GEORGE WILL on law schools and the Solomon Amendment:

A striking alteration of America’s political landscape since 1960 has been the marginalization — actually, the self-marginalization — of the professoriate. An inhospitable campus climate has prompted the growth of public policy think tanks and publications that sustain a conservative intelligentsia that helps elect and staff conservative administrations. And faculties have adopted increasingly adversarial stances toward an increasingly conservative public and its institutions.

Today’s schools bristle with moral principles that they urge upon the — so they think — benighted society beyond their gates. But as Roberts blandly reminded the schools regarding their desire to bar military recruiters: “You are perfectly free to do that, if you don’t take the money.”

Somehow it makes me think of Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters:

Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*.

Too many people in academia don’t seem to realize that the money has to come from somewhere. And you hear people talk about how academia needs to adopt an “adversarial stance” toward the larger culture, without thinking much about why the larger culture would want to pay for that.