Law Schools Protest 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

The New York Times profiled two law schools that are at the forefront of the fight against the military's controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The Vermont Law School and William Mitchell College of Law are the only two law schools in the country that bar military recruiters, which, under a 1996 law, allows the government to withhold federal research grants from the schools.

"They are the only institutions that have taken as dramatic and as principled a stance as they have, so it's certainly put in the category of profiles in courage," a Syracuse University law professor said. "They have done things that other schools have not done."

In defense of every other school out there, these two schools are both small and unaffiliated with larger universities—lifting the burden of other programs that might have been affected. But Vermont has not come out unscathed, losing up to $500,000 a year in federal research grants as punishment via the Solomon Amendment; William Mitchell hasn't been affected because it does not receive money from the four spending bills cited in the law.