Shot In The Dark: Kicking and Screaming

November 11, 2002

Kicking and Screaming

Many colleges and universities have long barred the US military from recruiting or conducting ROTC courses on campus.

Several years back, the Feds enacted a rule that would bar federal funding from institutions (including private ones) that forbade military recruiting. For years, that policy was applied with kid-gloves.

No more. The Fed is cracking the whip. And the academics, faced with the spectre of losing hundreds of millions in federal dollars, are falling into line.

But not without a fuss, of course. Lee Bockhorn of the Weekly Standard examines the paleo-left academy's peevish acquiescence.

As risible as this argument is, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger is employing an additional defense [for acquiescing], one that's both subtler and more radical in its implications. In his letter explaining Columbia's decision, Bollinger echoed Dean Leebron's point, but closed with a more provocative claim:

"The ready availability of [the enormous funding power of the state] requires self-restraint by officials, for otherwise we will lose our liberties not to official prohibitions but rather to the conditions attached to the purse. Such self-restraint is especially called for when colleges and universities are involved. The principle of academic freedom is one of the hallmarks of our country . . . Respect for the autonomy of these institutions is critical."

Notice the intellectual sleight-of-hand Bollinger is attempting here. The concept of academic freedom--the right of professors and students to teach, research, and publish on subjects of their choosing without fear of reprisal--is being extended to include institutional "autonomy," defined as the right of universities to see themselves as inviolable miniature fiefdoms with no accountability to outsiders. No one doubts the importance of defending academic freedom. But doing so becomes more difficult when the concept is stretched like Silly Putty to justify the whims of college bureaucrats who take unusual pleasure in giving the raspberry to the broader community's sensibilities.

This mirrors (in a larger arena) the current controversy in St. Paul, where a group of leftist parents opposes the inclusion of Junior ROTC in the St. Paul Public Schools.