Hating the Military

December 2, 2005

Kieran Michael Lalor

MANY of America's universities want to ban recruiters for the U.S. military from campus — but the Solomon Amendment, a law authored by New York Rep. Gerry Solomon in 1996, denies federal funds to any school that does. On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments from a consortia of 38 law schools (including mine) that want the Solomon Amendment declared unconstitutional.

The schools have long claimed that the problem is the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality — which they say violates their anti-discrimination policy.

The claim is laughable.

What's really driving this is not equal treatment for gays: It's academia's deep contempt for the armed forces, dating to the Vietnam era.

I started law school just days after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. Orientation centered on a case of determining the rightful owner of a painting stolen by a soldier in World War II.

It struck me as odd that with countless legal decisions in Anglo-American jurisprudence, the school chose — as an introduction to the study of law, during a time of war — to focus on a case where the bad guy was an American soldier.

The professor leading the class used examples from his practice to illustrate legal concepts. And he had cut his legal teeth defending draft dodgers, so his lessons typically involved a bumbling and heartless U.S. military persecuting a saint-like draft evader.

In my legal education, I've heard a former dean explain to my class that 9/11 was payback for the My Lai massacre and listened to a guest speaker compare U.S. soldiers to Nazis. My wife's also a law student; one question on the final exam of her legal ethics class incorporated an anti-military theme mocking operations in Iraq.

Earlier this semester, the law school invited an Army Special Operations commander to discuss the war in Iraq. (He was not in uniform and representing his own views, not the military's.) Not surprisingly, the dean of the school opened the round of questions with a knee-jerk query about Abu Ghraib and a loaded question comparing Iraq to Vietnam.

How do I know that this bias, rather than "don't ask, don't tell," is the issue? Because of how my school, and others, deal with the people who actually set that policy — our elected representatives.

Under our Constitution, civilians control the military. (Legal scholars generally know this.) Why ban the military from campus when Congress passed "don't ask, don't tell" into law?

Rep. Nita Lowey, whose district includes my school, voted in favor of "don't ask, don't tell" in 1993. In March 2004, she voted to significantly strengthen the Solomon Amendment. That same month, Lowey was welcomed to campus and given the "Pioneer of Justice and Equality for Women and the Law" award.

An Army JAG recruiter who might not even support "don't ask, don't tell," and is powerless to change it, is vilified and barred from campus. Meanwhile, the lawmaker who voted for the legislation is a "pioneer of equality and justice."

The hypocrisy of legal educators who want to ban the military but remain on the federal dole — and use the Constitution as a cloak for their hatred of the military — stands in stark contrast to integrity of the Constitution's defenders, whom many law professors want banned. 

Kieran Michael Lalor is a student at Pace University School of Law, a Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Founder of Eternal Vigilance Society