Education: Protest and the Law

In the spasm that routinely greets the arrival of military recruiters on college campuses, protesters occupied the offices of Columbia University's student placement agency for all of five minutes last week—time enough for them to perform a few customary acts of vandalism. Then the quiet of the midyear exam period returned..

Or so it seemed. But in the aftermath of the brief excitement, Columbia's acting president Andrew W. Cordier faced up to a nagging legal issue. He announced that a faculty committee will study the university's relationships with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Under specific scrutiny by the committee is Public...