For the past five years, Yale Law School has been engaged in a court battle with the Defense Department over the military's recruitment activities at university sponsored events on its campus, given its discriminate stance on homosexuality. Earlier this month, Yale lost that battle. Facing a loss of $350 million in government grants should it continue to ban military recruiters from campus, Yale must now relent and allow its ideals to be trespassed by a flagrantly intrusive government. The military's ability to bypass university policy at Yale is evidence of a disturbing trend of governmental interference in university affairs.

Yale requires all recruiters at university sponsored events to sign a pledge of nondiscrimination, which military organizations have not been able to comply with as a result of Defense Department's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. That 1993 policy, like its predecessor, prohibits servicemen from being openly gay. For the past 30 years, military recruiters have not been allowed on Yale's campus for their failure to comply with university policies stemming from the military's exclusion of gays.

However, five years ago the government threatened to withhold all of Yale's research grants - to the tune of $350 million - if the university continued to prohibit military recruiters. This threat was vindicated last month in a federal appeals court. Given a choice between upholding its nondiscrimination policy and losing all federal funding for scientific endeavors, the plaintiffs for Yale were forced to stand down. On Monday, representatives from the Air Force and Navy were present at a Yale job interview program for the first time since 1978.

At the crux of the legal battle was a 1997 law called the Solomon Amendment, which allows the government to deny funding to universities that prohibit military recruiting. Several Yale faculty members argued successfully in district court in 2005 that this law infringed on the university's academic freedom and right to free speech. But a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against several universities' attempts to prohibit military recruitment on campus due to the discrimination of openly gay individuals, virtually guaranteed the eventual defeat of Yale's arguments. The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Solomon Amendment allows the military to force its way onto campus despite university non-discrimination clauses.

The measures taken by the government are completely unreasonable. Instead of working to create a more tolerant military that complies with the nondiscriminatory policies of Yale and other institutions, it has strong-armed its way past any such regulations by threatening to withhold research funding. This funding goes toward vital research that benefits our society as a whole. Yale, for example, is a frontrunner in this field of medical research. Cutting funding to vital endeavors like this over an obstinate refusal to allow gays to serve openly is ludicrous.

Columbia University is currently the target of similar threats. A resolution was passed by Columbia's Senate in 2005 opposing the reinstatement of the Reserved Officers Training Corps program - which was disbanded during the Vietnam War - because of the military's discrimination against gays. In the aftermath of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) has proposed the Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act, intended to deny federal funding to Columbia if it continues to ban the ROTC. This is another example of government officials attempting to bully their way past university non-discrimination policies by threatening scientific research.

Universities, especially private institutions like Yale and Columbia, ought to have the right to shape and enforce their own policies of what is and is not tolerable on their own campuses. Blackmailing the university community and holding vital research hostage is despicable. What's worse is that all this is done to uphold the military's discriminatory policies.