Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a challenge to a law requiring higher education institutions to allow military recruiters on campus or forfeit federal funds. This was, in our judgment, an important step towards expressing respect and gratitude for the sacrifices of our armed services, while also reducing a dangerous polarization between two of this country's most important institutions.

At a time when the armed forces -- especially the Army -- are having to work overtime to meet recruitment targets, it's a terrible sign for national unity that there's an organized effort to deny them the chance to pitch America's best and brightest. Securing a representative cross-section of citizens to defend this country is already difficult in an all-volunteer military; we should be encouraging college-educated young Americans, especially from upper-middle-class and middle-class backgrounds, to wear the uniform if they are so willing. As Steven J. Nider argued last year in Blueprint magazine, it's a simple matter of equal access for an institution with an unequal responsibility to make life easier for us all.

The challenge rejected by the High Court yesterday, brought by an association of law schools, was based on the argument that the military's "don't ask/don't tell" policy towards gays and lesbians made it an employer practicing a form of discrimination rejected by the schools as a matter of principle. But it's Congress, of course, not the various military services, who sets that policy, and as the Court itself noted, allowing recruiters on campuses in no way keeps school administrators from expressing their own objections to "don't ask/don't tell."

It's hard to avoid the underlying reality that the challenge to the Solomon Amendment is just the latest stage of a saga going back to the expulsion of ROTC units (especially on elite university campuses) during the Vietnam War era. Frankly, some academic activists continue to believe the rarefied atmosphere of ivy-covered walls is profaned by the presence of the military in any form. Whatever the motives of anti-military protestors, this habit is beginning to smell of elitism of the worst sort, as comfortable "gownies" treat our working-class military like unwashed "townies," even though military service remains the most honored expression of patriotism for most Americans.

In the latest issue of Blueprint, Will Marshall suggests the chronic cultural and ideological polarization of the military and academia is bad for both institutions, and bad for the country. Breaking down the walls and letting military recruiters on campus is a good first step toward bringing both institutions back into the mainstream. Reconstituting ROTC units at our elite universities is an equally good second step. As retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Christman wrote last year in Blueprint, bans on ROTC units "not only deny opportunities to hear alternative voices on college campuses, but they also muffle the academic voice in our armed forces."

We need to help close the civilian-military gap, and especially the gap between the institutions that will train the next generation of American leaders and the armed services on whose sacrifices they will depend.