Harvard University should end ROTC ban

Harvard's hypocrisy

http://www.telegram.com/article/20101002/NEWS/10020320/1020

University should end ROTC ban

October 2, 2010

Harvard University's Drew Gilpin Faust declared last week that her
school will not welcome the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program
back to campus until the U.S. government rescinds its "don't ask,
don't tell" policy on gay Americans serving in the armed forces.

The statement, which came in the wake of a Senate decision not to
revisit the policy, at least for now, drew criticism from many. Sen.
Scott Brown criticized Harvard for denying ROTC a presence on campus
while simultaneously welcoming students who are in this country
illegally, as well as calling for passage of the DREAM Act that would
provide some illegal aliens a path to citizenship.

We can think of a few other reasons Harvard should end its ban.

•For starters, the ban dates to 1969, the height of the Vietnam War,
and was clearly a product of antiwar sentiment on a famously liberal
campus. The Uniform Code of Military Justice provisions that govern
the discharge of homosexuals from the armed forces actually date to
1950, and "don't ask, don't tell" was a compromise measure that took
effect only in 1993. Continuing to link ROTC's presence to the policy
is clearly just a matter of ideological whim.

•Ms. Faust herself clearly understands the central role that military
service plays in this country. As the author of "This Republic of
Suffering," an insightful and moving study of Americans' experience
with death during and immediately after the Civil War, it is puzzling
indeed that she would deny Harvard students the opportunity to choose
one more way to serve their nation.

•Harvard University and its faculty continue to enjoy an abundance of
federal grants, awards and programs, and its students accept federal
loans. Unless the university is willing to divorce itself from all
involvement with federal funding, it has no business barring ROTC,
which is itself a federal program. Colleges and universities
accepting taxpayer dollars are simply not permitted to pick and
choose which provisions of federal law they will accept and which
they will ignore.

Ms. Faust said that Harvard looks forward to the end of "don't ask,
don't tell" and will welcome the opportunity to "regularize our
relationship" with the U.S. military. We presume that relationship
already covers, say, the U.S. military protecting Cambridge from
foreign attack. Ms. Faust and Harvard have an opportunity here to
seize the highest moral ground of all and raise the pressure on
Congress to modify or drop "don't ask, don't tell": Welcome ROTC back
to campus, and make clear that all Harvard students who wish to enter
the program can do so.

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