Op-Ed
Lehman's Laurels
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Brutal Honesty
February 13, 2005 - 8:00pmCornell's president came to Ithaca with a record of socially conscious service within the academy. He wrote widely on welfare reform and public policy and became nationally prominent in his role as Dean of Michigan's Law School during the Grutter case. In that suit, Barbara Grutter sued Lehman in his capacity along with other top administrators at Michigan for violating her civil rights by taking race into account in its admissions policy. But the Supreme Court affirmed the law school's narrowly-tailored policy that aimed, in the very words of Lehman's counselors, "to ensure that a critical mass of underrepresented minority students would be reached so as to realize the educational benefits of a diverse student body." While the undergraduate admissions case decided at the same time was not upheld, Lehman's policies were sanctioned by the highest court in the land.
For his continuous support of affirmative action in that position, the NAACP awarded Lehman its National Equal Justice Award in 2003.
Our president is no stranger to contentious policy debates or progressive advocacy. Indeed, he has displayed a zeal for diversity and equal justice. What is peculiar, however, is that our president has left his muscles in Ann Arbor.
While the motto of our campus holds our community to a standard of equal opportunity, and the official policy of our institution requires "diversity and inclusion and welcome [to] all individuals, including those from groups that have been historically marginalized and previously excluded from equal access to opportunity," whatever grains of egalitarianism Ezra hoped his farm would yield have been trampled by Lehman's recent silences.
Despite his impressive record of fighting bias in his time before returning to Ithaca -- a record that played no little role in his selection -- President Lehman's leadership on non-discrimination has been lacking at best and perhaps indifferent at worst.
The most central issue we can consider to evaluate Lehman's ability to follow our motto and his dedication to equal justice is the Solomon Amendment. Originally passed in 1995, and since amended several times, these pages of U.S. Code withhold Department of Defense funding from any institution whose policies impinge on the ability of ROTC or military recruiters to participate in campus activities. Solomon was passed with the specific intent of slapping maverick institutions like Yale Law School, whose non-discrimination policy forbade military recruiters resources and space during career events.
Because it is the explicitly unabashed policy of our armed forces to discriminate against applicants with "a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct," the faculty of Yale Law School choose to exercise their rights of expression and not endorse the employer's flatly discriminatory policy. Cornell's Law School originally condemned Solomon when it was passed, but since then, and especially during Lehman's term when Yale and 25 other schools were actively fighting it, our campus has quietly allowed bias incidents to occur at every career fair.
Congress moved to expand the scope of Solomon in recent years. Now if any sub-element of a university prevents military recruiters access provided to equal opportunity employers, sanctions are triggered for the entire institution. Moreover, funding restrictions now include Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Education, Labor and Defense.
Following a series of letters from the U.S. Army to then-Yale President Richard Levin threatening a sudden $300 million funding loss to Yale, the law faculty voted in 2002 to temporarily suspend their nondiscrimination policy. Yale Law permitted recruiters into all formal recruiting programs and protocols, yet to the chagrin of arrogant Pentagoners, since 2002 not a single graduate as accepted a position with the military. The Department of Defense was still convinced that Yale's policy, despite its suspension, was in violation of the Solomon Amendment. In response to threats from the DoD, the Yale faculty sued the Secretary of Defense. And, two weeks ago, they won.
The ruling of the District Court of Conn. calls the Solomon Amendment "unconstitutional" and states that it "has forced the Faculty to change their message" from non-discrimination to "an equivocal statement that includes the disclaimer 'except for the military.'" It continues to assert that the Solomon Amendment coerces speech, encroaches on freedom of expression and infringes on the Yale faculty's constitutionally protected rights. Solomon's funding conditions stand completely outside the realm of any Spending Clause power of Congress because they are not "any way related, let alone reasonably, to the purposes for which the federal funds have been given."
The Solomon Amendment is a piece of legislation designed to bully universities expressing non-discrimination and has twice been overturned in the past 4 months. Our administration has repeatedly refused to participate in either of the suits. Check out solomonresponse.org to find a list of schools with the integrity to protest. Check out Day Hall to find an administration in love with mottos but unwilling to practice them.
It surely does not escape the attention of our president that the bylaws of the American Association of Law Schools -- a group in which he was an active member from 1997-2001 -- require member schools to exact a promise of non-discrimination from all employers it invites to campus.
Putting our president's past and present conduct in context, two ugly conclusions are inevitable: Either Lehman's advocacy for "equal justice" and his integrity to uphold the bylaws of organizations in which he is a member and the policies of a university he heads has diminished. Or, as a gay faculty member recently quietly observed following the Faculty Senate's refusal to discuss the Solomon Amendment decisions, federally-dictated gay-bashing is just not a concern at Cornell.
Mr. president, can you please prove us incorrect?
Jeff Purcell is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at jlp56@cornell.edu. Brutal Honesty appears Mondays.
Archived article by Jeff Purcell