Bob Loblaw

Posted on December 6, 2005 by David

One of the things that most amazed me about going to a premier law school was the degree to which prospective employers would stoop to kiss our asses: offers of trips, meals, and obscene salaries for little tangible reason beyond the fact that we all got B+’s at NYU (everybody gets B+’s at NYU).

Everyobody, it seemed, wanted a piece of us, including Uncle Sam. NYU, ever a progressive institution, restricted the military from recruiting on campus, though, in view of the military’s anti-gay policy. Then came the Solomon Amendment, which entailed that, as a condition to receiving federal funding, any educational institution must permit on-campus military recruitment. It was broad in scope, covering all of NYU, an enormous institution depending on lots of federal dollars, a huge risk just for a law school’s political stance.

The law school caved while I was there and my friends of the LGBT persuasion had a great idea: sign up for all military interviews, show up in drag, and eviscerate the low-level military recruiter on the ground that she was an integral part of the machine, an archetype of hate, and thus deserving of public ridicule. They weren’t offered jobs.

But of the lawyers, and for the lawyers, NYU sued. Relying in part upon the Boy Scout case which held that, government funding be damned, the Boy Scouts could dissociate with queers at will, NYU gained great success in finding that the Solomon Amendment’s spending condition unduly burdened free speech. Today the government will be arguing for reversal before the Supreme Court.

The issue will focus largely on whether a law school’s decision to allow certain employers on campus constitutes “speech” per se. I’ll be interested in seeing the approach of the shamelessly homophobic Scalia on this issue, insofar as he has a tendency to bend over backwards in protecting “speech” when it is defined to include corporate spending for political campaigns. Money talks–corporate America is speaking up for its rights to tax cuts when it contributes heavily to both the RNC and the DNC. But is NYU “speaking” by sending a message to its students that we do not support institutionalized discrimination, that we support the struggle of oppressed classes?

Lord knows it has spoken volumes by taking on the military.

» Filed Under Turf Wars

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