Why would an academic employment contract be more lenient than the Constitution? The Constitution is a floor, not a bar to reach for. It's a mistake to read modern libertarian (little "l") ideas into the Constitution. While there has been a change through history in which of the federal versus state governments has exercised the police power, the Constitution has always served as a check on an otherwise expansive power. It's easy to forget that all the founders' talk of "limited government" was aimed at the states, not citizens, and referred to the federal government specifically, not the federal, state, and local governments together. The states were conceived of as inheriting the nearly unlimited powers of the British Parliament. The innovation of the U.S. was not to dramatically limit the state, but to put a powerful state under majoritarian control, with a limited set of protections from abuse.
The circle back on topic: there is nothing within the worldview of the Constitution that is inconsistent with a certain activities being allowed of the government that are outside the powers of an individual. You can argue about which entity is the right one to exercise it, but the government is supposed to have more expansive powers than any person.