Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School; Harvard University - Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)) has posted "Our Money or Your Life!" Higher Education and the First Amendment on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
What limits, if any, does the First Amendment impose on efforts by the federal government to use federal funds to move institutions of higher learning in its preferred directions? What is the scope of the right to "academic freedom"? Three propositions are well-established: (1) the federal government can generally speak as it wishes, free from the constraints of the First Amendment, (2) the federal government is generally forbidden from engaging in viewpoint discrimination in funding private actors (including universities), and (3) the federal government may not impose unconstitutional conditions, as, for example, by funding a university's medical schools only if the university obliges all of its faculty to speak out in favor of a specified cause. Hard questions arise when the federal government is using its authority over federal funds to prevent alleged or actual violations of federal law. Those questions are especially challenging when the government is not directly targeting speech, but is intruding on institutions of higher learning in a way that cannot be said to be minimally necessary to redress or prevent violations of federal law. Such intrusions raise unresolved questions about the content and scope of a general right, often thought to be implicit in the First Amendment, to academic freedom. Money doesn't talk, it swears.-Bob Dylan I.
Highly recommended.
