It's been observed elsewhere, but why on earth are they protesting the folks following lawful orders, and NOT protesting Congress, who gave the orders?

Good question, Ethan. And I wonder if any campus feminists are protesting at taking money from the world's most famous misogynists!

But, in the case of Rumsfeld vs. Forum, I'm not so sure about the government's attempt to lump the law schools together with every other school in a given university. I don't really understand the governance of such institutions, so I don't know just how fair this is. If the law schools are self-sustaining in terms of their budget, then I'd say the government's case is weaker. But if it's all one big pot, then it's harder to justify the universities' stance. And, as some have pointed out, there's nothing to stop them from letting the recruiters on campus while simultaneously supporting student protests against them. Restraining that would indeed be an infringement of free speech.

But there actually may be a good progressive reason for hoping the universities lose, as Nathan Newman has pointed out:

"...the whole "right not to associate with speech I don't like" is a doctrine that the rightwing has been pushing for decades to allow racists, gay-haters and corporations to exclude people. Most recently, the doctrine was used to strike down the New Jersey gay rights law that had required the Boy Scouts to allow gay leaders under this bastard First Amendment doctrine.

"Extending the doctrine to large economic institutions like universities is just one step away from large corporations using the doctrine to attack laws protecting pro-union speech or any manner of other speech that the government protects on private property."

On the other hand, as one commenter in that post notes, if SCOTUS applies the Boy Scout case, the military loses. If they don't apply Dale, they have to limit its scope, and either way, liberals win.

So for either side, the decision could turn out to be a case of a prayer that "heaven in enormous vengeance grants."

It is the same liberal bullshit: "You can say whatever you want, as long as it is our viewpoint."

I suspect those other cases are not relevant. The law school already has the right, which no one is disputing, "not to associate" with recruiters. Except that in this case they accepted money that came with that condition attached.

It's the attaching of strings to Federal money that's the issue here, and making it a 1st Amendment case is bogus.

(Your point about whether they are separate from the University I have no more idea than you about. But I haven't heard that that is one of their arguments.)

You're right. I thought the separation I mention was at question, but it's not. They're challenging the Solomon Amendment itself. I've now read the ACLU position, and a couple of other amicus briefs and their grounds don't make much sense to me. The professors and students are perfectly free to protest volubly and the university, by officially supporting such protests, would make it clear that it was not associating with the military recruiters. And I really don't understand how the students are harmed.

Now, I'm not familiar with the Solomon Amendment, so if there are restrictions on such protests, then I'd say that aspect of the law should be struck down. But if it's a simple purse-string connection, no.

I wonder, if a private employer who endowed a chair insisted on discrimination, would they feel justified in preventing recruiting and keeping the money?

Frankly, this is just the sort of thing that fuels the right-wing complaint of "judicial activism" (which is not, BTW, something the right should complain about, since the conservative justices on SCOTUS are notoriously more likely to overturn legislation than the centrist or liberal ones.) For that reason, and for the reasons Nathan discusses, it's not something progressives should be supporting.

As for "liberal bullshit," Mr. Lanning, that attitude is by no means exclusive to liberals.

That the feminists at Harvard and elsewhere are silent when their universities are accepting Saudi money certainly is a delicious irony!

As for excluding military recruiters from the campus while taking Federal money, I fail to understand why Uncle Sam doesn't show some cojones and tell Harvard, et al, "He who pays the piper calls the tune", and tell them to accept the presence of recruiters or lose their Federal funding.

Ain't political correctness wonderful?

I think that's what Unca Sam has done, and the law school is trying to block this...

Don't you think this is just somebody's idea of "yippee, we can use this!" In the 60s and 70s they didn't allow the ROTC or recruiters on campus because the campuses were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Then time passed and . . . now they've come up with a reason they hope they can make stick, legally speaking, even if it's logically faulty.

Of course it is. (Which is why them taking Saudi money is funny.)

The whole position is a pack of lies and hyprocrisy. I live among people like this, and they are reacting to the presence of the nasty Republican-favoring American military within their sophisticated Euro-styled elite enclaves like they would react to the student cafeteria being replaced by a MacDonalds or a Toys-R-Us.

(But if they were threatened by terrorists the flubberworms would instantly howl, "Bush promised to protect us!")