It Has to be Asked!
I think the question needs to be asked – and apologies to some of the very smart and ethical attorneys that I know and blog with. But the more I thought about the fact that so many law schools were against letting recruiters on campus, the more I began to wonder just what kind of lawyers we are turning our nowadays.
I’ll admit up front that I have not done extensive research on this subject, so it is based from the heart, soul and critical thinking, rather than from facts. The bastions of higher education complained that military recruiters should not be allowed on campus because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policies. As I understand it, the claim by the law schools was that the military policies interfered with the First Amendment right of free speech, and therefore the schools had the right to ban the recruiters from campus. Sheesh – even that sentence was a mouthful.
While I can see how the military’s policy may effect someone’s right to free speech once they join the military, I fail to see how it effects people’s rights to have recruiters on campus. Doesn’t the military, as an entity in and of itself, have the right to present their point of view? Isn’t that a free speech issue also? And is it possible that there are students on campus that would like to hear what the military recruiters have to say? Don’t they have rights too? In essence, didn’t the law school’s policies do the same thing they claim the military’s policies do – deny people free speech rights? Maybe I’m confused, but it seems rather circular.
But the issue that sparked this post was that 36 law schools – the people who are educating our future lawyers – could not understand that they were arguing in circles (no lawyer pun intended). The fact that they could not see that freedom of speech issues work both ways, at least to my simple mind, bothers me. And the question came out – without forethought – “What – do we have a bunch of Ward Churchills running the law schools?”
I think Bill Murchison says it all at Townhall.com:
One might wonder -- as I do -- why our nation's highest court had to be asked anything so obvious as, "Are military recruiters entitled to reach U.S. college students on the same terms as nonmilitary recruiters?" What seems obvious to Main Street Americans isn't, alas, obvious to their intellectual establishment. A fair reading of FAIR's argument is that the military's needs don't rise to the level of gay law students' imputed need for affirmation by their military protectors -- according to the Constitution!
Mr. Murchison continues:
Where this stuff comes from is a matter of conjecture. A strong, indeed, I think, decisive inference, is that our academic community has yet to recover from the Sixties -- probably because many of those who were the Sixties now preen in top academic offices, imposing on the younger generation the ideas they sought, 40 years ago, to impose on the older generation.
It helps to recall what the Harvard faculty did to its president, Larry Summers, for wondering -- in the course of wondering about the paucity of women scientists -- whether women's minds are formed for science in the same way that men's minds are formed for it. Does anyone know the answer to that one? I think not. What brought the roof crashing down on Summers' head and contributed to his eventual demise as president, was his implication that the question of sex differences might be worth discussing. Egad! You might have thought he had proposed a School of Creationism Studies, with Pat Robertson as dean.
Kind of scary if you ask me. I am glad the Supreme Court came down on these self-proclaimed intellectuals.
I’ll admit up front that I have not done extensive research on this subject, so it is based from the heart, soul and critical thinking, rather than from facts. The bastions of higher education complained that military recruiters should not be allowed on campus because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policies. As I understand it, the claim by the law schools was that the military policies interfered with the First Amendment right of free speech, and therefore the schools had the right to ban the recruiters from campus. Sheesh – even that sentence was a mouthful.
While I can see how the military’s policy may effect someone’s right to free speech once they join the military, I fail to see how it effects people’s rights to have recruiters on campus. Doesn’t the military, as an entity in and of itself, have the right to present their point of view? Isn’t that a free speech issue also? And is it possible that there are students on campus that would like to hear what the military recruiters have to say? Don’t they have rights too? In essence, didn’t the law school’s policies do the same thing they claim the military’s policies do – deny people free speech rights? Maybe I’m confused, but it seems rather circular.
But the issue that sparked this post was that 36 law schools – the people who are educating our future lawyers – could not understand that they were arguing in circles (no lawyer pun intended). The fact that they could not see that freedom of speech issues work both ways, at least to my simple mind, bothers me. And the question came out – without forethought – “What – do we have a bunch of Ward Churchills running the law schools?”
I think Bill Murchison says it all at Townhall.com:
One might wonder -- as I do -- why our nation's highest court had to be asked anything so obvious as, "Are military recruiters entitled to reach U.S. college students on the same terms as nonmilitary recruiters?" What seems obvious to Main Street Americans isn't, alas, obvious to their intellectual establishment. A fair reading of FAIR's argument is that the military's needs don't rise to the level of gay law students' imputed need for affirmation by their military protectors -- according to the Constitution!
Mr. Murchison continues:
Where this stuff comes from is a matter of conjecture. A strong, indeed, I think, decisive inference, is that our academic community has yet to recover from the Sixties -- probably because many of those who were the Sixties now preen in top academic offices, imposing on the younger generation the ideas they sought, 40 years ago, to impose on the older generation.
It helps to recall what the Harvard faculty did to its president, Larry Summers, for wondering -- in the course of wondering about the paucity of women scientists -- whether women's minds are formed for science in the same way that men's minds are formed for it. Does anyone know the answer to that one? I think not. What brought the roof crashing down on Summers' head and contributed to his eventual demise as president, was his implication that the question of sex differences might be worth discussing. Egad! You might have thought he had proposed a School of Creationism Studies, with Pat Robertson as dean.
Kind of scary if you ask me. I am glad the Supreme Court came down on these self-proclaimed intellectuals.
posted by Specter at 3/07/2006 10:19:00 AM
<< Home