COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Yale Law, Newly Defeated, Allows Military Recruiters
THOMAS KAPLAN, New York Times
October 1, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Sept. 30 For five years, Yale Law School has fought to
restrict military recruiters from its job fairs because of the
Pentagon's policy that bars openly gay or bisexual people from the
military. But with the federal government threatening to withhold
$350 million in grants if the university does not assist the
recruiters, that fight will all but end on Monday.
After an appeals court ruled in favor of the Defense Department on
Sept. 17, the law school said it would allow recruiters from the Air
Force and Navy to participate in a university-sponsore d job interview
program for law students on Monday afternoon. For now, the legal
battle to stop the recruiters is over, said Robert A. Burt, a Yale
law professor and the lead plaintiff in the case.
"The judges who hold office at the moment disagree with us,"
Professor Burt said. "We must wait for history to vindicate our position."
At question is a statute called the Solomon Amendment, which allows
the federal government to withhold funds from universities that do
not extend the same welcome to military recruiters as they do to
other recruiters.
Since 1978, Yale Law School has required recruiters to sign a pledge
of nondiscrimination. Military recruiters would not do that because
of the Defense Department's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which
permits homosexuals to serve in the armed forces as long as they keep
their sexual orientation private.
But in 2002, the federal government threatened to withhold the
millions it grants to Yale every year, mostly for medical and
scientific research, if the law school did not accommodate the
recruiters. The law school complied, but 45 members of its faculty
filed suit, challenging the law as an infringement on free speech and
association as well as academic freedoms. (Yale College has not
restricted the activities of military recruiters.)
A district court agreed in 2005, and the law school again ceased to
assist military recruiters. But in a broader case, the United States
Supreme Court last year unanimously sided against a consortium of
about three dozen law schools and universities seeking to bar
recruiters from their campuses. Because of that decision, the ruling
by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in
Manhattan against the professors last month was widely anticipated here.
Still, that did not lessen the ruling's sting for gay rights
advocates like Sara Jeruss, a third-year law student and the
co-chairwoman of OutLaws, an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual
and transgender students at the law school.
"We're disappointed by it," Ms. Jeruss said recently in an interview.
"We obviously wish the government wasn't forcing discrimination on us."
But given the Supreme Court's ruling, Professor Burt said, there was
little chance the appeals court would side with the professors, and
even less of a chance that such a ruling would survive on another
appeal to the high court. That left the law school out of options.
"We had a choice, which is we could continue to exclude the military,
and Yale University would have lost $300 million per year," Professor
Burt said in an interview here recently. "We're not going to bring
the medical school and the whole science enterprise to its knees."
And so the law school obliged when officials from the Judge Advocate
General's Corps in the Air Force and Navy asked to be part of the law
school's fall job interview program, which begins Monday afternoon at
a hotel near the campus.
Yale will be one of nearly 200 law schools that the Air Force's judge
advocate corps will visit this year, said Capt. Eric Merriam, the
chief of recruiting for the corps.
"We appreciate the opportunity to explain the opportunities for
qualified attorneys to serve the United States as members of the Air
Force JAG Corps," he said.
Still, the court decision does not appear to have stifled any
bitterness over the recruiters' visit. A coalition of law school
faculty, students and staff members were to release a letter on
Monday strongly disagreeing with the don't ask, don't tell policy,
and gay rights activists at the law school planned a silent protest
for the afternoon.
And not everyone here thinks that the fight was worth it. Stephen
Vaden, a third-year law student and an opponent of don't ask, don't
tell, said the school would be better able to effect change in the
military's policies if more students were exposed to career
opportunities within the armed forces.
"I think that those individuals who want to change the don't ask,
don't tell policy are going about it in completely the wrong way,"
said Mr. Vaden, president of the Yale Law Republicans. "Standing in
the courtroom, screaming 'Discrimination! ' and trying to ban them
from the law school," he added, "they're doing themselves more harm than good."
Ms. Jeruss and other students said that their protest was not aimed
at the recruiters personally, and Captain Merriam said that the JAG
Corps' recruitment efforts would not be affected by any dissent at
Yale. But students promised that as long as the don't ask, don't tell
policy was in effect, they would demonstrate whenever military
recruiters travel here.
"We may not be able to stop the recruiters from coming, but we
certainly still have the ability and I think, the responsibility
to speak out," said Addisu Demissie, a third-year law student.
"That's what we have left."
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen material relevant to the work of Eugene, Oregon’s Committee for Countering Military Recruitment that we think may be of use to others individuals and groups with similar goals.
Because our web site is public, personal comments about the articles and (frequent) corrections of reporters’ errors are also not included. If an article interests you, we encourage you to return to the Counter-Recruitment List Serve and put the article’s headline into the search line, which should bring up (often wise and useful) commentary and corrections. If you do not belong to the List Serve, it can be found at counter-recruitment@yahoogroups.com
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the articles on this site are posted without profit to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposed.