Author Daniel J. Flynn believes that last month’s Supreme Court case of Rumsfeld vs. the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) was about the hypocrisy of higher education.
“Faculty and administrators rarely have trouble accepting military money through government contracts, but have problems with students accepting military money [through service],” Flynn said at an Accuracy in Academia event called “The Ivory Tower’s War on the U.S. Military.”
So the decision of the Supreme Court made the hypocrisy obvious and illegal by telling colleges and universities that they cannot continue to get federal funding while banning military recruitment on their campuses explained Flynn, the former executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
Flynn, a former Marine reservist, worked to publicize the plight of ROTC cadets when he worked with the Young America’s Foundation in the mid-1990s.
Historically, the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) began because of the desire of universities to connect with the military and offer more to its students. At that time, ROTC programs were mandated at schools, which some, including the Fellowship of Christian Reconciliation, fought against, said Flynn.
Flynn said these Christian pacifists feared that being prepared for war would lead to one so they sought a legislative end to the ROTC mandate. Thus they sought to change the status quo through congressional act, as supporters of the ROTC are doing now to prevent the elimination of ROTC from college campuses.
According to Flynn, a poll was taken during the mid-60s that showed that 63 percent of the students at UC-Berkeley believed ROTC belonged on their campus, revealing a clear disconnect between students and professors, who in large part wanted to ban ROTC.
People have opposed ROTC for many reasons said Flynn, including the most recent claim of discrimination against gays used by FAIR in the recent court case.
“But it doesn’t matter why they oppose it. The reasons change, but [the real reason is] there are a disproportionate number of professors who hate the military,” said Flynn.
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas and Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies that Have Obscured Our Nation’s Greatness.
Michael Tremoglie, one of the other speakers at the event, suggested that professors think that everyone thinks the way that they do. Tremoglie also said that the veterans he knows who advocated getting out of Vietnam only had one reason for it; America’s unwillingness to win in Vietnam. They simply didn’t want to fight a war that we didn’t resolve to win.
Most recently, Flynn worked at the Leadership Institute until leaving to devote himself fully to his next book, according to his Web site, www.flynnfiles.com. He lives in Washington, D.C.
As a campus speaker, he’s been shouted down and has had professors blare televisions to try and drown him out.
