The National Association of Scholars applauded the Supreme Court's dismissal yesterday of the disingenuous free speech claims put forward by a coalition of law schools in Rumsfeld v Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights.
"While we have generally been wary of the use of government power to coerce private higher education institutions," said Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, "we are pleased that in this instance the bien pensants of academe have been hoist with their own petards. Having long been complicit or acquiescent in the enforcement of speech codes, and supportive of regulatory policies promoting ethnic and gender quotas, they here tried to torture the concept of free speech to cover their pet practice of excluding military recruiters from campus. The Court has rightly and unanimously rebuked their sophistry."
"A sensible and consistent commitment to intellectual freedom," observed Dr. Balch, "ought to allow military recruiters open access to campus. Students should be at liberty to learn about the opportunities for serving their country through the armed forces, along with other career possibilities, whatever the administrations of their institutions may think about the wisdom of specific military policies. It is embarrassing that so many legal scholars, and other academic leaders, cannot bring themselves to recognize such a simple fact."
The National Association of Scholars is a higher education reform group. It is located in Princeton and has forty-six state affiliates and more than four thousand professors, graduate students, administrators, and trustees as members.
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