A Harvard Crimson editorial celebrates the Undergraduate Council's decision not to fund a campus Christian group whose charter stipulates that the group's leaders must subscribe to the group's ìPrinciples of Faith.î According to the author of the editorial, who is also a member of the aforementioned Undergraduate Council, such a stipulation is blatantly discriminatory, and the U.C. should thus be lauded for denying the group funding. Trouble is, he's flat wrong--as a recent case at Tufts aptly demonstrates. What this student calls discrimination, constitutional law calls "freedom of association." The Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship has the right to form its own rules about who is eligible for office within the organization. It also now has the right to claim that it is being unfairly discriminated against by Harvard's Undergraduate Council.

I've written about freedom of association and the funding of student groups here and here.

Crimson link via James Taranto.