National ROTC Coverage: 2006

6 January 2006 The Dartmouth article "ROTC cadets to receive full financial support". Note: The Army is matching the arrangements already in place for ROTC students at other institutions such as Harvard and Stanford.
12 January 2006 GayPatriot blog item "Columbia University Wants It All". Note: A gay servicemember says "If Columbia University doesn’t want the federal government on its campus, fine. But they shouldn’t expect federal dollars."
13 January 2006 Daily Princetonian article "CAP's ROTC advocacy died down in 1980s". Note: When Judge Samuel Alito '72 joined Concerned Alumni of Princeton "keeping ROTC at Princeton was indeed a priority for CAP when it was founded in 1972. By the 1980s, however, ROTC appears to have disappeared as a major issue for both CAP and the University." The first issue of CAP's magazine had an "article titled "The Prospects of ROTC," which outlined the University's recent actions against ROTC... The 1972 Prospect article also stated that CAP opposed any further diminution of ROTC programs, and pledged to fight to protect Princeton ROTC. "Concerned Alumni of Princeton will take an active role in voicing alumni opinion on the matter," the article stated."
18 January 2006 Columbia Spectator op-ed "Veterans Deserve Better" by Chris Kulawik CC'08. Note: Kulawik describes an incident on Activities Day in which a student visiting the Columbia Military Society table was "publicly insulted for being both a minority and a veteran" by three people in a "violent rant" in which "the table nearly flipped". The student "submitted a complaint to his dean with hopes of a thorough investigation and ultimately disciplinary action against those students who harassed him" and got no response from the administration. See responses by Jonah Birch, CC ‘05 and Todd Murphy, GS '08.
25 January 2006 Columbia Spectator article "A Firm Stance: CU Marine Reservist Targeted In Angry Confrontation; No Disciplinary Action Taken". Note: An anti-military incident recounted in an Op-ed column is covered by the Columbia student newspaper. The Spectator claims that students urging other students to sign up for ROTC was "not allowed on campus" at the time. This seems wrong. Even after the 3rd Circuit court decision allowing bans on external recruiters, students always retained the freedom to urge other students to enlist to fight for their country. After the Supreme Court agreed to review the case, the 3rd Circuit halted implementation of its ruling, removing the restriction on external recruiters.
25 January 2006 U.S. Military Veterans of Columbia University press release "Anti-Military Discrimination at Columbia". Note: The group "asks that Columbia University amend its Discrimination and Harassment Policy to grant all veterans and military-related persons protected status."
27 January 2006 Columbia Spectator Op-ed "The Conservative Witch Hunt" by Zach Zill CC '06. Note: One of the students who "confronted" pro-ROTC students in the "anti-ROTC incident on Activities Day" denounces the 25 January Spectator news article as part of a "witch-hunt" and denies having made offensive remarks attributed to him.
30 January 2006 Columbia Spectator column "Revisiting Vietnam" by Monique Dols GS '06. Note: Dols observes that "ROTC supporters are making headway by recruiting for the Fordham University and Manhattan College ROTC programs on campus. By increasing the ranks of military personnel on campus, they are laying the groundwork for the program’s future return." She regards this as a negative development and urges people to "expose the ugly underbelly of US aggression in the world".
1 February 2006 New York Sun article "Veterans Take Grievances to Columbia Provost". Note: The provost, who spoke passionately against ROTC on campus in May 2005, was to hear complaints about harassment. The article lists an incorrect tally for the Columbia Senate vote on ROTC in May 2005; it was 53-10.
7 February 2006 Harvard Crimson column "Reasoning with Solomon" by Cormac A. Early '09. Note: Early writes that opposition to military recruiting "marginalizes rational and intelligent opposition to DADT, and acts only in the interests of those who wish to preserve the status quo" and "the University’s objections are more likely to be taken seriously as the legitimate objections of a rational, moderate, and patriotic institution, rather than the irrelevant obstructionism of radical leftists" if military recruiting is allowed.
9 February 2006 Columbia Spectator article "Sanchez Lodges Protest: Reserve Marine Files Grievance With SDA Against ISO Protest". Note: University spokeswoman Susan Brown said Columbia already includes military status as a protected category in its speech code, and the protection is not limited to Vietnam-era veterans. International Socialist Organization member Monique Dols GS ’06 said post-Vietnam veterans should not have such protection since they enlisted voluntarily.
13 February 2006 Columbia Spectator Op-Ed "ROTC and the Ivory Tower: Cease Fire" by Adam Weinstein. Note: A self described "liberal war resister" suggests that if you have disagreements with current military practices "You bring ROTC back to Columbia, and you sign yourself up". He suggests that to do otherwise is to "keep the military and the ivory tower separate and go on with your life of smug self-satisfaction" and will result in "marginalizing yourselves and alienating potential supporters". See letter in response on 21 February.
21 February 2006 New York Sun editorial "Testing Harvard". Note: The Sun notes rumors of an impending resignation of President Summers and notes that he "showed his understanding of the role of Harvard in wartime, beginning with his appearance at a commissioning ceremony for the Reserve Officers Training Corps program that was kicked off Harvard's campus in the era of protest against the war in Vietnam."
21 February 2006 Columbia Spectator letter "Military Veterans Bring Diverse Voices to Columbia Community" by The Executive Board of U.S. Military Veterans of Columbia University (MilVets). Note: The MilVets point out that Adam Weinstein’s February 13th column is an example of the political diversity of military veterans on elite campuses.
22 February 2006 Wall Street Journal editorial "Veritas at Harvard". Note: The Journal notes how ROTC was one of the issues of contention between President Summers and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and notes a similar conflict faced by former Dartmouth president David McLaughlin.
23 February 2006 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed "Coup d'Ecole: Harvard professors oust Larry Summers. Now they must face their students" by Prof. Ruth Wisse. Note: Prof. Wisse points out that President Summers' support for ROTC was one of the reasons for his ouster, notes student support for both Summers and ROTC and predicts "students will sooner or later stand up for their contemporaries who want to serve their country".
23 February 2006 Columbia University statement of nondiscriminatory policies "Equal educational opportunity and student nondiscrimination policies and procedures on discrimination and harassment". Note: The statement begins with the words "Columbia University is committed to providing a learning environment free from unlawful discrimination". Since the previous antidiscrimination rules had been used to argue against ROTC on the basis of discrimination against openly homosexual people in the military this wording is interesting because "Don't ask, don't tell" is the law, and there fore not unlawful.
5 March 2006 Boston Globe Op-Ed "The insurrection: Harvard needed Larry Summers. The board's failure to stand by him suggests its members don't know what it takes to lead a great university" by John Silber. Note: The past president of Boston University describes how he endured faculty revolts and made many changes, including restoring ROTC.
6 March 2006 Wall Street Journal column "Taliban Man at Yale" by John Fund. Note: Fund notes the irony that "Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters." See follow-up column on 13 March.
6 March 2006 Supreme Court of the United States decision text "Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (No. 04-1152)". Note: By an 8-0 vote the Supreme Court upheld the Solomon Amendment in a military recruiting case. The court ruled that Congress has the constitutional right to force a university to allow military recruiting, even if no federal funding was involved. The court rejected an Amicus brief argument that Congress only intended to mandate military recruiting that fit with a university's nondiscrimination rules, since passing such a law would have been a "largely meaningless exercise". The decision did not mention the use of the Solomon Amendment in ROTC cases, but noted "recruiters are not part of the law school".
6 March 2006 New York Times article "Supreme Court Upholds Campus Military Recruiting".
6 March 2006 Harvard Crimson article "Court Says Schools Must Let Military on Campus: Ruling by Roberts '76 puts his alma mater in a bind".
6 March 2006 Columbia Spectator article "Supreme Court Upholds Solomon Amendment: Columbia Could Face Choice Between ROTC and Federal Funding". Note: The ruling says nothing about ROTC and the reasoning used in upholding the Solomon Amendment, that "recruiters are not part of the law school", does not apply to a full ROTC program, where instructors are faculty members and ROTC courses are in the university's list of courses. However, the Pentagon's likely offer to Columbia was an ROTC satellite office, not a full ROTC program, for which the faculty appointment and course offering issues would not apply.
6 March 2006 Yale Daily News article "Supreme Court rules against law schools: Justices say military recruiters must be allowed on campus". Note: Yale has a different challenge to the Solomon Amendment going through the courts. Lead plaintiff Robert Burt said that instead of arguing that the First Amendment speech guarantees trump the constitutional right of the government to raise an army there is a different right to cite: "We have a special claim that we have autonomy in running our affairs because we are a university, and there's a tradition of special respect for universities, and a special protection ... to protect students from discriminatory or demeaning behavior. That argument was simply not presented to the court, and they didn't deal with it."
7 March 2006 New York Sun article "High Court Opens Campuses to Military". Note: "chairman of the Advocates for Columbia ROTC, Sean Wilkes, told The New York Sun yesterday that the ruling "adds weight to our campaign"" and Mark Xue, president of the Columbia Military Society added: "The decision does not directly apply to ROTC programs, since it has not yet been established if the argument that 'recruiters are not a part of the law school' applies to either a full or satellite ROTC office." Also, the president of the Association of American Law Schools, Carl Monk, "told the Sun yesterday that the organization would require its members to make clear that they do not support the presence of military recruiters on their campuses" but it was not clear if the AALS would drop its requirement that accredited schools get special authorization to comply with the law instead of AALS rules.
7 March 2006 Daily Princetonian article "Court backs military recruiters". Note: "Chai Feldblum, a board member of the Forum of Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), the coalition of law schools that sued the government, said she was "completely shocked" at the unanimous opinion ... The issue here has always been 'don't ask, don't tell.' That [policy] needs to get repealed, either by being invalidated by the Supreme Court or by Congress changing the law".
7 March 2006 Washington Post editorial "Now Repeal the Ban". Note: The Post agrees that the Solomon Amendment and "Don't ask, don't tell" are both constitutional, but asserts that only a "combination of bigotry and inertia keeps the gay ban in place" and calls for Congress to repeal the "Don't ask, don't tell" law. The Post does not discuss incremental approaches such as first making changes in areas of the military in which gender privacy issues are minimal, such as the Judge Advocate General's Corps.
8 March 2006 Columbia Spectator article "Supreme Court Upholds Solomon Amendment: Unanimous Ruling Affirms Military’s Right to Recruit on College Campuses". Note: ROTC opponent Nate Walker TC '07 said it was likely that the Pentagon would use the court victory to seek to restore ROTC at Columbia, while Sean Wilkes CC '06, head of Advocates for Columbia ROTC, said it was unlikely.
8 March 2006 Cornell Daily Sun article "ROTC Athletes Have Twice the Commitments".
10 March 2006 Harvard Crimson editorial "Constitutional, But Immoral: Although technically constitutional, the Solomon Amendment must be fought against". Note: The editorial calls for Harvard to lobby to change the "Don't ask, don't tell" law.
10 March 2006 The New Republic article "War College" by Peter Beinart. Note: Beinart describes the scene outside the Columbia University Senate vote on ROTC on 6 May 2005: "Outside the senate auditorium, some pro-rotc students hung a banner reading a vote for rotc is a vote for the heroes of our generation. With the Court decision as her pretext, Senator Clinton's opportunity is clear: Go to Columbia and tell its leaders that those students are right... Today, the Serviceman's Legal Defense Network--which represents gays and lesbians in the military--understands the same thing. Which is why it does not oppose rotc on campus, even as it struggles heroically against "don't ask, don't tell." It is Bollinger and Brinkley who, by shunning the military, have placed themselves in the oppositional, anti-liberal tradition of the New Left."
13 March 2006 Wall Street Journal column "You've Got Mail (It's From Yale): A university official calls Taliban critics "retarded" while the university maintains a stony silence" by John Fund. Note: Fund recounts Yale responses to his 6 March column comparing Yale's welcoming of a Taliban official and its shunning of ROTC. Fund refers to a 281 word Yale statement discussing the Taliban and ROTC, printed in a 13 March column in the American Spectator.
13 March 2006 American Spectator column "The Yale Colonial Office" by Jed Babbin. Note: Babbin quotes from an official Yale statement saying "there is a lot of mis-information out there ... that Yale does not have any ROTC program, we do." The Yale statement goes on to describe their "ROTC program" as consisting of bussing Yale students to the ROTC program at the University of Connecticut.
13 March 2006 Newsday op-ed "'Fortunate Sons' Should Have to Serve" by Elaine Kamarck. Note: A former aide to Vice President Gore details the problems with the "absence of America's upper classes from military service."
15 March 2006 Harvard Crimson article "All That She Can Be: The women of Harvard Army ROTC strive to find a balance between learning how to fight and learning how to fit in."
17 March 2006 Washington Times Op-Ed "'Deeply ashamed' of Yale" by Flagg Youngblood. Note: A Yale alumnus and military veteran who works at Young America's Foundation compares Yale's tolerance for a former Taliban official and its intolerance for ROTC.
Spring 2006 Sign of Peace (Catholic Peace Fellowship) article "Saint Ignatius of Loyola and ROTC: A Report from Jesuit Campuses". Note: Despite the Jesuit movement being founded by a wounded veteran, and 26 of 28 Jesuit colleges in the US having military training, the article asserts that there are "contradictions of Jesuit Universities hosting ROTC".
22 March 2006 Columbia Spectator column "Rumsfeld 1, Columbia 0" by Chris Kulawik CC '08. Note: Kulawik points out that Columbia has many programs that discriminate by race and gender and concludes that to "claim that ROTC is the only such case ... is blatant hypocrisy". He also recounts how anti-ROTC students told him that “The racist military takes advantage of minority students; they aren’t able to understand what exactly they’re getting into.”
22 March 2006 Yale Daily News editorial "FAIR fight should not be limited to Yale Law". Note: The editors expect the remaining lawsuit about the Solomon Amendment "to prove futile" and suggest that Yale lobby the executive branch and Congress to change "the code that governs military recruiting".
24 March 2006 Columbia Spectator article "Discrimination Policy Amended: New Policy Wording Adds Military Status to Protected Group List". Note: When Columbia revised its antidiscrimination rules to include all military veterans it began the statement with the words "Columbia University is committed to providing a learning environment free from unlawful discrimination". Since the previous antidiscrimination rules had been used to argue against ROTC on the basis of discrimination against openly homosexual people in the military this wording is interesting because "Don't ask, don't tell" is the law, and therefore not unlawful. However, this Spectator article adds another possible explanation. University spokesperson Susan Brown said that the new statement "is a semantic clarification, not a policy shift. New York State Law had already held military status as a protected category, and the old policy included “any other legally protected status”". This suggests the possibility that Columbia may have been trying to include in its policy all forms of unlawful discrimination without meaning to accept forms of discrimination mandated for the military by federal law, but Columbia has not commented more definitively on the wording change.
24 March 2006 Columbia Spectator editorial "Opportunity Disguised". Note: "Getting as many liberal-minded Columbia lawyers as possible, both gay and straight, into the military’s judge advocate general corps would be one of the best ways to turn the tide against “don’t ask, don’t tell” ... Shunting ROTC off to Fordham is a great symbolic way to protest the military’s policies, but it does very little to accomplish real progress. Increasing Columbia’s involvement with the military through recruiting and ROTC might rankle some, but it would be the best way for Columbians to work for justice."
27 March 2006 Washington Square News (NYU) column "No dissent in military" by Eric Moskowitz. Note: Moskowitz suggests that the Solomon Amendment will be used to restore ROTC to elite colleges and the presence of graduates of these colleges will result in a greater acceptance of gays in the military.
29 March 2006 Washington Square News (NYU) Op-Ed "Military leadership should reflect a more diverse population" by Stephen Trynosky. Note: An ROTC graduate observes that many people from New York City enter the military as enlisted soldiers, but there are few officers from NYC.
31 March 2006 Yale Daily News Op-Ed "University must address Hashemi issue head-on" by John Fund. Note: Fund, a Wall Street Journal columnist, recounts a Yale College Council meeting at which a Yale professor referred to Yale's silence over the Taliban case: "Yale won't allow ROTC on campus, but it wants to act like the Pentagon when it comes to information control".
3 April 2006 Harvard Crimson article "From Plympton St. to the Pentagon: Caspar Weinberger dies at 88; former Crimson chief served under Nixon, Ford, Reagan". Note: The article quotes Harvard Alumni Association Executive Director Jack P. Reardon Jr. ’60 as saying that “Caspar Weinberger ‘bled’ crimson!” and that he was “endlessly interested in and supportive of Harvard and more especially Harvard students.” He was the co-founder with classmate David Clayman '38 of Advocates for Harvard ROTC and a member of its Advisory Committee until his death. Even in the final year of his life he continued to use his contacts and influence to press for having ROTC at elite colleges.
5 April 2006 Detroit News column "Military academy attracts new 'greatest generation'" by Thomas Bray. Note: Bray observes that 62% of the Army's officers come from ROTC programs "which been making something of a comeback on college campuses" and notes the student-led effort to return ROTC to Columbia.
6 April 2006 FrontPage magazine article "Curricula Rivalries" by Michael Tremoglie. Note: The author recounts the history of military officer commissioning on civilian campuses, beginning with Norwich University in 1819. He also recounts the anti-ROTC protests at the City College of New York in the 1930s: "Unlike many of the students and faculty of CCNY, the college’s president, Frederick Robinson, favored ROTC and patriotism. However, by 1938, Robinson resigned from CCNY after being persecuted by students and faculty".
7 April 2006 Colgate Maroon-News Op-Ed "ROTC: Return of the Corps? Colgate Should Reconnect With American Military" by Douglas J. MacDonald.
24 April 2006 Associated Press article "Federal judge throws out suit challenging 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'". Note: The government had argued that the law "rationally furthers the government's interest in maintaining unit cohesion, reducing sexual tensions and promoting personal privacy".
28 April 2006 WNET TV (Channel 13) NY Voices report "Campus Politics". Note: Sean Wilkes CC '06, chairman of Advocates for Columbia ROTC discusses the history of ROTC at Columbia.
28 April 2006 Chicago Maroon editorial "Bring ROTC Back to Campus".
May 2006 book "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service – and How it Hurts Our Country" by Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer.
10 May 2006 My Learning Curve blog item "Shane Hachey (GS 04) letter to Columbia University Senate. Subject: Columbia v. The Military". Note: On the first anniversary of the Columbia University Senate vote against ROTC Hachey notes that "this vote had no tangible effect on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. It did not "send a message" to anyone in Washington except that our university is hostile to the military".
16 May 2006 Wall Street Journal article "Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines". Note: The Journal reviews Marc Wortman's book "The Millionaires' Unit", which recounts how a group of Yale undergraduates organized an aerial defense unit in 1916 with little help from the Navy. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Navy made the young aviators commissioned officers and many went on to very distinguished careers, including in the Pentagon.
17 May 2006 New York Sun article "At Columbia, First ROTC Event Since '72". Note: In contrast to the annual ROTC Commissioning ceremony at Harvard, "the commissioning ceremony is sponsored by the students, not the university." Columbia Provost Alan Brinkley, who spoke passionately against ROTC at the 6 May 2005 Columbia University Senate meeting that rejected ROTC, will attend the 19 May commissioning.
18 May 2006 The Dartmouth article "Three seniors to accept ROTC Army commission". Note: The three "are ranked among the top five percent of 4,500 Cadets on the National Order of Merit List".
25 May 2006 Boston Globe Op-Ed "A call to serve" by Frank Schaeffer and Kathy Roth Douquet. Note: The authors of AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country write "a commencement speech a leader of either political party should make at an Ivy League college" advocating serving in the military. See letters on 28 May.
28 May 2006 Boston Globe letters "The call to volunteer" responding to the 25 May Op-Ed "A call to serve".
1 June 2006 Family Security Matters column "Standing Up for ROTC on Campus" by Charles Mitchell. Note: "Not only did [Bucknell] President Mitchell show his face and speak—his remarks were deeply supportive of Bucknell’s ROTC program and the military in general... Standard operating procedure for a president who wanted to observe the dogma of political correctness would have been to claim he was busy and send some middling administrator to offer some sort of lame platitudes on his behalf."
1 June 2006 "Columbia Hosts ROTC Commissioning Ceremony". Note: The ceremony was held on 19 May.
7 June 2006 Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization formed. Their Web site is www.harvardveterans.org.
7 June 2006 Letter of thanks from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Harvard President Lawrence Summers. Note: The letter was presented to President Summers at the Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony that day. Discussing ROTC, Secretary Rumsfeld wrote "Your support has been enormously constructive to the objectives of both our institutions".
7 June 2006 Address by COL (ret) Kenneth G. Swan '56 MD at the Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony.
7 June 2006 "Remarks at ROTC commissioning ceremony" by Harvard President Lawrence Summers. Note: President Summers said "our country is best served when great universities like this one stand with those who defend the freedom that makes it possible for us to do all the wonderful things that we are able to do here".
7 June 2006 US News and World Report blog item "The ROTC at Harvard" by Michael Barone. Note: The letter from Secretary Rumsfeld to President Summers is quoted.
7 June 2006 Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 2006.
7 June 2006 Daily Standard article "From Rumsfeld to Summers: The secretary of Defense sends a note to the outgoing president of Harvard." Note: The letter is the same as the one posted on the Advocates for Harvard ROTC web site on 7 June.
8 June 2006 Harvard Gazette article "ROTC faces down rough weather: Graduates, Summers honored at ceremony". Note: The Gazette notes the letter of thanks to President Summers from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and the president's response that "I look forward to the day when it is common and doesn't draw remark when an Ivy League president attends an ROTC commissioning ceremony".
9 June 2006 Washington Times item "Harvard hero" in Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough's "Inside the Ring" column. Note: The letter from Secretary Rumsfeld to President Summers is quoted.
12 June 2006 Harvard Crimson article "Rumsfeld Says He Is 'Most Grateful' for Summers' Support of ROTC". Note: The Crimson reported on the 7 June ROTC Commissioning Ceremony and found a Pentagon spokesman to authenticate the copy of the letter from Secretary Rumsfeld to President Summers posted on the Advocates for Harvard ROTC web site on 7 June.
16 June 2006 TCS Daily column "Profile in Courage" by Michael M. Rosen. Note: Rosen notes that President Summers "received what would otherwise be a kiss of death for any university administrator: a letter of thanks from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praising him for offering a "recognition of [the officers'] personal commitment to serve this great nation.""
4 July 2006 New York Public Radio Brian Lehrer Show item "Class Warfare". Note: Lehrer interviews Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, co-authors of AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country.
13 July 2006 Providence Journal column "Past time to reconsider bans on ROTC" by Melvin Bernstein. Note: The chairman of the New England region of the American Council of Alumni and Trustees notes the Supreme Court's upholding of the Solomon Amendment and urges colleges to restore ROTC.
17 July 2006 FrontPage Magazine article "Why Elites are AWOL" by Patrick Poole. Note: Poole discusses the book AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country and asks "as the personal connections between members of Congress and the military grow more distant, are our elected officials more or less likely to send American forces into conflicts with no identifiable military outcome or absurd rules of engagement?"
1 August 2006 Townhall column "A military draft?" by Thomas Sowell. Note: Sowell suggests ROTC as the best way to reduce the civilian-military gap.
31 August 2006 "The Movement to Restore ROTC at Columbia: Historical Background" by Sean Wilkes CC'06, Chairman, Advocates for Columbia ROTC.
8 September 2006 "Military Recruiting at Columbia's Activities Day".
12 September 2006 Columbia Spectator column "Agents of Change" by Joanna Bove. Note: Bove suggests that those who blocked changing Columbia's policy on ROTC were agents of change. See letter on 15 September.
13 September 2006 Daily Princetonian article "In their shared pain, some find a new sense of purpose: The military represented a higher calling for some, but for others, the cost of serving wasn't worth it". Note: The writer interviewed Princeton alumni who have served in the military.
14 September 2006 New York Times article "Gay Groups Renew Drive Against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’".
15 September 2006 Columbia Spectator letter "ROTC not Such a Victory: Progressives Should Welcome Change" by Eric Chen GS'06. Note: Responding to a 12 September column, Chen notes ">it is an irony that those who blocked changing Columbia's policy on ROTC would call themselves "agents of change"".
1 October 2006 Harvard Crimson article "Military Presence Sparks Protest". Note: To protest the inclusion of the military in the "Career Forum" protesters entered the forum location and changed into "superhero" costumes and "attempted to enlist in the armed forces to protest its ban on openly gay soldiers".
9 October 2006 Greg Mankiw's Blog item "ROTC". Note: The former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors calls for restoring ROTC at Harvard.
9 October 2006 Old War Dogs blog item "Perhaps to Draft an All Volunteer Army" by George Mellinger. Note: Mellinger stresses that ROTC is also important in producing civilians who know enough to oversee the military. "Today far too many of the congressional leaders are incompetent to their jobs of military oversight; they don’t even know the right questions to ask, and cannot tell a straight answer from a lie."
11 October 2006 Columbia University event Discussion of Citizenship and Military Service at Columbia University. Note: Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, co-authors of AWOL: the Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service—and How It Hurts Our Country talked and answered questions at Columbia.
20 October 2006 Columbia Spectator letter "LGBT Groups Create Community, Should Also Focus on National Issues" by Sean Wilkes, CC '06. Note: A recent ROTC graduate discusses an article focusing on the atmosphere for gender identity at Columbia and urges activists to focus on national issue too, such as changing the "Don't ask, don't tell" law.
24 October 2006 Columbia Spectator article "Doing Our Part in a Time of War" by Eric Chen. Note: One of the main leaders of the ROTC and veterans movements at Columbia wonders whether to re-enlist or stay in civilian life after graduation.
November 2006 The Eye (Columbia Spectator) article "Columbia’s Warrior". Note: Matt Mireles interviewed Josh Arthur CC '04, in Iraq after graduating from Columbia College and Army ROTC. Arthur describes how he decided to go into an Army combat unit.
3 November 2006 Columbia Spectator column "Reassessing Kerry's Botched Joke" by Brandon Hammer. Note: Hammer says it is "pretty true" that students who don't do well in school get "stuck in Iraq". See response on 10 November.
6 November 2006 Washington Times column "Not-so-smart college boys" by Suzanne Fields. Note: Fields discusses the history of ROTC at Harvard and writes "An honest embrace of diversity and multiculturalism would require inclusion of the military."
7 November 2006 New York Sun column "The Ivy Soldier" by Seth Gitell. Note: Gitell interviewed Retired Captain Paul Mawn, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC. Enrollment in the Paul Revere Army ROTC Battalion, based at MIT, has grown 40% during the last year and a half. The Harvard contingent is the biggest, outnumbering students from the host college MIT. Gitell also interviews a Harvard student who tells of "considerable interest in ROTC on the part of his classmates".
9 November 2006 Wall Street Journal Best of the Web Today item "It's personal" by James Taranto. Note: Taranto celebrates the example of Mark Reinhardt, a Princeton graduate who entered the military despite the views of his father, economist Uwe Reinhardt, that the military attracts people with few other opportunities.
10 November 2006 Columbia Spectator Op-ed column "Stupid Soldiers" by Matthew Dunn and Michael Podberesky. Note: Responding to Brandon Hammer's 3 November column, they assemble the evidence that soldiers are above average on many measures of intelligence and income, with fewer at the high and low extremes. The lack of an ROTC program at elite colleges may account for some of the data. Similar data was assembled by the New York Times.
14 November 2006 Columbia Spectator Op-Ed column "Wake Up Dems, Liberalism is Dead" by Rudi Batzell. Note: Batzell calls for increasing the proportion of the military that comes from higher socioeconomic groups, but doesn't call for restoring ROTC at Columbia.
15 November 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article "San Francisco school board votes to dump JROTC program". Note: ROTC opponents used openly anti-military arguments to oppose the ROTC program while acknowledging that "the program is popular and even helps some students stay in school and out of trouble."
15 November 2006 New York Sun column "West Point on East Side" by Amy De Rosa. Note: The mother of a West Point cadet from Manhattan describes how "Indignant parents reacted as if my husband and I had crossed a forbidden line by allowing our son to apply and go to West Point".
19 November 2006 New York Times Op-ed "The Great Liberator" by Lawrence H. Summers. Note: The former Harvard president recounts how "Milton Friedman’s participation on a government commission on the volunteer military in the late 1960s was a kind of intellectual version of the play “Twelve Angry Men.” Gradually, through force of persistent argument and marshaling of evidence, he brought his fellow commission members around to the previously unthinkable view that both our national security and our broader interest would be best served by a volunteer military."
25 November 2006 The Eye (Columbia Spectator) article "Letters From Baghdad: Our First Dispatch From the Front Line" by Josh Arthur CC '04. Note: Arthur, recently graduated from Columbia and ROTC, is stationed in a Sunni area and describes finding bodies of Shiites "in open fields near mosques, on heavily trafficked corners, or simply in sites that are known as places to expect to find bodies."
27 November 2006 Army Times letter "No ROTC strategy in NYC" by Capt. Stephen K. Trynosky. Note: An ROTC graduate observes that New York City trains few officers as compared to enlisted soldiers, and notes that the ROTC programs that trained people like Gen. Colin Powell could be particularly helpful in training officers from minority groups and those who have needed language skills.
29 November 2006 Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web Today" item "Responding to Rangel--II" by James Taranto. Note: Taranto quotes John Griffin, professor of finance at Old Dominion University, who describes his ROTC students as "some of the brightest, most polite and hardest-working students that I have had. It has been an honor to teach them. They make being their professor an honor. Knowing that these men and women will be running our military and our country someday makes me feel at peace with the future of our country."
December 2006 Parameters article "Storming the Ivory Tower: The Military's Return to American Campuses" by Marc Lindemann. Note: Lindemann recounts the history of ROTC at the most selective colleges and suggests strategies for increasing the role of the military at such institutions. One suggestion is "to work with like-minded student organizations to bring charismatic service members to speak on campus." Another is to "introduce students to veterans who, after honorably fulfilling their military commitments, have succeeded in business, medicine, law, or politics. Alumni groups, such as “Advocates for ROTC,” are already poised to provide such representatives."
1 December 2006 The New Republic article "The Academy and Iraq: War College" by Andrew Delbanco. Note: Prof. Delbanco writes "For the vast majority of students and faculty in places like Columbia--it's different for support and maintenance staff, who are more likely to have friends or family in the line of fire--war is an utter abstraction rather than an imaginable fact. Perhaps the deepest divide in our country today runs between those for whom the war is a relentless threat to loved ones and those for whom it is a TV show to be switched on and off. At places like Columbia, the former is our most underrepresented minority group." See the 18 December Weekly Standard response and the 1 January response by Austin Byrd.
2 December 2006 The Eye (Columbia Spectator) article "Letter from Baghdad - Dispatch # 2" by Josh Arthur CC '04. Note: Arthur, recently graduated from Columbia and ROTC, describes how Iraqis are targeting each other more than Americans, but counterinsurgency remains important.
4 December 2006 New York Post column "Diversity Double-Talk: Ivy's 'Inclusion' Excludes Military" by Matt Sanchez.
5 December 2006 BWOG (Columbia University Blue and White Blog) item "Here we go again...". Note: An item on the incident in which Columbia student Matt Sanchez was insulted for his military service is followed by a wide-ranging discussion that included ROTC. Issues discussed include the question of why Columbia bans ROTC, citing discrimination against gays, but does not ban Red Cross blood drives in which gay men are not allowed to give blood.
11 December 2006 Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web Today" column "Responding to Rangel--IV" by James Taranto. Note: Taranto quotes David Curtin, a professor at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, who observes that "without fail, the ones who are ROTC or in the reserves (many of whom have been in Iraq) are always among the top performers in my class (which most of the students find to be pretty difficult)".
12 December 2006 Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web Today" column "Responding to Rangel--V" by James Taranto. Note: Taranto published a letter from Joe Fluet, an officer in the Army Reserves who taught ROTC cadets at George Mason University, quoting the cadets' reasons for serving in the military.
15 December 2006 Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web Today" column "Responding to Rangel--VIII" by James Taranto. Note: Taranto quotes Bob Crotty, the father of a recent Stanford ROTC graduate: " I had a chance to meet a number of the young men and women in his ROTC unit, as well as the Santa Clara University ROTC cadre--what an impressive group! I can confidently report that the country's military is, and will continue to be, in good hands ... Those young ROTC students are the best of American youth, willing to serve their country in a time of peril. We sing that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. I ask you, who today is braver than those serving in the military?"
16 December 2006 Marine Corps Commissioning Ceremony at Columbia University - Mark Xue, CC 06.
18 December 2006 The Weekly Standard Scrapbook item "Utter Abstractions at Columbia". Note: Responding to Prof. Andrew Delbanco's New Republic article the Weekly Standard notes "Delbanco never mentions in his essay that in Columbia's case (as with many other elite universities) there is a simpler explanation than social class for the situation he laments. Columbia banned the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) from its campus in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam war. And as recently as May 2005, Columbia's Senate (an advisory panel of faculty and students) voted 53-10 to keep Morningside Heights pristinely military free." See the 1 January response by Austin Byrd.
19 December 2006 Harvard Crimson article "Adams House Alum Dies in Car Crash". Note: Jamin B. Wilson ’04, an ROTC graduate, was killed in a car accident Thursday on his way to work at the Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany.
28 December 2006 Seattle Times guest column "True to self and country" by Jonathan Eggers-Gold. Note: An undergraduate in the Marines' Platoon Leaders Class program discusses the motivations behind a trend on the elite campuses for men and women to join the military.

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