Military Not the Only HLS Recruiter That Discriminates

To the editors:

Re “Supreme Injustice,” editorial, May 9:

After the Third Circuit Court of Appeals declared the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional, Harvard Law School (HLS), parading itself as the paragon of nondiscrimination, ceremoniously banned the military from campus. It should be noted, however, that HLS’s application of its hallowed nondiscrimination policy is quite uneven.

The nondiscrimination policy explains that it is committed to “equal opportunity for all persons on the basis of individual merit” without regard to characteristics such as race or sexual orientation. While HLS invokes this policy in its arguments for banning the military from campus for its (wrongful, I would say) discrimination against gays, it apparently does not see any problem hosting the many law firms that specify that they are recruiting minority first-year students only­—strongly inferring that non-minority first-years should wait until next year to have a shot at a plum summer job.

This hypocrisy directly contradicts the plain text of the policy. So much for equal opportunity on the basis of merit without regard to race!

ELLIOTT MARC DAVIS

Cambridge, Mass.

May 9, 2005

The writer is a student at Harvard Law School.