National ROTC Coverage: 2010

3 January 2010 Denver Post Op-ed "ROTC program isn't a one-way education" by T.J. Wihera. Note: The column outlines the details of ROTC training, including that "ROTC is not an active duty experience", which means that students retain civilian rights not retained during active duty. Also, enrollement in many ROTC courses "is not limited to ROTC students. Any student can enroll in a military science class and learn along with the cadets". The column also describes one of the lesser-advertized benefits of ROTC training "tell a hiring manager that you can take directions, develop a plan, and lead others through it, and you can watch them glow."
9 January 2010 New York Times article "From Battlefield to Ivy League, on the G.I. Bill". Note: The article highlights how Columbia University "more than any other Ivy League institution has thrown out a welcome mat for returning servicemen and women. There are 210 veterans across the university, integrating a campus whose image-defining moment in the past half-century was of violent protests against the Vietnam War." Columbia actively recruits veterans, and its School of General Studies "now counts 88 veterans with G.I. benefits among the 1,330 students" and the infusion of federal funding "is proving to be a bonanza for universities." At Columbia, as the Yellow Ribbon Program ramps up, "Twenty to 25 more veterans are expected to arrive at the School of General Studies in the spring, and [School of General Studies] Dean Awn predicted that the overall number would grow “by 60 or 75 a year.” Columbia has set aside $1.2 million for Yellow Ribbon students for the current academic year, while the government is expected to pay $5 million on behalf of veterans attending under the new G.I. Bill, not including the housing allowances."
3 February 2010 Boston Phoenix article "Howard Zinn: 1922-2010: In Memoriam of the anti-war warrior" by Raymond Mungo. Note: Mungo writes that "Howard actually organized a petition on behalf of us student journalists when, in 1966, the BU News student paper that I edited called for a campus ban of ROTC. The idea of kicking ROTC out of BU was utterly outrageous to many, but Howard succeeded in persuading 43 other teachers to join him in signing a faculty petition backing our demand. The Record American (Boston's moronic Hearst tabloid) called for his head, but Howard stood his ground. The anti-ROTC movement soon spread to other campus newspapers, resulting in a ban that still holds at elite Ivy League schools."
3 February 2010 RT Network Alyona Show segment "Ivy League Cadets". Note: Columbia University ROTC student John McClellan is interviewed about whether the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law being discussed in Congress would result in ROTC programs returning to elite colleges.
16 February 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Four Harvard Students Receive Gates Scholarships". Note: Harvard ROTC graduate Thomas M. Barron ’09, "an Army ROTC cadet at Harvard who is currently training at Fort Benning in Georgia, will put his military service on hold to complete his yearlong degree program at Cambridge.
17 February 2010 Columbia Spectator column "On the front lines of prejudice: In reality, the military is merely the means through which the political and cultural climate at home displays itself" by Derek Turner. Note: Turner says that one benefit of restoring ROTC at Columbia would be to allow the military a local voice "so that we can engage it in discussion... having ROTC on campus would open the door to having a new group of students at Columbia who could contribute a meaningful voice to campus."
18 February 2010 Columbia spectator op-ed "Don’t wait, don’t stall" by Robert McCaughey. Note: The Barnard history professor advises: "Had the University Senate in 2006, after a special committee divided equally on its recommendation, voted differently on the proposal to lift the ban (the vote was 53 to 10 to continue the ban), Columbia would be in a strong position to lead the call for the elimination of DADT. But by acting now to lift the ban before what is already shaping up as a partisan donneybrook would at least give all Columbians the right to take part in it without the burden of having to apologize for a university policy that is neither right nor smart."
19 February 2010 Harvard Crimson column "ROTC? ROFL! Antipathy for the military infiltrates the faculty" by Brian J. Bolduc '10. Note: Bolduc suggests that Harvard "seems headed toward recognition" of ROTC if the "Don't ask, don't tell" law is changed, despite some faculty whom Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, describes as “remnants of what I would call the Woodstock generation. These people supported the Vietcong. They view themselves as veterans of the anti-war movement.”
25 February 2010 GW Hatchet article "ROTC students petition for credits". Note: Students in Army ROTC at George Washington University are lobbying the University to receive full credit for their ROTC classes, but the University is still determining if the coursework merits an increase from the current partial credit. Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald Lehman, who was in the Air Force ROTC, said that the courses need to be academically rigorous enough to receive full credit, and time spent in training and drills does not count as academic work.
25 February 2010 Secure Nation blog post "A Centrist Approach to Reforming Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" by Michael Segal. Note: "Taking the incremental approach to gays in the military may seem like a go-slow approach, but in practice it is likely to be the fastest and most trouble-free way to begin opening up units to gays. In contrast, under the plans of either the left or the right, no units would be opened this year."
26 February 2010 Yale Daily News article "ROTC after Yale: A year of midterms". Note: In pilot training after Yale, Benji Hulburt ’08 observed “One way Yale might have prepared me better is the study habits... Here I have to study constantly.” Yale’s ROTC adviser, Jerry Hill said that he was optimistic about reform of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law, and if ROTC returned to Yale, the first initiative Yale must take is to give cadets course credits for their training.
1 March 2010 Boston Herald article "Harvard may end 40-year ROTC ban: Don’t-ask-don’t-tell rule a key obstacle". Note: Some predicted that ROTC would return to Harvard if Congress repeals DADT, but others said the issue was more complicated, and expected "full official recognition of ROTC", not necessarily splitting of he Harvard students away from the three service ROTC programs at MIT.
3 March 2009 Stanford University News article "Faculty Senate to meet on Thursday: The senate will hear reports on ROTC at Stanford...". Note: The Stanford news office provides some historical background to ROTC at Stanford.
4 March 2010 Stanford Review blog item "Preview: Faculty Senate takes on ROTC". Note: In advance of a faculty senate meeting discussing ROTC, economics professor John Taylor describes why closer relations between Stanford and the military would be good for both.
4 March 2010 Stanford University ROTC Excerpt from Faculty Senate Minutes. Note: Professor David Kennedy referred to a 1969 proposal by the military for academic credit on a course-by-course basis, and said "The Faculty Senate accepted that proposal in January of 1970, and then reversed itself, May 7th, 1970, the week of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. [Finally] it reversed its vote entirely and stated, 'We want ROTC off the campus by the end of the next academic year'". Prof. Kennedy and former Secretary of Defense Prof. William Perry argued for a return of ROTC as a way of narrowing the civil-military divide. Also "Professor Admati, noted, "I come from a country, Israel, where the Army is the people's Army, and everybody [has been in the service]. That does make it special. I do feel that it's separate here, because I know nobody who serves, really."
4 March 2010 Stanford Review blog item "Faculty Senate Launches ROTC Exploration". Note: The faculty senate voted overwhelmingly to form an ad-hoc committee to "investigate Stanford’s role in preparing students for leadership in the military including potential relations with ROTC". Proponents argued that the issues of the 1960s were solvable, and reform of "Don't ask, don't tell" would remove the last major stumbling block to closer relations between Stanfard and the military.
5 March 2010 Stanford Daily article "Faculty Senate talks ROTC". Note: Professor William Perry ‘49 M.S. ‘50, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense, and historian David Kennedy ‘63 argued for restoring ROTC. "When Perry was discussing the issue with President Hennessy last decade, the controversial policy came up as a roadblock.“We both decided that with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ it was inappropriate to re-raise the question,” Perry said. But yesterday, Kennedy and Perry expressed confidence in President Obama’s ability to end the policy."
5 March 2010 New York Times Bay Area blog item "Stanford Considers Bringing R.O.T.C. Back". Note: The history of ROTC leaving Stanford is discussed, complete with a picture of the Navy ROTC building in flames.
5 March 2010 The Day (Connecticut) article "Lieberman sees ROTC benefiting from repeal of military ban on gays". Note: Senator Lieberman thinks that DADT repeal would make a difference to ROTC acceptance on campus, but thinks full repeal would get less than 60 votes in the Senate. But Amalia Skilton, coordinator of Yale's LGBT political action group, Fierce Advocates, said "repealing 'don't ask, don't tell' would not cause ROTC to be welcomed back to campus. There would still be opposition."
8 March 2010 The Day (Connecticut) editorial "Time coming to reconsider ROTC bans". Note: "If Congress lifts the ban tied to sexual orientation, as it should, there will be no excuse for universities to prohibit ROTC programs on their campuses. In fact, a continued ban would itself be a form of discrimination against students who want to pursue military service through ROTC."
9 March 2010 San Francisco Chronicle article "Stanford considers bringing ROTC back". Note: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kennedy, in presenting to the Faculty Senate, warned that by banning ROTC at elite colleges "we are in danger of seriously compromising a 200-year-old tradition in this society of the citizen soldier ... In 2008, the 307 general officers in the United States Army ... had 180 of their children in the service" but by contrast, the 535 members of Congress had only 10 children serving in the military.
10 March 2010 Stanford Daily article "ROTC Revisited". Note: The article recounts the history of ROTC leaving Stanford in the early 1970s, including the arson that burned the ROTC building to the ground in 1968. David Harris ’67, one of the leaders of the anti-ROTC movement, summed up his position as “If you believe in the life of the mind, you don’t drop napalm on villages”.
11 March 2010 FOXNews article "ROTC Enrollment on the Rise Across U.S, Army Reports". Note: Enrollment in Army ROTC rose from 28,489 two years ago to 30,721 last year to ~32,000 now.
24 March 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Minow Joins Protest of ‘Don’t Ask, Don't Tell’". Note: The letter from 6 law school deans "raises the question of whether ROTC will be allowed to return to campus if President Barack Obama’s carries out his promise to repeal the policy ... According to Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC, the organization is seeking official recognition for ROTC on campus with or without the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”" The original version of the article suggested that military recruiters were also banned from Harvard's campus, but that has not been true since court decisions safeguarding the right to recruit.
26 March 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Why Are Schools Afraid? The Controversy Over ROTC On Campus" by Catherine Miller. Note: A veteran and Columbia MPA student observes "Veterans are valued because the personal development that occurs as a result of military service cannot be duplicated anywhere else in our society. So why do these same prestigious universities (i.e.: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Stanford, and Columbia) ban ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) on their campuses? " She notes the controversy over the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law, and suggests "In order to survive in a democracy, compromises are made to establish organizations and to move forward with “good enough” policies."
8 April 2010 San Jose Mercury News Op-ed "With ROTC, Stanford could help shape our military debate" by Ben Renda. Note: "As a Truman National Security Project fellow, I have twice visited Stanford to teach a "Military 101" course to undergraduates. What I have taken away from these is a strong appreciation for the students' raw intellect but an equally powerful concern for their unfamiliarity with our military and the circumstances surrounding two current military conflicts that have claimed 5,391 American lives... Stanford has the opportunity to set the example for other institutions of higher learning across America by allowing ROTC to return."
9 April 2010 Eric's Learning Curve blog item "Letter to my fellow advocates for Columbia ROTC". Note: One of the leaders of the 2002-2005 effort to get Columbia to welcome ROTC argues for the importance of a vision of high-quality ROTC that will convince both the military and the university that re-engaging with each other is worthwhile. He advises showing how "Columbia's global perspective matches military's global perspective", emphasizing the "precious opportunity to create a new forward-thinking innovative program that draws upon world-class university resources and top-quality students in a global city", and pointing out that Columbia has the "largest population of student-veterans in the Ivy League".
18 April 2010 Remarks of Admiral Mike Mullen and Columbia President Lee Bollinger. Note: Admiral Mullen said that ROTC representation from universties in the Northeast would "be of great benefit to both the universities as well as the military, as well as the country" but cautioned that "we’re limited into where we get our accessions and how many we can create". President Bollinger said that the "don't ask, don't tell" law "has really been the crucial divide" between the university and ROTC, but he cited "enormous opportunities ...for rebuilding the relationship between American universities and the military".
26 April 2010 Boston Globe article "Elite colleges thawing on ROTC: Harvard, others reconsider policies". Note: The more welcoming climate "has become pronounced since February, when Pentagon leaders for the first time advocated overturning the law that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the ranks." At Brown, undergraduate dean Katherine Bergeron, "pledged to do more to support students in ROTC, including finding ways to award them academic credit for their military courses".
26 April 2010 Brown Daily Herald letter "Bringing back ROTC would improve U. rankings" by David Curry ’51. Note: Curry notes that "Simmons is frustrated over Brown’s place in national rankings and feels the rankings do not give Brown credit for the excellence of its standards and programs. Maybe bringing back ROTC ... to Brown would help". Some college rankings include public service as a criterion.
29 April 2010 Brown Daily Herald article "‘Reserve’-ing judgment for ROTC: Forty years after ROTC’s eviction, attitudes soften on campus". Note: "Last week, Students For ROTC held its first two public events, a dinner hosting Brown ROTC alums and a panel discussion with military officers... certain factors, including the possible future reformation of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and a shift in attitude, point to the changed nature of a debate over ROTC at Brown". Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron said “I think it would be fruitful for us to look into ways of recognizing in some fashion the work that students do in the ROTC program (at [Providence College]).” "The form that such recognition would take hasn’t been decided yet, but more convenient transportation to PC and the possibility for academic credit for ROTC courses are two considerations, according to Bergeron. Support for students in ROTC isn’t new, she said. The University has a dean who oversees ROTC cadets and maintains a Web site with the program information. Top administrators, including President Ruth Simmons, were in attendance at last year’s commissioning ceremony, a visible sign of University support." However, there is currently only one Brown student doing ROTC, and the student on the Curriculum Committee who wrote the opinion in the late 1960s that called for the complete removal of ROTC, David Kertzer, is now Brown's Provost.
29 April 2010 Boston Globe editorial "To restore ROTC, end gay ban". Note: Citing both Harvard and Brown, the Globe observes that "Reserve Officers Training Corps units deserve a place at the nation’s elite universities, and Congress can make that happen easily by ending the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members ... If more graduates of top colleges entered the services, the military and the schools alike would benefit". See letters here and here.
3 May 2010 The Harbus op-ed "Memorial Day: The Long Crimson Line" by Bobby Wolfe. Note: Wolfe, a veteran and Harvard Business School student, looks forward to the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law and observes "The Harvard students and administration will have a heavy weight lifted from their shoulders, and they should celebrate the diversity that ROTC cadets bring to the community of students".
5 May 2010 Stanford Daily article "For Stanford ROTC students, early commutes — and perspective". Note: In a panel discussion on whether Stanford should allow ROTC on campus, Kassandra Mangosing ’10 described how she needs to wake up at 3:15 AM to get to ROTC at San Jose State University.
9 May 2010 Second Line of Defense article "Close the Open Wound on Vets: End the Ban on ROTC at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia Effective Memorial Day 2010" by John Wheeler. Note: Discussing discrimination against gays in the military and ROTC in universities, Wheeler notes "There is no systematic evidence that the majority of gays in the military and gay vets want fellow military personnel in ROTC stigmatized to end the stigma on gays. Stigmatizing one group of youngsters in order to de-stigmatize another group is self-defeating and a policy oxymoron."
20 May 2010 New York Times op-ed "The Academies’ March Toward Mediocrity" by Bruce Fleming. Note: Fleming, a professor at the United States Naval Academy, writes that the service academies have "an average cost to taxpayers of nearly half a million dollars per student, more than four times what an R.O.T.C.-trained officer costs" yet " nobody in the Navy or other services who would argue that graduates of Annapolis or West Point are, as a group, better than those who become officers through other programs". See letters on 24 May.
21 May 2010 Boston Globe article "Harvard's ROTC grads to get full treatment in Yard commissioning". Note: Speaking at Harvard ROTC Commissioning on 26 May will be Michael G. Vickers, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, depicted in the film Charlie Wilson's War, former US Senator Paul Kirk '60 and Harvard President Drew Faust.
25 May 2010 The Atlantic column "DADT and Ivy League ROTC" by James Fallows. Note: Fallows argues that the "separation between an important military intake system and some of the most elite universities" is "bad for the military, bad for the universities, and bad for the country. Almost no one urging the anti-ROTC change of those days would have argued or imagined that 35 years after U.S. troops left Vietnam the ban should still be in place." See responses, but note that the claim that Stanford currently has Army ROTC is not true.
26 May 2010 Harvard Crimson op-ed "Lifting the ROTC Ban" by John P. Wheeler MBA ’69. Note: Wheeler writes that "Our country needs the best that Harvard has to offer in a new century of grave threats" and calls on Harvard to welcome ROTC.
26 May 2010 Harvard Gazette article "From Ivy to military: Harvard’s newest commissioned officers take the stage". Note: The article includes background on the speakers at the Harvard ROTC Commissioning ceremony, as well as that of Chuck DePriest '77, who was cited for his role in restoring an ROTC option at Harvard.
26 May 2010 Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 2010.
26 May 2010 Remarks of LTC Hall at Harvard ROTC Commissioning
26 May 2010 Remarks of Senator Kirk at Harvard ROTC Commissioning.
27 May 2010 Harvard Crimson article "At ROTC Ceremony, Faust Calls for Strong Relationship With Military". Note: "While not commenting directly on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy—which bans homosexuals from serving openly in the military—Faust seemed to allude to the policy when she asked the recently minted officers to “help reinforce the long tradition of ties between Harvard and military service, as we share hopes that changing circumstances will soon enable us to further strengthen those bonds.”"
27 May 2010 The Atlantic column "More on ROTC and the Ivy League" by James Fallows. Note: Three veterans discuss the factors other than "Don't ask, don't tell" working against having ROTC at elite colleges. One noted the high costs at these schools and wrote "I would challenge these elite schools to meet the armed forces half way: if the Defense Department does away with DADT, the elite schools need to provide ample scholarship aid to ROTC scholarship cadets to make it feasible to have ROTC back on these campuses". Another focused on low enthusiasm from the military, and wrote that "the various ROTCs' evaluative metrics, and perhaps the biases of some ROTC officials, severely undervalue Columbia and similar universities as candidates for new programs."
28 May 2010 Harvard Magazine article "“Listen and Learn in Order to Lead”: The ROTC Commissioning Ceremony". Note: The article includes an image of the program and complete audio of the ceremony.
15 June 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Harvard Gets Its Horn On" by Jules Crittenden. Note: A Boston Herald editor sees "signs of sociological advancement at Harvard Yard" in its relations with ROTC and the military more widely.
28 June 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Capabilities and Capacity: ROTC at Columbia University and the 21st Century officer corps" by Eric Chen. Note: Chen, one of the leaders of the ROTC and veterans' movements when he was a student at Columbia, assembles the evidence that universities such as Columbia are an excellent fit with the skills that the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review identifies as needed.
1 July 2010 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony "Capt. Flagg Youngblood Testifies about Kagan's Treatment of Military at Harvard". Note: Youngblood, who did ROTC at Yale, recounted how "an English instructor once remarked, Flagg, you shouldn't wear that uniform to class, it's not conducive to learning". He went on to work on what became the Solomon Amendment, and in his testimony described how Elena Kagan's treatment of military recruiters at Harvard Law School was a clear violation of that law and "Dean Kagan admitted to breaking the law".
2 July 2010 Best Defense blog comment "Why Does Everyone Miss the Obvious? It's Recruiting!". Note: Jumping into a discussion "Where is the next generation of generals?", the commenter ascribes the issue to recruiting: "We've tilted our ROTC footprint to the south and disproportionately placed those resources at mediocre institutions. 10 Army ROTC units in Alabama and 9 in Georgia with only 2 in NYC and 3 in NJ."
4 July 2010 Washington Post op-ed "Army ROTC needs more boots on more campuses" by John Renehan. Note: "In the past two decades, the Army has shrunk the resources devoted to its Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs -- a primary source of new officers -- at colleges in a number of states and large urban areas. According to public Army documents, the reductions were particularly sharp in the Northeast, which had 50 ROTC programs in 1987. That number is down to 27 today... officers in charge of recruiting have said that it is cheaper to recruit cadets in places such as Texas and Alabama. The costs of expanding ROTC in places such as New York are excessive, they have said, and universities there have insufficient space or are not very welcoming... ROTC programs thrived for decades in New York before being closed by the Army during the 1980s and '90s. The City University of New York system, for example, 50 years ago commissioned as many new Army officers as any school except West Point."
4 July 2010 Secure Nation blog post "ROTC in New York City: An Untapped Resource" by Sean Wilkes. Note: Wilkes presents the evidence for the military under-investing in ROTC programs in New York. He notes how New York is the nation's largest importer of college students but has very few ROTC programs and these are far from the bulk of college students.
9 July 2010 Operation Warrior Forge blog item "Veteran Soldier’s quest leads him to LDAC". Note: John McClelland enlisted in the Army to become a medic in 2003 and went on to serve in the Army's storied 75th Ranger Regiment. After his enlistment came to an end he became an ROTC student at Columbia University. "He’s currently seventy five percent through writing his first fiction novel on combat, tentatively titled, “The War In Glorious Technicolor,” that follows some disillusioned Army privates on a vigilante vision-quest through Afghanistan in a stolen humvee in search of the notorious Osama Bin Laden."
12 July 2010 Minding the Campus article "How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others" by Russell K. Nieli. Note: "A new study by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and his colleague Alexandria Radford is a real eye-opener in revealing just what sorts of students highly competitive colleges want -- or don't want -- on their campuses and how they structure their admissions policies to get the kind of "diversity" they seek... what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call "career-oriented activities" was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student's chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards... Excelling in these activities "is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission."" More relevant to the issue of ROTC at competitive colleges would be data on whether an applicant indicating an interest in doing ROTC at college changes the probability of admission.
14 August 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Needs of the Nation: ROTC at Columbia University and the Quadrennial Defense Review, Part II" by Eric Chen. Note: Chen quotes from the Department of Defense's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review to illustrate the investment potential of having ROTC at Columbia University, with extensive links to relevant Columbia capabilities.
26 August 2010 Wall Street Journal Op-ed "The Military Should Mirror the Nation: America's Armed Forces are drawn from an increasingly narrow segment of society" by Gary Schmitt and Cheryl Miller. Note: "Much ink has been spilled over the fraught relations between the military and the Ivy League. But while the good military vs. the bad Ivies makes for good political theater, it isn't the whole story. While ROTC has been banned from many Ivy League campuses since the Vietnam War, the military also has drawn down its ROTC programs in the Northeast and in urban areas." The authors address questions that people asked about the article here.
26 August 2010 Time Magazine article "Is ROTC Poised for a Comeback at Elite Colleges?" Note: "Michael Segal, a Harvard graduate and member of the coalition group Advocates for ROTC, argues that for schools like Stanford and Columbia, which have strong engineering programs, the benefits of bringing ROTC to these campuses could outweigh the costs of maintaining what will likely be smaller units there. "It may look on paper that these schools get half as much value as ROTC does at other programs, but we need some of these people," he says. "We need very thoughtful people in the military."" In addition to the Ivy-based units mentioned in the article, Penn also has on campus Naval ROTC.
26 August 2010 Center for a New American Security blog post "Recruiting the Officer Corps". Note: "The U.S. Army, then, needs to be more intentional about recruiting officers outside the American South. It is no coincidence that the only combat arms officer commissioned into the U.S. Army from my class of 2,000+ at Penn was a white southern male."
12 September 2010 Stanford Review article "Future of ROTC Hangs in Leeway". Note: "President Hennessy weighed in, “Our faculty is responsible for course content and would need to review and approve the necessary curriculum changes.” Hennessy, when asked how ROTC can make Stanford a better university responded, “I think that the more significant question for the faculty is whether Stanford can make an important contribution to the country and national defense by having Stanford students prepare for leadership positions in the armed forces.”"
13 September 2010 Columbia Spectator op-ed "America needs ROTC at Columbia: Restoring the ROTC to Columbia will benefit cadets, the U.S. military, and the University community at large" by Eric Chen. Note: Chen, one of the leaders of the ROTC movement when he was an undergraduate at Columbia, used the Department of Defense's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review to illustrate why Columbia graduates are crucial to the military.
17 September 2010 Columbia Spectator article "USenate not ready to consider ROTC with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ still uncertain: DADT has been at the heart of the ROTC discussion for the past several years." Note: Pro-ROTC University Senator Prof. James Applegate predicted that the University Senate would wait to see what happens about gays in the military, and said “My personal guess is that if you got rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and said ‘Do you want ROTC back?,’ the vote would be overwhelmingly ‘yes.’”
17 September 2010 WKMS (NPR) radio item "Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the ROTC". Note: The item profiles Chris Morehead, an openly gay college student taking ROTC physical training and hoping to join the military when he graduates.
18 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Ready, waiting, wondering: ROTC cadets signed up after 9/11, eager to serve. But with wars winding down, will they see action?". Note: "Those from the class of 2011 will graduate a decade after the attacks that propelled them into the military and have spent the last three years training for war. That a war may no longer be waiting for them is causing them to reassess their futures. To some, the change is disorienting. To others, it’s a relief. To most, it’s more complicated than that."
20 September 2010 Columbia Spectator article "With expected repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ CU braces for ROTC debate: If “don’t ask, don’t tell” is thrown out, USenate members want to be sure students have their say about ROTC’s possible return to Columbia." Note: “We don’t want to be caught off-guard. We don’t want ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ to be repealed and then be handed something that says, ‘ROTC is coming back,’” said Andrew Springer, a student senator from the Columbia Journalism School. “We are crafting a strategy. We haven’t fully fleshed it out yet, but we know we want to get student opinion on this, so we want to hold hearings. We are willing to do polls and surveys.”
21 September 2010 Wall Street Journal column "Why the GOP Should Repeal DADT: Gays in the military: The White House and Congress owe them better" by Bret Stephens. Note: "DADT has given top universities a handy alibi to exclude ROTC from their campuses, and the students at those schools a reason not to serve. Would lifting DADT increase recruitment at schools like Harvard and Yale? Probably only at the margins. But it would help end the poisonous estrangement, with all its larger political consequences, between America's military and our intellectual elites."
22 September 2010 Columbia Spectator advertisement "Faculty for a Reserve Officers Training Corps Program at Columbia". Note: Eighteen Columbia faculty members look past an anticipated reform of "Don't ask, don't tell" and "address the substantive case for ROTC" and declare that "A civil-military gap caused by mutual incomprehension is undesirable". All signers agreed that "Provided that legislative prohibition of military service by open homosexuals is ended and ROTC is subject to the same academic procedures as govern other programs, we support the establishment of an ROTC program."
22 September 2010 Columbia Spectator article "USenate members seek ROTC feedback despite ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ repeal delay: The controversial policy has been at the center of on-campus debates about the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps—twice halting initiatives to invite the program to Columbia". Note: Despite the filibuster of action on the military bill the previous day in the US Senate, the Columbia University Senate "is staying on track—seeking student feedback, but holding off any resolution until “don’t ask, don’t tell” is officially repealed".
23 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Harvard links ROTC return to end of ‘don’t ask’". Note: "Harvard University, which expelled ROTC four decades ago, will welcome the military training program back to campus only when the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members is repealed, the university’s president said yesterday. Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, speaking the day after the US Senate declined to take up a measure that would have repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy, said vestiges of antimilitarism on campus dating to the Vietnam War are largely gone and she would now welcome the opportunity to “regularize our relationship’’ with the armed forces.... Today, Faust said, there is only one reason ROTC is barred from campus: The issue is “entirely linked to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’’’ She said Harvard bars discrimination by all undergraduate groups.... Faust, like Summers before her, has actively engaged Harvard’s military community, attending the commissioning ceremonies of ROTC graduates and publicly displaying support. Last night, Faust invited ROTC cadets to appear with her at Fenway Park when she threw out the first pitch at the Red Sox game." The article made no mention of whether changing Harvard's position would require 100% of military to be open to non-heterosexuals and whether the openness would need to include all groups included in the "gender identity" wording of its non-discrimination policy.
23 September 2010 Yale Daily News article "At Columbia, a push for ROTC despite setbacks". Note: "Two Columbia students have organized an intercollegiate conference in early October to discuss the return of ROTC programs to campuses that have banned them. The students began organizing the conference before Tuesday’s vote with the hope that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would be repealed. While they deemed the Wednesday’s vote of the policy a setback, they said they still hope to energize different campuses to bring back ROTC if it is later repealed. For Columbia College student and ROTC advocate John McClelland, getting ROTC units at more Ivy League universities is symbolic of the military developing a more inclusive culture. A former Army medic who served in Afghanistan, McClelland said he was exposed to a larger diversity of opinions and values when he came to study at Columbia. If the military could train its cadets at Ivy League schools, with their more inclusive cultures, future officers might make the armed forces more friendly toward gays and lesbians, he added.“If you are a gay soldier, you want a commander who is not biased against somebody because that commander had gay friends in college,” McClelland said. Columbia sociology professor emeritus Allan Silver, an Army veteran who co-wrote a statement supporting ROTC’s return that 20 Columbia professors published in the Spectator, the campus newspaper, said ROTC programs need to adapt to the liberal arts curriculum at institutions such as Columbia, Harvard and Yale... Silver and his colleagues promote a new approach to integrating ROTC into the university curriculum, one that incorporates a broader scope of academic disciplines. “In this age, it’s not bad for military officers to know some anthropology, some languages, some ethics,” he said. “All of that is the core of the liberal arts.”... At Yale, University Secretary Linda Lorimer said she does not know how quickly ROTC would return if “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” were repealed. The program must be first studied and reviewed by the faculty and office of the University before it could come back to Yale, she said in an interview Wednesday evening."
23 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Brown blasts Harvard president for barring ROTC because of 'don't ask, don't tell'". Note: Noting Harvard President Drew Faust's decision to continue to ban ROTC from its campus, Senator Brown said "“Harvard President Faust has been lobbying on Capitol Hill in support of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants attending college. Harvard has its priorities upside down,” the Massachusetts Republican said in a statement. “They should embrace young people who want to serve their country, rather than promoting a plan that provides amnesty to students who are in this country illegally.”"
24 September 2010 WCBV-TV story "Brown Blasts Harvard Over ROTC Ban". Note: The video segment includes Paul Mawn, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, saying "We're trying to get official recognition of ROTC, regardless of the politics of Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since it is a federal law.
24 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Brown criticizes Harvard leader on ROTC policy". Note: In addition to Senator Brown's comments, "Republican gubernatorial [candidate] Charles D. Baker, a 1979 Harvard graduate, also criticized his alma mater. “It’s a bad message to send to the ROTC, to people who serve in our armed services, that somehow they’re not welcome on any campus,’’ Baker said outside the State House, where he was holding a press conference on illegal immigration. “It’s too bad that Harvard doesn’t have ROTC on its campus.’’" See letters in response here, here and here.
24 September 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Senator Brown Faults University's ROTC Policy". Note: "Isaiah T. Peterson ’12, an Air Force ROTC cadet, said that while relations with the University have improved, its position based on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” still seems shortsighted. “We’ve been pretty happy that the University has reached out to us in the last couple years,” he said, but added that he thinks “it’s a terrible idea for Harvard to distance itself from the military, especially when it’s not the military making the policy.”"
26 September 2010 Stanford Review editorial "Why Is ROTC Different?". Note: Stanford's conservative magazine writes "If the University denied any other group of students academic credit, support, and even acknowledgement, student voices would already have risen with cries of intolerance. If the University punished any other group of students based on the existence of a Congressionally-mandated law, then we would hear those same cries of intolerance."
27 September 2010 Minding the Campus article "ROTC Back in the News" by John Leo. Note: Leo gives a short history of the ROTC issue in light of the clash on the issue between Harvard President Drew Faust and Senator Scott Brown. He mentioned the 2005 Columbia University Senate vote on ROTC - the student votes were 13 against and 8 absent.
29 September 2010 Stanford Daily editorial "Bring ROTC back to campus". Note: Referring to the "Don't ask, don't tell" law, the editorial observes that "holding ROTC hostage to the potential repeal of the policy, which has floundered in Congress despite widespread support from political and military leadership, only empowers a political failure to cause two detrimental outcomes instead of one... Stanford owes these students–as well as those who might have chosen to serve had the opportunities been more available–its fullest support. It is not just those students who suffer from the exclusion of ROTC. All Stanford students do. If diversity is part of the University’s mission, exposure to the military ought to be a valued element." See letter on 4 October.
29 September 2010 Columbia Spectator article "Bollinger focuses on M’ville in fireside chat". Note: "Bollinger also fielded questions on his personal views on the potential return of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to campus. Bollinger said he and many others in the University Senate are troubled by the discriminatory practices of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.“Of course I value the military enormously, but I do not think that as part of our academic program we should have a program that discriminates against any of our students,” he said, adding that the ROTC’s return will have to be re-evaluated if “don’t ask, don’t tell” is eliminated." The article made no mention of whether lifting of Columbia's ban would require 100% of military to be open to non-heterosexuals and whether the openness would need to include all groups included in its non-discrimination policy.
29 September 2010 Lecture at Duke University by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. Note: Secretary Gates said "The state of Alabama, with a population of less than 5 million, has 10 Army ROTC host programs. The Los Angeles metro area, population over 12 million, has four host ROTC programs. And the Chicago metro area, population 9 million, has 3. It makes sense to focus on places where space is ample and inexpensive, where candidates are most inclined sign up and pursue a career in uniform. But there is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally, and geographically have less and less in common with the people they have sworn to defend. I’d like to close by speaking about another narrow sliver of our population, those attending and graduating from our nation’s most selective and academically demanding universities, such as Duke. In short, students like many of you. Over the past generation many commentators have lamented the absence of ROTC from the Ivy League and other selective universities. Institutions that used to send hundreds of graduates into the armed forces, but now struggle to commission a handful of officers every year. University faculty and administrators banned ROTC from many elite campuses during the Vietnam War and continued to bar the military based on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law – with Duke being a notable and admirable exception with your three host programs. I am encouraged that several other comparable universities – with the urging of some of their most prominent alumni, including the President of the United States – are at least re-considering their position on military recruiting and officer training – a situation that has been neither good for the academy or the country. But a return of ROTC back to some of these campuses will not do much good without the willingness of our nation’s most gifted students to step forward. Men and women such as you."
30 September 2010 Stanford Daily "Letter from the editor: covering ROTC". Note: Elizabeth Titus takes issue with the contention by the Stanford Review's blog that "For a long time, The Stanford Review was the only campus publication and one of the few student-driven voices reporting on ROTC at Stanford and calling for its return" by listing its coverge of the issue, including a 2007 editorial "Time to rethink ROTC".
1 October 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Senator Scott Brown Petitions for ROTC at Harvard". Note: The petition reads "ROTC (The Reserve Officers' Training Corps) is an honorable service to the United States of America and that all students wishing to serve in ROTC should be allowed to exercise their service on the campus of Harvard." It is not clear whether this wording is meant to signal Brown's willingness to support inclusion of openly gay people in the military; the wording is evocative of President Faust's statement "I believe that every Harvard student should have the opportunity to serve in the military". Also note that an ROTC program at Harvard would require approval from both the Pentagon and the university.
2 October 2010 "Brief Remarks About the ROTC and Columbia" by Dean M. M. Moody-Adams. Note: The dean of Columbia College was traveling on Columbia business on the day of the Columbia Service & Society Conference but these remarks of hers were read at the conference. She stressed the importance of creating "a pool of highly skilled military leaders who are trained in non-military institutions—institutions that teach them about the complexity of human experience" and asked "what if an elite liberal arts education proved especially likely to create leaders who understand what it takes to turn others into citizen soldiers? What if having an official ROTC presence at a school like Columbia might be a valuable and reliable means of ensuring the creation of citizen soldiers?" She went on to envision how Columbia and ROTC could interact after reform of "Don't ask, don't tell": "Would it mean something special for an ROTC student to have his or her service as a citizen soldier given a new kind of recognition on Columbia’s campus? Might it increase the numbers of Columbia students who sign up for ROTC, and hence increase the chances for interaction between students who choose military service and those who do not? How might the resulting changes add to the diversity of the Columbia experience - and might we all come to appreciate more about the diversity of opinions among students who choose military service? Might faculty be able to play a role in helping to shape the perceptions of democratic needs and interests of the men and women who go on to be leaders in the military? In short, might it be good for the undergraduate experience of ROTC and non-ROTC students alike if the ROTC were to make an official “return” to Columbia? ... I invite you to consider whether the right question may no longer be “How could we ever formally recognize ROTC on our campus,” but, instead, “How can we not welcome them back?”"
2 October 2010 American Council of Trustees and Alumni Speech by Anne Neal at Columbia Service & Society Conference. Note: ACTA president Anne Neal said "Each campus will need to ask itself tough questions. For example: What kind of presence do we want ROTC to have—an office, a building, a website? ... Are there ways that Columbia and other institutions might develop rigorous offerings in such fields as military history, anthropology, and game theory ...that would create ROTC programs commensurate with the outstanding academic programs of our greatest universities? ... there is a documented and disturbing dearth of courses on military and diplomatic history in elite and major universities. At Harvard today there is not one explicitly military history course offered this year or planned in the near future in the history department. There is only one course dedicated explicitly to US foreign relations. Out of 48 history faculty members, including visiting faculty, none are explicitly focused on foreign policy, diplomatic history or military history. Of Stanford’s full time history faculty, zero are focused on diplomatic or military history. At Brown, there are no courses focused on military history, and no faculty focused on diplomatic or military history, although there is one faculty member who is “probing the politics of knowing about and interacting with birds.”
4 October 2010 Stanford Daily op-ed "Our School, Not Your Army Base" by Danny Colligan M.S. ‘11. Note: Colligan takes an anti-military approach to the ROTC issue and writes "there are plenty of reasons to exclude ROTC. First, I’m not aware of any other organization that blackmails its members with financial penalties if they discover years down the road that the group isn’t for them. Second, I also haven’t heard of any student group that forces its members to pledge several years of their lives to the organization after graduation. These requirements make Stanford less of an institution to nurture intellectual interests and more of an assembly line for the Army." In fact, service or payback provisions have been conditions for certain NIH-supported training programs.
4 October 2010 New York Post op-ed "Every color but camo: Campus bigotry a social threat" by Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Note: Reynolds notes how top colleges promote diversity as a central value, yet distance themselves from students in ROTC. He notes that "Expansive federal powers to solve social ills are widely supported at our "top tier" universities, and we have reached the point where virtually everything is potentially subject to federal control" and the federal government "can surely act to integrate our institutions of higher learning, even if their leaders choose to stand in the schoolhouse door".
4 October 2010 Claremont Review of Books article "The Case for the Academies" by Michael Nelson. Note: Discussing Thomas Ricks' case "Why We Should Get Rid of West Point", Nelson observes "Although ROTC might meet all the services' needs for officers in peacetime or during the popular phase of a war, one lesson of Vietnam is that campuses can quickly turn inhospitable when a war becomes unpopular with the academic Left. Not only was ROTC expelled from some universities in the late '60s and early '70s, but more recently, when post-9/11 student movements were launched at several Ivy League universities to bring ROTC back, they were thwarted by loud objections to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays and lesbians that Congress adopted in 1993." Also, the service academies "produce a large share of officers trained in science and engineering—no minor virtue in today's technologically sophisticated military. Even English and history majors have to take many more math and science courses than ROTC cadets do."
5 October 2010 Boston Globe article "For ROTC students, an awkward limbo: Cadets would welcome formal recognition by Harvard". Note: "MIT hosts students from nine colleges in its ROTC program, but Harvard is the only one that bans ROTC from campus" and Harvard ROTC students "would welcome the increased visibility of formal recognition", helping expose other students to the option of serving in the military.
5 October 2010 National Review column "Our Universities Need a Military Presence" by David French. Note: "Our universities would be better off if more veterans and active members of the military (such as ROTC faculty) were on campus to present alternative — and more realistic — viewpoints." French goes on to list what he calls "fantasy-world" "typical elite university nonsense", including "concepts of Islam ... cultural relativism ... views of human nature" and observes that "The success of counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq rested a great deal on truly understanding your area of operations and the people who lived there. That meant seeing them as they were, not as you wanted them to be. That meant understanding the weaknesses of a culture, as well as its strengths.
6 October 2010 Cub Pub (Columbia Political Union) blog post "Don't Ask Don't Tell, ROTC, and Columbia". Note: The post describes the 2 October Service and Society conference at Columbia, which focused on looking past the "Don't ask, don't tell" issue and "dealt with exploring the connections between universities and the military, the different educational opportunities they present students, and a reconciliation of those perspectives of campus".
6 October 2010 Columbia Spectator column "Forgetting war and peace issues: Making sure we take a larger stance on war and peace " by Sam Klug. Note: Klug discusses the 2 October Service and Society conference at Columbia and describes how a World War I era course on "War Issues" evolved into the Contemporary Civilization course. He urges Columbia to look beyond the war-related issues that affect Columbia directly, such as ROTC and DADT, and address "broader questions about the wars we’re fighting, why we’re fighting them, and what we gain and lose from them".
6 October 2010 Columbia Spectator "BloggerHeads" feature "Should ROTC return?". Note: James Dawson observes that "ROTC is a passive issue for most students, something that they really wouldn’t care about either way. What sends them over the edge is the DADT element." Derek Turner argues that engaging with the military is a more effective way to influence it than opposing laws such as "Don't ask, don't tell" without having served.
7 October 2010 Harvard Magazine article "Senator Brown Chides Harvard on ROTC". Note: The article lists items that attest to President Faust's good relations with the military.
8 October 2010 The Dartmouth article "Unofficial ROTC program growing". Note: "Although it is officially run through Norwich University, Dartmouth’s Army ROTC trains on campus, according to Sgt. Maj. Levi Bennett, who heads the Dartmouth ROTC... Despite the growing size of Dartmouth’s Army ROTC program, the College cannot guarantee a “decent amount of officers annually,” Bennett said. The College’s program usually has 10 to 12 cadets enrolled and is not large enough to contract an independent on-campus program, he said.“We have more cadets who have made commitments in past years,” Bennett said. “The program is on the rise.” " ROTC student Philip Aubart ’10 said “We attend our weekly classes on campus, but for the big events — where you need a lot of cadets and a lot of support staff — we participate with Norwich”.
8 October 2010 Inside Higher Ed article "Not Everyone Is AWOL". Note: The article lists numbers of students in ROTC programs at several top colleges. Lt. Col. Peter Oertel, commander of Duke's Air Force ROTC unit, said “There is general support for the military ... People are accepting, but don’t go one way or another, this is another diversity issue for a lot of them and they respect us.” Lt. Col. John R. Stark, head of Army ROTC at Princeton, said “We are not looked down on, we are not promoted”.
13 October 2010 Daily Princetonian article "‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ ruling raises questions about ROTC". Note: Commenting on impending changes in "Don't ask, don't tell", Lt. Col. John Stark, head of Princeton's Army ROTC program, said "I think it’s the first step in making us part of the mainstream on campus ... Hopefully the [Princeton] administration will see it the same way."
13 October 2010 The Atlantic column "DADT Implications: Return of ROTC, Broadening the 'Sliver'" by James Fallows. Note: Fallows looks beyond the "Don't ask, don't tell" issue and calls for elite colleges to end their bans on ROTC.
15 October 2010 Yale Daily News article "YCC to survey students on ROTC". Note: The Yale College Council plans to gauge the interest of current Yale students in doing ROTC on campus. University Secretary Linda Lorimer focused instead on prospective students and said that that having an on-campus program might persuade high school students interested in ROTC to apply to Yale. As of 2009, Yale students have a cross-town Army ROTC opportunity at the University of New Haven, first used in 2010, but still have no nearby Air Force or Navy opportunities.
19 October 2010 BWOG (Columbia) blog item "ESC: Whispers of ROTC". Note: "Senator Tim Qin said that the Senate may be reviving the ROTC issue."
20 October 2010 BWOG (Columbia) blog item "ROTC: For Your Edification". Note: The item links to two background documents on ROTC programs, but some of the information in the documents is wrong and contradictory. For example, one says Yale gives course credit and another says it does not. Also, Yale now has a cross-town Army ROTC opportunity at the University of New Haven.
22 October 2010 Daily Princetonian editorial "Editorial: Reevaluating ROTC". Note: The editorial looks past "Don't ask, don't tell" and suggests "By embracing the military as another laudable means of entering public service after graduation, the University can continue to encourage students to find unique and exciting ways to serve their country and the global community during and after their Princeton careers." See letter on 25 October.
23 October 2010 Columbia spectator article "Quick hits from the USenate meeting". Note: Columbia President Lee Bollinger announced spoke about ROTC at a University Senate meeting. "“I think we are all aware that the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ provision happily appears to be destined to go away. I think we have many members of our community who want to participate in activities on campus, and we should support them in doing so to the extent that it’s consistent with our University policies and values.” He added that any future decisions about ROTC or military presence on campus should come through the USenate Executive Committee and to expect news on that front."
24 October 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education article "Warrior Nation". Note: The article discusses the concern in the armed forces as to whether it would make "economic sense" to return ROTC to elite colleges. The article also cautions that "throughout American history, the government's likelihood of initiating the use of force has consistently gone up whenever the percentage of veterans in Congress and the cabinet has gone down."
25 October 2010 New York Times op-ed "The R.O.T.C. Myth" by Diane H. Mazur. Note: The legal co-director of the Palm Center, which the Washington Post describes as "a think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara that is dedicated to repealing the ban" on openly gay people in the military, points out that the absence of ROTC at some elite colleges is technically not a ban because the military withdrew after colleges such as Harvard withdrew faculty appointments and academic credit for ROTC. However, under provisions of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964, no ROTC unit "may be established or maintained at an institution unless the senior commissioned officer of the armed force concerned who is assigned to the program at that institution is given the academic rank of professor... and the institution adopts, as a part of its curriculum, a four-year course of military instruction ... which the Secretary of the military department concerned prescribes and conducts", provisions that colleges such as Harvard withdrew in the late 1960s. A contemporaneous account by Capt. Thomas J. Moriarty, then professor of Naval Science at Harvard, pointed out that withdrawal of the faculty appointment for ROTC officers meant that the program must end because of the 1964 law. In recent years, universities such as MIT have come up with a solution to the faculty appointment issue that meets the provisions of the law by designating the ROTC faculty as visiting professors. See letters on 1 November and detailed analyses from EnterpriseBlog and Secure Nation.
25 October 2010 Daily Princetonian letter "Discriminatory practices not reason for ROTC’s status as outside organization" by Robert Durkee. Note: The Vice President of Princeton writes that "The reason that ROTC is considered an outside organization is because it is an outside organization: The ROTC program is sponsored, operated and controlled by the U.S. Army, not by the University."
25 October 2010 Cornell Daily Sun article "As 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Hangs in Limbo, Cornell Grapples With Repercussions". Note: "One gay cadet in the Cornell ROTC program said, “I was excited to hear that it was suspended … but I knew that the Department of Defense was ready to appeal [the injunction] ... it seemed that nothing changed, as it was yet another day in the army.”" LTC Steven Alexander, professor of military science at Cornell said that the university “prohibited discrimination” policy aims to assist the university “to comply with federal, state and local legal mandates” and DADT, as a federal policy, takes precedence over the University’s specific non-discrimination clause.
26 October 2010 Yale Daily News column "Bring back ROTC" by Rob Michel. Note: "Last year, as a senior in high school, my hardest decision was choosing between Yale and the United States Military Academy. Both Yale and the academy offer unique and unmatched opportunities to the young men and women who attend them. It was very difficult for me to choose between the desire to serve my country and the desire to receive a degree and education from arguably the best academic institution in the world. I am certain that mine was not a unique dilemma. Why can’t Yale offer an unmatched education coupled with the ability to serve one’s country in the military?" See the letter on 27 October, repeating the claims in the 25 October NYT op-ed, and note the first comment on the letter page pointing out how the universities understood they were getting rid of ROTC.
26 October 2010 AEI EnterpriseBlog item "Why Isn’t ROTC on More Elite Campuses?" by Gary Schmitt and Cheryl Miller. Note: The authors discuss the 25 October New York Times op-ed on ROTC, and observe "in her haste to hold the military accountable, Mazur goes too easy on elite schools and their faculties. Her main argument is that if there were a ban against ROTC at Ivy schools, the military would have already punished the offenders under the Solomon Amendment, which allows the government to deny federal funding to universities if they bar either ROTC or military recruiters from campus. This is simply not persuasive." The authors go on to assemble the evidence for their observation.
26 October 2010 The National Interest blog item "Civil-Military Relations and the Campus" by Paul Pillar. Note: The author, who worked for decades in the CIA, discusses the 25 October New York Times op-ed on ROTC and observes from his years at Dartmouth: "During that time the Vietnam War underlay the strong emotions, but the presence of ROTC was the prime immediate target" and "a lasting effect of not having the program readily available to students at some of the country's leading universities has been an accentuation of a civil-military divide in the United States that has become wider over this same forty year period". He notes 3 ways in which restoration of ROTC at top colleges would benefit the country: "One is to impart to a portion of the serving military officer corps the insights, knowledge, and critical thinking that those universities impart to any of their graduates. A second would be to provide more of that understanding that comes from military experience to graduates who do not make the military a career but after a few years in the uniform return to civilian life, some of them becoming political, civic, or business leaders. The third is the cross-fertilization of perspectives that comes from the military and civilian communities being exposed to each other on campus."
1 November 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Re-legitimizing ROTC" by Michael Segal. Note: The Webmaster of Advocates for ROTC discusses the 25 October New York Times op-ed on ROTC, and after referring to many of the original sources observes "Leaving out the 1964 law from the history of ROTC in the 1960s is a serious omission since it ignores the fact that many top colleges knowingly removed the legal basis for ROTC, and thereby left the military no option under the law but to leave. However, we should also credit top colleges with planting the seeds for the enhanced “ROTC+” programs of the future. There is much value in the ROTC+ vision of high quality courses with joint university and ROTC credit, whether taught by regular faculty or ROTC commanders."
1 November 2010 Army Strong Stories blog post "Harvard's 40-Years of Anti-Army ROTC Rhetoric Unveiled; No Myth" by Andre Dean. Note: LTC Dean discusses the 25 October New York Times op-ed on ROTC and expresses dismay that Prof. Mazur could sum up the exit of ROTC from Harvard as "the military decided to leave". He details the violence that occurred between the 4 February 1969 faculty vote to remove the legal basis for ROTC at Harvard and the 19 April 1969 decision of Harvard's governing Corporation to accept the faculty decision.
4 November 2010 Harvard Crimson article "The Other Public Service". Note: "Harvard talks the talk about service, [Capt. Paul E.] Mawn ['63, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC] fumes, but when it directs its young talent towards the world, it neglects the most important kind. “They don’t consider the military as public service. Anything but the military. They view America as this big bad power with a big stick going after all these Third World countries... The general feeling is that you shouldn’t have anything to do with the military because it’s a trade school,” he says." Seth W. Moulton ’01, a Platoon Commander in the US Marine Corps who is now a tutor in Quincy House, relates that "Approval was harder to exact from his family, however. His mother told him that she would only have been more disappointed if he had chosen a life of crime.“Yeah,” he drawls, as stern irony pulls smiling creases across his face. “She has a way with words.”"
4 November 2010 Yale Daily News column "No ROTC while there’s DADT" by Matt Williams. Note: Williams writes "According to the Yale admissions website, “Yale does not discriminate in admissions, educational programs, or employment against any individual on account of that individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, handicap or national or ethnic origin; nor does Yale discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.” Programs sponsored and affiliated with the University should uphold these same values." A commenter notes that not allowing ROTC until people with handicaps face no discrimination in the military is impractical.
6 December 2010 Young America's Foundation blog item "Top Universities Deny Students' Reghts to Defend America". Note: "Young America’s Foundation has conducted a study to determine which campuses deny a student’s right to participate in ROTC and defend our country. Most of the campuses highlighted do not have ROTC programs and give no academic credit for students who wish to serve their country. Young America’s Foundation surveyed the top 25 schools according to U.S. News and World Report."
7 November 2010 Stanford Review op-ed "ROTC Debate About More Than DADT" by Kyle O'Malley and Evan Storms. Note: "Stanford has an obligation to let students participate in a program that can offer students the opportunity to become bothscholars and soldiers. Stanford should allow ROTC to have a presence on this campus to ensure that those who do choose to serve in the military are equipped to deal intellectually and comprehensively with the issues that they will face."
11 November 2010 Stanford Ad Hoc Committee on ROTC letter "Your thoughts on possible relations between Stanford University and ROTC". Note: The letter summarizes the history of ROTC at Stanford, including a 1970 "proposal from the Army that academic credit be given on a course-by-course basis under the aegis of the Committee on Undergraduate Studies" and asks for input on the ROTC issue at Stanford.
11 November 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "The Senate Wants You! (To Comment on ROTC’s Existence)" by Otis Reid. Note: "In February 1969, the Faculty Senate voted 75% to 25% to phase out academic credit for ROTC programs. What did students think of this? Aren’t they the radicals that pushed against the army? I guess not: later that month, students voted by a 60% to 40% margin that “ROTC has a legitimate place on the campus and deserves the support and credit from the University for all those parts of the program that are of genuine academic interest.” In early 1970, the Faculty Senate agreed to offer academic credit on a course-by-course basis to ROTC courses, but reversed course after the war escalated with the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, ultimately resulting in the decision to phase out academic credit by 1973. The [Associated Students of Stanford University] Senate (then a larger, combined entity) agreed and passed a resolution against allowing any group designed for military training to be designated a [Voluntary Student Organization]".
11 November 2010 Callie Crossley Show radio interviews "Thinking Out Loud: ROTC And The Ivy League". Note: Crossley interviews Advocates for Columbia ROTC founder Sean Wilkes and Prof. Diane Mazur, who both make the case for the importance of having ROTC at elite colleges.
12 November 2010 Columbia Spectator article "ROTC members raise flag, break ban". Note: The students "will continue to perform flag-raising ceremonies every Monday at dawn, after Columbia’s University Senate gave them the green light last month... Staff Sergeant and University Senator Jose Robledo, GS, said that he and others have been lobbying the University Senate, University President Lee Bollinger, and Public Safety for permission to reinstate these ceremonies since May."
13 November 2010 Weekly Standard article "The Other ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: Why won’t the Pentagon stand up for ROTC?" by Cheryl Miller: Note: The manager of the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute examines Diane Mazur's contention that the Pentagon's lack of invoking the Solomon amendment to get ROTC at top colleges means that they have little interest in starting such programs. Miller notes that "a group of students associated with the conservative Young America’s Foundation wrote Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, alerting him to possible violation of the Solomon Amendment. Receiving no answer, they sued the Defense Department for its failure to enforce the law. The students ultimately lost their suit, with the Court of Appeals holding that they lacked standing to sue." Miller notes that "the Defense Department has its reasons for not wanting to strong-arm ROTC’s presence on university campuses via Solomon. Given the level of cooperation between a university and the military needed to make an ROTC program work, it’s understandable that the Pentagon does not want to be in the position of pushing to have a program where faculty and administrative support is lacking. Nevertheless, it should not be left to the Pentagon to decide whether a law of the land will be enforced or not. By adopting its own version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Pentagon is only encouraging the growing gap between American elites and those who put their lives at risk for our freedoms. As Gates warned, America can no longer afford its best and brightest thinking of military service as “something for other people to do.”"
13 November 2010 Christian Radical blog item "Blowing the Dynamite! a message from Bob Graf on the campaign to get the military off US Catholic Colleges" by Bob Graf. Note: A graduate of Marquette University urges it and other Catholic universities to reject ROTC as "supporting the forces of death".
14 November 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "ROTC ban survives despite Solomon Amendment" by Kyle Huwa. Note: "With its track record over the past 50 years, it seems unlikely that the Pentagon will take any steps to cut federal funding to schools that forbid ROTC. Thus, the decision of whether or not Stanford students have the right to participate in ROTC on their federally funded campus lies completely in the hands of the faculty senate."
14 November 2010 Columbia Spectator editorial "Red, white and Columbia blue: What a flag-raising ceremony says about Columbia's attitude towards the military." Note: Columbia's student newspaper sees the granting of permission for a flag raising ceremony by students dressed in their military uniforms as a step towards reversing what it refers to as a "ban" on "all military activities on campus". This is not strictly true, as Columbia never formally banned ROTC; it just knowingly removed the legal basis for ROTC. Also, students have long been able to appear on campus in uniform and urge fellow students to join the military. And although Columbia students don't get credit for ROTC courses taken at other schools, the same applies for Army and Air Force ROTC students at Harvard, and applies even at Princeton, which has its own Army ROTC program. See letter on 30 November in response.
15 November 2010 Stanford Daily op-ed "Repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Does Not End Military Discrimination" by Charles Ledbetter and Janani Balasubramanian. Note: Two students writing "on behalf of Stanford Students for Queer Liberation" state "as an organization that supports a radical queer political framework, we oppose ROTC as a representation of militarism ... we do not feel it in our interests to support the ROTC program even after the repeal of DADT".
16 November 2010 Stanford Daily op-ed "ROTC is our choice. Let’s make the right one" by Sam Windley LL.M. ’11. Note: The author argues that there is little value to having an ROTC program at Stanford, but as discussed in the comments, does not focus on the value of interactions between the military and the university, the influx of scholarship funds, or the importance to the country of having Stanford graduates in the officer community.
16 November 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "The ROTC Debate Heats Up" by Alex Katz. Note: "At the end of the day, this debate is about whether we should facilitate opportunities for Stanford students. I think we should."
17 November 2010 Harvard Kennedy School video "Admiral Mike Mullen: The Interplay of Policy & Strategy". Note: Harvard President Drew Faust and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen speak and address the ROTC issue. Faust said "It is my personal belief that Harvard has a responsibility to this nation and its citizens, a responsibility it has embraced since the earliest days of the Republic, with a long tradition of service and more Medal of Honor recipients than any other institution of higher education other than the service academies. We continue to honor that tradition through initiatives like the National Security Fellows here at the Kennedy School and in our tuition assistance for more than 75 veterans across the university in the Yellow Ribbon Program. It is my belief that as a further embodiment of that tradition an ROTC program open to all ought to be fully and formally present on our campus. For it is also my belief that gays and lesbians should have full rights as citizens, including the privilege and the honor of military service ... I want to be the president of Harvard who sees the end of "Don't ask, don't tell" because I want to be able to take the steps to ensure that any and every Harvard student is able to make the honorable and admirable choice to commit him or herself to the nation's defense." Mullen said "I think it is incredibly important to have ROTC units at institutions like this. I think President Faust has made it very clear and I certainly would do all in my power to make that happen."
18 November 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Drew Faust Endorses Return of ROTC". Note: "Harvard University will “fully and formally” recognize the long-banned Reserve Officer Training Corps program upon the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” University President Drew G. Faust said yesterday at the Institute of Politics ... Faust has previously conditioned ROTC’s return to Harvard upon the policy’s repeal, but yesterday marks the first time that she has explicitly said that her administration would welcome ROTC back to Harvard’s campus. “As a further embodiment of that tradition [of service], a ROTC program open to all ought to be fully and formally present on our campus,” Faust said to a ringing round of applause. Mullen, who was the primary speaker at yesterday’s event, has forcefully said that he personally believes “don’t ask, don’t tell” ought to be repealed. He said he thinks it is “incredibly important” to have ROTC units at institutions like Harvard, adding that the policy’s repeal is up to Congress." Faust added: “I want to be the president of Harvard who sees the end of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ because I want to be able to take the steps to ensure that any and every Harvard student can make the honorable and admirable choice to commit him or herself to our nation’s defense”. "Mullen did not address “don’t ask, don’t tell” during his prepared remarks but said in response to a question from Harvard Kennedy School professor David R. Gergen that he would do everything in his power to bring a ROTC unit to [institutions like] Harvard."
18 November 2010 Boston Herald article "If ‘don’t ask’ goes, Harvard pledges to bring back ROTC". Note: "Biology student Sean Wilkes, who served in the Army on active duty from 2006 to this year, said he thought the moment showed how the military’s relationship with academia has improved since Vietnam.“Over time, particularly in the last 10 years, there have been inroads,” Wilkes said. “I think this really demonstrates the degree to which that relationship has grown in a very positive way.”"
19 November 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Barriers Remain For ROTC Return". Note: Despite the positive remarks of Harvard President Faust and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mullen about the prospects for ROTC at Harvard, "the unit’s return to campus remains highly uncertain due to low levels of enrollment, limited Pentagon funding, and logistical hurdles. Chief among the obstacles is the small size of the corps at Harvard. The number of students enrolled in ROTC would likely have to increase to justify the installation of a campus unit, said Retired Captain Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC ... If ROTC were officially recognized, it would reduce the administrative hurdles that cadets currently have to navigate and would mark an important symbolic gesture toward the military, Faust said in an interview yesterday. Exactly how the University would structure the program is something that would need to be worked out with the military, she said.“I think what’s important is that we signal that ROTC and service in the military is something we want to be available to all our students,” she added. “We don’t want to raise any additional hurdles for them by making it inconvenient and a choice that is scrutinized.”" The article also asserts that "The University would also have to grant credit for ROTC coursework" but this is not done at other universities such as Princeton, as detailed in a 2009 statement from Princeton VP Robert K. Durkee.
19 November 2010 Stanford Daily article "ROTC committee awaits community responses". Note: The Stanford ad hoc committee on ROTC sent an open letter to the Stanford community asking for feedback on the potential return of ROTC to campus.
21 November 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "The Culture Gap is Real: Not much attention paid to ROTC debate" by Danny Crichton. Note: "Bringing ROTC back to campus is unlikely to dramatically increase the number of Stanford students becoming military cadets, but it may bring Stanford’s culture into the military. Given the massive changes that warfare has experienced (such as the rise of unmanned aerial vehicles or highly-networked soldiers), maybe that young innovation is precisely the change needed to help America in future conflicts."
22 November 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "Talking ROTC w/ “Cam and Company”" by Alex Katz. Note: Katz says that the increase in student veterans at Stanford is changing the climate on campus to be more friendly to ROTC. There are 21 veterans as undergraduates.
22 November 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Blueprint for Harvard ROTC" by Michael Segal. Note: The Webmaster of Advocates for ROTC notes that "Harvard President Drew Faust and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen made strong statements of support for Harvard ROTC on 17 November 2010. Their support raises two important questions: what do they mean by support for Harvard ROTC, and how can we translate such support into reality." He outlines a basic model for ROTC that is acceptable to top universities and how the university, military and alumni can enhance this to create an "ROTC+" model of the future.
24 November 2010 Harvard Crimson column "Keep ROTC Out of Range" by Sandra Y. L. Korn. Note: A first year student opposes "blindly supporting ROTC" because "the U.S. military is far from blameless" and "has faced allegations of abuse". She adds, "apart from its ongoing history of discrimination based on sexual orientation, the military maintains a well-established policy of gender discrimination. Although many strong women serve in the armed forces, the military does not draft women or place them in active combat roles, perpetuating a stereotype of female weakness and subordination." She says the President Faust "incorrectly presumes that DADT is the only viable objection to the U.S. armed forces". See related blog posts here and here.
29 November 2010 Columbia Spectator op-ed "A case for ROTC at Columbia: Accepting the program here may attract wealthier students to the military" by Allan Silver. Note: Prof. Silver argues that the switch to an all volunteer military instead of conscription makes it crucial to have a way to attract higher socioeconomic status students to the military. "If a democracy contemplates or goes to war, all groups should bear its prospective and real sacrifices. Columbia’s students ... have little skin in the nation’s military service and its wars and little contact with those who do. It is a civic scandal that those with higher prospects in the society and economy are egregiously underrepresented in military service ... We should actively encourage ROTC’s return to the Northeast, large cities, and elite universities—all combined in our case. "
29 November 2010 Columbia Spectator op-ed "A farewell to homogeneity: Columbia's acceptance of ROTC can bring diversity much needed in the student body" by Allison Dilyard. Note: A junior at Barnard writes "Why would ROTC be a relief? Because we need some diversity here. What we have now is a majority of naively liberal kids who all seem to be from California and the tri-state area. If we had ROTC on campus again, there would almost definitely be a stronger presence of students from the middle states, which would be such a relief from what sometimes seems to be an overwhelming single-mindedness of the super-liberal coasts."
29 November 2010 Columbia Spectator op-ed "My life as an army ROTC cadet and Barnard student: Balancing a Fordham ROTC-Barnard workload can be tough, but also very rewarding" by Natalie Lopez-Barnard. Note: "ROTC has been the vehicle for my leadership training, and it can easily consume more than 20 hours of my time a week. This program has shown me my mental and physical strengths as well as my limitations, and with this awareness, I am a more capable person. My training has instilled within me higher standards of self-discipline that motivate me to accomplish goals... Barnard College is an educational institution that prides itself on developing female leaders. As the first student cadet from Barnard to complete the Army ROTC program, I will soon be the first officer of the U.S. Army from Barnard College. "
29 November 2010 Columbia Spectator op-ed "Pursuing freedom without letting go of equality: Having the military on campus offers much to Columbia—it's also problematic" by Barry Weinberg. Note: The outreach coordinator for Everyone Allied Against Homophobia writes "The exclusion of, at times, racial minorities, women, and, currently, LGBT individuals from serving in the military does not merely deprive the military of valuable human capital in its goal of protecting our society, but it is antithetical to the values in our society that make it worth protecting."
30 November 2010 Columbia Spectator article "Student cadets push for accommodations: Some students say Columbia should provide more support for cadets participating in ROTC programs". Note: Students describe problems getting permission to move into dorm rooms early enough for ROTC orientation or get Physical Education credit for their ROTC training, but administration officials say that both should have been granted. Other colleges such as Harvard and Yale have given particular administration officials responsibility for coordination with ROTC students, with resulting improvements on such issues.
30 November 2010 Columbia Spectator letter "Referring to the restriction on ROTC as a "ban" is misleading" by Allan Silver. Note: A Professor Emeritus of Sociology discusses a 14 November Spectator editorial and observes that "It is more accurate to say that these institutions effectively barred ROTC by requiring changes in its curriculum, credit arrangements, and commanding officers’ faculty status. In the charged atmosphere of the time, the strict application of existing legislation made it impossible for the military services to accept these changes... Today, ROTC programs at MIT, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania have resolved many or all of the curricular problems of four decades ago. After the repeal or effective reform of legal prohibitions against service by homosexuals, cooperative good will by Columbia and the military can resolve the remaining obstacles."
30 November 2010 Stanford Review article "ROTC’s Fate Rests with Many". Note: "Stanford Army cadet Ann Thompson ’11 ... stated, “I know that many Stanford students are interested not only in bringing ROTC back to campus, but also in participating in the program.” She continued, “I have spoken to many Stanford students over the past four years who were genuinely interested in joining ROTC.” ... Thompson realizes that a full program won’t move back onto campus overnight. She believes though that it could someday become a reality. “If ROTC were to return to Stanford, it would probably happen incrementally,” Thompson stated.... But Thompson also points out the most important factor in the debate: “Both Stanford and the [Department of Defense] must first be on board.” She stated, “Over time, though, I believe Stanford will be able to support battalions and a detachment of its own…the payoff will be enormous.”"
30 November 2010 Stanford Review article "Letters to the Faculty Senate ROTC Committee". Note: Among the letters is one by Grant Everett Starrett ‘09, who writes "There is a tradition in the United Kingdom that the partisan critics of the government be referred to as “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.” Stanford has demonstrated disloyal opposition in its decision to stubbornly protest policies determined by political masters of the US military."
30 November 2010 Stanford Review article "President’s Office Supports ROTC". Note: Through its Military Service as Public Service initiative, Stanford funds Zipcar transportation for all ROTC students to cross-town programs. The initiative also funds activities such as celebrating military service, identifying student liaisons, inviting guest speakers, and organizing community-building events.
30 November 2010 Stanford Review letter "Military Experience, Post-Stanford" by Roger Josselyn, MBA ’49. Note: "Any future war will be won or lost because of the quality of our military leadership - not just because of the caliber of our forces... So guys and dolls, if you think the ROTC on campus is some despicable anti-social activity, you, as I did, are likely missing the point, namely that your personal short-sightedness could, sooner rather than later, cause the demise of your taken-for-granted America."
1 December 2010 Harvard Crimson editorial "Even Stronger Support: If DADT is repealed, Harvard should recognize the military on campus". Note: "Whether the military establishes a ROTC chapter on campus is out of Harvard’s hands, although Harvard should do everything it can to encourage that such a chapter flourishes, if one is ever reinstated. If the military stays, and permanently becomes more open, then the onus will be on Harvard to open itself up to ROTC."
1 December 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Dems, QSA Debate Impact of DADT Repeal on ROTC at Harvard". Note: Harvard College Democrats Campaigns Director Katie R. Zavadski ’13 said that "students could do more to combat the military’s discrimination from within its ranks than through protest.“The ROTC students we have here at Harvard are probably very enlightened and egalitarian—the people we would want to be going into the military to make it more welcoming for women and queer people ... If there are students with a more progressive world view in the military, it will probably become a safer place for women and queer service members alike.”"
1 December 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Marine, Father, Harvard Freshman". Note: The Crimson profiles Taylor B. Evans, who is a first year student at Harvard after 5 years in the Marine Corps. His obligations as an ROTC student and Harvard coursework keep him very busy, but he has the perspective that "I have to worry about not seeing my wife for a couple of days... there are guys who have to worry about not seeing their wives for months". "Students have reacted to his story more with interest and awe than with disdain or derision and have shown interest in learning more about his life and experiences, Evans says."
1 December 2010 Columbia Spectator letter "Columbia and ROTC are incompatible" by Herbert J.Gans. Note: A Professor Emeritus of Sociology writes that "ROTC is in part a leadership training program for the killing of other people and the destruction of their societies".
1 December 2010 Secure Nation blog item "DADT Study Data Argues Against One-Size-Fits-All Approach" by Michael Segal. Note: A scientist reads the actual DADT survey results, not just the Pentagon's interpretation report, and finds support for a service-by-service implementation of DADT reform. As noted in the comments, similar themes came out two days later in the Senate Armed Services Committee testimony of the service chiefs and questioning by Senator Jim Webb, and committee chairman Senator Carl Levin said he was rethinking his intial inclination towards a one size fits all approach to implementation.
2 December 2010 Stanford Ethics and War Series event videos "Who Should Fight? The Ethics of the Draft".
3 December 2010 Yale Daily News editorial "Repeal DADT, bring back ROTC". Note: The editors of Yale's student newspaper say that the prohibition on military service by openly homosexual people and the absence of ROTC from campus "both effectively prevent or hinder the ability of scores of citizens to serve their country, while limiting individual choice and expression".
3 December 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "Are you too smart for the draft?" by Nadiv Rahman. Note: Rahman describes the “Ethics of the Draft” panel discussion sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. "All three speakers focused on a broad variety of topics pertaining to military participation and the role of the citizen-soldier. They also drew attention to the fact that the rejection of ROTC by institutions such as Stanford helps to further the distance between the civic society and the military."
7 December 2010 Boston Globe column "Crimson with shame" by Kevin Cullen. Note: Cullen claims that Senator Scott Brown "changed his mind" on "Don't ask, don't tell" and that "Now it’s Harvard’s turn" to change its mind on ROTC. Actually, Brown and Faust had long expressed hopes both to make the military more welcoming to gays and Harvard more welcoming to the military, and both have acted on those hopes in recent weeks. See letter on 9 December.
8 December 2010 Harvard Crimson op-ed "In Defense of ROTC" by Lucas E. Swisher ’14. Note: Swisher argues that it is unfair to exclude ROTC from campus over "Don't ask, don't tell" because it is specified by federal law, beyond the control of ROTC students.
9 December 2010 Boston Globe letter "Brown, Faust both working toward change, in careful consideration" by Michael Segal. Note: The webmaster of Advocates for ROTC points out how the positions of Senator Scott Brown and Harvard President Drew Faust have been steady and are "advancing the same vision" of promoting gay rights and the relationship between Harvard and the military.
9 December 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "Is ROTC’s return being decided right now in Washington?". Note: The ROTC issue depends on the "Don't ask, don't tell" issue, which depends on the tax bill.
14 December 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "Thoughts on ROTC, Stanford, and the “Two Cultures”" by Danny Crichton. Note: "It is my fundamental thesis that the military’s culture today is largely independent of the culture that exists at places like Stanford, a disconnect that did not exist until the last few decades."
18 December 2010 Weekly Standard blog item "Gays in the Military, ROTC back on Campus? Time to end to that discrimination, too." by William Kristol. Note: "One trusts the presidents and trustees of colleges that have been keeping ROTC at arm's length, allegedly because of DADT, will move posthaste to ensure a hearty welcome and full equality for ROTC at their universities... One would hope that prominent individuals, like Yale alum Joe Lieberman, who played so crucial a role in ending DADT, would lose no time in writing president Richard Levin to urge the re-installing of ROTC at Yale, that Crimson alums like Chuck Schumer will be in touch with Harvard president Drew Faust, and that Columbia graduate Barack Obama will weigh in with Fair Columbia's Lee Bollinger."
18 December 2010 Harvard University "President Faust's statement on DADT". Note: Faust wrote "It was no accident that Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation not only guaranteed freedom to black Americans, but at the same time opened the Union Army to their participation. Because of today’s action by the Senate, gay and lesbian Americans will now also have the right to pursue this honorable calling, and we as a nation will have the benefit of their service. I look forward to pursuing discussions with military officials and others to achieve Harvard’s full and formal recognition of ROTC. I am very pleased that more students will now have the opportunity to serve their country. I am grateful to the Massachusetts congressional delegation for its unified support for repeal."
18 December 2010 Politico blog item "Harvard, Yale moving on ROTC". Note: "Harvard University President Drew Faust today signaled that she would move to restore ROTC to the campus. "Because of today's action by the Senate, gay and lesbian Americans will now also have the right to pursue this honorable calling, and we as a nation will have the benefit of their service," she said in a statement through a spokesman. "I look forward to pursuing discussions with military officials and others to achieve Harvard's full and formal recognition of ROTC."" The wording is somewhat different from her statement of 17 November. The Politico item also notes that "Some gay advocates ... would prefer the schools wait until repeal has been fully implemented. Americablog's John Aravosis wrote that the schools should only let up "when the discharges stop and the ban is fully lifted.""
18 December 2010 Columbia Spectator blog item "Bollinger signals possible lift on ROTC ban". Note: The president of Columbia University said that the US Senate vote to repeal "Don't ask, don't tell" provides “the opportunity for a new era in the relationship between universities and our military services... This is a historic development for a nation dedicated to fulfilling its core principle of equal rights. It also effectively ends what has been a vexing problem for higher education, including at Columbia — given our desire to be open to our military, but not wanting to violate our own core principle against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”
18 December 2010 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "DADT Overturn Paves the Way for ROTC’s Return" by Alex Katz. Note: "So what now for Stanford? The Faculty Senate’s ROTC committee, unlike officials at many peer institutions, declined to comment. The committee still has a number of months left to complete its research before presenting conclusions to the Faculty Senate. And until that time, I suspect that we’ll hear little out of the committee."
18 December 2010 Harvard Republican Oasis blog item "Recognize ROTC". Note: "President Faust should fulfill her promise to “fully and formally” recognize ROTC upon the repeal of DADT... the Harvard Republican Club hopes that President Faust and Harvard University will do everything in its power to recognize ROTC immediately and provide as much support to ROTC cadets as it can."
19 December 2010 Yale Daily News article "DADT repeal may pave way for ROTC return". Note: "Yale College Council President Jeff Gordon '12 said he supports have ROTC at Yale now that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed, adding that YCC will likely take that position as well. YCC members will meet with administrators early next semester to discuss ways to bring ROTC back to Yale."
19 December 2010 Eric's Learning Curve blog post "Quick word: With DADT repealed, return of ROTC to Columbia is next". Note: One of the founders of the ROTC and veterans movements at Columbia looks ahead to the effort to have ROTC return to Columbia and observes "The devil is in the details: buy-in from the needed university and military decsion-makers, course credits, faculty status, campus space and facilities, recruitment, operating costs, etc., etc., etc.." He quotes General David Petraeus, who said "Now, as anyone who has been involved in transformation knows, change can be hard. It can be challenging. And it can be frustrating. Inevitably, all institutions resist change to some degree--even when all recognize that change is needed."
19 December 2010 The Atlantic article "The Ivy League Makes Peace with ROTC". Note: "While ROTC could well make a return at Columbia -- a university that in 1916 formed one of the first Navy ROTC detachments in the nation -- the decision-making process leading to its restoration on the upper Manhattan campus appears likely to be slower than at Ivy League schools with a less involved deliberative approach to the question."
19 December 2010 The Atlantic blog item "DADT and ROTC" by James Fallows. Note: The repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law "removes the last stated objection to the return of ROTC programs to on-campus operations at Harvard and some other elite universities ... It is time for Harvard, which took an early lead in removing ROTC programs in the Vietnam era, to set an example in bringing them back."
19 December 2010 Stanford Daily article "‘Don’t ask’ repeal could ‘lighten task’ for Stanford’s ROTC committee". Note: Psychology professor Ewart Thomas, the chair of the Faculty Senate’s ad hoc committee on ROTC, wrote “I’m delighted by the repeal by Congress of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell ....I have a feeling that this repeal will lighten the task of the Faculty Senate’s ROTC committee as we discuss whether, and in what form, Stanford University should expand its relations with the Reserve Officer Training Corps programs within the U.S. military.” He also noted that not all opposition to ROTC is rooted in the federal policy, and that concerns about continued discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military after the repeal could still exist.
19 December 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Senate Repeals DADT, Stalls on DREAM Act". Note: The repeal "opens the door for the potential return of the Reserve Officer Training Corps to Harvard’s campus.... However, according to retired Captain Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC, even with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” many obstacles remain to bringing back a ROTC program to Harvard’s campus.“There’s several issues that need to be addressed by the Pentagon and the politicians,” Mawn said, listing funding and recruitment as examples. “I think this is going to be an issue for many years.”"
19 December 2010 BWOG (Columbia) blog item "ROTC on Campus: Past, Present and Future". Note: A detailed chronology of the ROTC issue at Columbia is provided. The comments add a lot of crucial context and detail.
19 December 2010 The Boston Channel TV item "Harvard May Reconsider ROTC Ban". Note: Advocates for Harvard ROTC chairman Paul Mawn said "What needs to be done, from Harvard's viewpoint, is to officially recognize [ROTC] and then take a pro-active stand in getting people that may participate in ROTC".
20 December 2010 BWOG (Columbia) blog item "University Senate Creates ROTC Task Force". Note: "The Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate has just announced that it will form a task force on ROTC starting in the spring semester in light of yesterday’s DADT repeal." The press release is quoted in full and also available here.
20 December 2010 Columbia Spectator blog item "USenate establishes task force to evaluate ROTC". Note: The press release is quoted in full and also available here.
20 December 2010 AEI EnterpriseBlog item "DADT Repeal’s Implications for ROTC" by Cheryl Miller. Note: "Michael Segal at Secure Nation has some great suggestions as to how universities and the military can work together to enhance the ROTC curriculum, providing high-quality courses worthy of academic credit. Advocates should also work for closer ties at those universities that currently host ROTC units, but hold them at arm’s length: Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania. Much more can (and should) be done to integrate ROTC into mainstream campus life than merely hosting a program."
20 December 2010 New Haven Register article "Yale to consider having ROTC program after 'don't ask, don't tell' policy dropped". Note: "Yale President Richard C. Levin, in a statement Monday night, said the university was “eager to open discussions about expanding opportunities for students interested in military service, and we will be discussing this matter with the faculty of Yale College in the spring semester.” In the meantime, he has directed General Counsel Dorothy Robinson, Secretary Linda Lorimer and Yale College Dean Mary Miller to talk with military officials about their interest in establishing an ROTC unit on the Ivy League campus."
20 December 2010 Politico column "Universities and the military" by Ben Smith. Note: Smith observes a "very deliberate attempt by administrators, most of them shaped by the '60s, not to repeat what most on the left now see as a key mistake of that era, the hostility not just toward a war but to the soldiers. Columbia has been particularly aggressive on that front, recruiting recent veterans to study at the school and, earlier this year, hosting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at Columbia."
20 December 2010 AEI Center for Defense Studies blog item "DADT, ROTC, and the Civil-Military Divide" by Raphael S. Cohen. Note: Cohen, a recent Harvard ROTC graduate, writes "as an active duty officer, my soldiers wondered why anyone with a Harvard diploma would ever join the military in the first place. For many of them, Harvard grads were the people who sent them half-way around the world to some forgotten hell-hole, not the ones who went there with them." He expresses concern that the military will undervalue the importance of ROTC at top colleges: "In an era of defense budget cuts, the military may want to avoid these costly ventures in favor of cheaper gestures—sending recruiters to campus and calling it a victory. Cheap gestures, however, are often just that—gestures with only a marginal real impact." He suggests that "ROTC programs will need to attract and commission enough students from a sufficiently wide demographic base (i.e. not simply the more conservative members of the student body) to effect real change... While it may not immediately help the balance sheet, however, bringing ROTC back to elite schools might at least start the long, slow healing of the civil-military rift that has plagued the United States for almost the last half century."
20 December 2010 Outside the Beltway column "ROTC Returning to Ivies" by James Joyner. Note: "My guess is that all or most of these schools will offer to bring back ROTC and that the military will then be in the awkward position of deciding that it doesn’t make sense to fund battalions at all of them... One thing might help is to reach an accommodation on cost, where the schools waive tuition in excess of the limit of ROTC scholarships. It’s rather much to expect aspiring young officers to take on a sizable debt on a second lieutenant’s pay."
20 December 2010 Harvard Magazine article "After “Don’t Ask, Don't Tell”". Note: Harvard's alumni magazine observes (emphasis in the original) "This decision does not necessarily mean that ROTC training will appear on the Harvard campus per se; the military services have organized such training on a clustered basis, serving multiple campuses with common facilities. Harvard cadets travel to MIT for their classes."
21 December 2010 Wall Street Journal column "The Army and the Ivy: Now that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is no more, President Obama can follow up by seeing that elite universities welcome the military back to campus" by William McGurn. Note: McGurn offers advice to President Obama on his State of the Union address "When you take the victory lap you are entitled to for ending the prohibition on gays serving openly in the military, follow up with a call to end the remaining discrimination faced by members of our military—the second-class status of Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) cadets on some of our leading college campuses... But it's not just the Harvards and Columbias that need encouragement here. Alas, the Pentagon could use a little prodding, too. The dirty little secret is that our military brass has been too willing to abandon whole swaths of America (mostly in the Northeast and urban areas) where they find recruitment more difficult." See letters in response.
21 December 2010 Boston Herald article "ROTC still a long way off at Harvard". Note: Retired Lt. Gen. Tad Oelstrom of the Harvard Kennedy School said that even if Harvard invites ROTC back, a budget-conscious Pentagon may decline. "The military would have a large say in this ... Setting up an ROTC detachment . . . is an expensive thing to do." Sarah Harvey, 22, who graduated in May and is in the National Guard, said "I think it will make a huge difference to students simply because it sends a message to them that ROTC is not only acceptable but encouraged".
21 December 2010 Boston Globe article "After 4 decades, Harvard opens door to ROTC". Note: "A Pentagon spokeswoman said it is too early to say whether the decision could result in a ROTC unit being established on campus, but student interest and the military budget are two potential factors. "It is premature to speculate," said Eileen Lainez, the spokeswoman. "Services must maintain a delicate balance of units, cadre manpower, and officer production in light of fiscal constraints and competing wartime requirements." While Harvard officials would not elaborate on what formal recognition would entail, advocates said they would like the university to set aside office space on campus for ROTC students to gather, take a more active role in enrolling veterans and others interested in the military as students, and promote the military as a legitimate career option for its graduates. “At Harvard, ROTC has been like the crazy uncle in the attic: We know he’s up there but we don’t want to tell anyone that he’s there,’’ said Paul E. Mawn, a 1963 Harvard graduate and retired Navy captain who is chairman of Harvard Advocates for ROTC. Nicole Unis, a Harvard graduate student in Army ROTC, said that while she does not expect Harvard’s formal recognition of ROTC to change her day-to-day life, she hopes it will help the program recruit more students. Harvard alumni subsidize student involvement in ROTC, paying MIT between $100,000 and $400,000 a year, a cost that Mawn said Harvard should pick up if the university is serious about recognition. "It’s not just up to president Faust to bring ROTC back on campus," Mawn said. "For ROTC to survive at Harvard, you need to have more people, and right now, there is not enough people to justify it. You can’t have a battalion with only five people in it." Over the past 20 years, the battalion has typically counted between 15 and 20 Harvard undergraduates a year, [Lieutenant Colonel Timothy] Hall [commander of the Army ROTC battalion based at MIT] said. Currently, he said, only six from Harvard are enrolled. Over the past two years, the Army ROTC has enrolled only one Harvard freshman, while 11 members have graduated, he said... The program would also be costly for the Department of Defense, which would have to provide scholarships, facilities, and salaries of military officers to teach. Nationwide, 327 schools host ROTC units, and nearly 1,800, including Harvard, have cross-town affiliations with host units, according to the Department of Defense."
21 December 2010 Inside Higher Ed article "Goodbye DADT, Hello ROTC". Note: "Presidents of some of the nation's highest profile colleges and universities, where the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program has been barred for decades, said that the U.S. Senate's vote Saturday to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" will usher the return of the program to their campuses -- though the exact procedure remained unclear."
21 December 2010 Yale Daily News article "Admins to discuss ROTC with military reps". Note: "James Campbell '13, who heads the YCC ROTC Committee, said in an e-mail that he hopes Levin's statement signals the end of debate over ROTC at Yale — but he acknowledges that ROTC may face some hurdles in the months ahead."Perhaps the biggest challenge will be demonstrating that there isindeed enough student interest to make a Yale ROTC unit a worthwhile endeavor for the Department of Defense," Campbell said."
21 December 2010 Commentary Contentions blog post "DADT Will Soon Be a Non-Event" by Max Boot. Note: Discussing the repeal of DADT, Boot writes "Perhaps the most lasting impact of this policy change will be the return of ROTC to Ivy League campuses. Already Harvard and Yale are talking about reinstating their ROTC programs. This, too, will not make much of a change in either the Ivy League or the military, but it is a small, welcome step toward bridging the chasm that separates the armed forces from society’s elites."
21 December 2010 Washington Post op-ed "Bring ROTC back to elite campuses" by Eliot A. Cohen. Note: Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, identifies the possible barriers to the return of ROTC: professors, who "are masters of passive-aggressive behavior, and while they may not overtly reject ROTC they can find ways of containing, obstructing or subverting it" and members of the military who "fear that going back to the Ivies will prove inefficient - too many cadre for too few cadets - and doubt they can recruit many elite undergraduates. Some officers and sergeants will feel uncomfortable, if not downright insecure, dealing with Ivy League professors... If we are serious about bringing back ROTC, university presidents and deans, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will struggle to make it happen. As Lincoln told Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War: "I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.""
22 December 2010 New York Times article "Elite Colleges Rethink Ties to R.O.T.C. After ‘Don’t Ask’ Repeal". Note: The number of students at elite colleges doing ROTC at other colleges is: Harvard 19, Columbia 6, Yale 4, Brown 1, and Stanford 15. Harvard is the only one to have cross-town Army, Navy and Air Force opportunities nearby.
22 December 2010 Boston Globe editorial "End of ‘don’t ask’ should begin new era for military on campus". Note: "Bringing ROTC back would prove that the universities’ steadfast stances had been the product of honest and open concerns about discrimination, rather than an expression of reflexive anti-military sentiments. Students would have a better chance to serve their country, and the Pentagon would find itself with a new source of highly educated recruits at a time when its need for men and women with special training is at an all-time high. Whether in foreign languages or science, the skills learned at top universities are increasingly applicable to the military." The editorial also claims that "Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t actual ROTC bans in place at these universities, as this would render them ineligible for federal funding under the 1994 Solomon Amendment." This is incorrect. The Solomon Amendment applies applies to an institution that "prohibits, or in effect prevents" establishment of an ROTC program, so the universities have done enough to trigger the Solomon Amendment since they deny even nominal faculty appointments for ROTC faculty, failing a key provision of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964. By doing so in the 1960s, the universities knowingly removed the legal basis for ROTC programs, obligating ROTC programs to leave. The reason the Solomon Amendment has not been triggered is that only the Secretary of Defense has the authority to invoke the law, but even the Bush administration was reluctant to do so. This reluctance may have been due in part to uncertainty over the constitutionality of the Solomon amendment with regards to ROTC. Although the Supreme Court upheld Solomon in the context of military recruiting, it signaled that its decision did not include ROTC by noting that "recruiters are not part of the law school", an argument that would cut the other way in the case of ROTC. See letters on 25 December here and here.
22 December 2010 Columbia Spectator article "New USenate task force may reconsider military on campus". Note: "Next semester, the Task Force on Military Engagement plans to hold hearings, conduct a survey regarding Reserve Officers Training Corps, and serve as an educational resource about the military’s history with Columbia".
22 December 2010 ABC News article "Repeal of Gay Ban Opens Door to ROTC Return at Top Schools". Note: "Allowing ROTC to operate on-campus would also facilitate integration the nation's top students into military leadership roles and potentially broaden connections between military decision-makers and other high-profile alumni from the elite schools, advocates say. "The alternative is a civil-military divide, and you get situations like people who've trained in Ivy League institutions or places like Stanford who are represented in leadership of the country but who don't have friends in the military, or they don't know enough about the military to manage it properly, or just have discussions about military-related issues," said Michael Segal, founder and director of Advocates for ROTC, an umbrella group promoting the return of the military program to top colleges and universities.... Eric Chen, a recent Columbia graduate and Army veteran, said the military and universities need to understand the mutual benefits of bringing ROTC back to all schools in the Ivy League. "In an increasingly complex global security environment, America needs military leaders able to adapt on a full spectrum, which means officers who are creative critical thinkers and lifelong learners with the best possible academic foundation," he said. "Columbia already hosts innovative cross-cutting programs that rely upon the special reach and multi-dimensional resources of a global flagship university in a world city."" The article notes that "skeptics have questioned whether there would be enough student interest to merit the time and resources of bringing ROTC back. Chen said the military and university administrators need to give students a chance. "You first have to plant the seed in order to grow the tree," he said. "Building the cadet population at Columbia first requires ROTC on campus. Then, as Columbia ROTC is nurtured into a fully integrated member of the university, the cadet population will grow over time.""
22 December 2010 Yale Daily News article "Yalies support ROTC return, survey says". Note: "Of the 1,346 undergraduates surveyed this November, almost 70 percent support the establishment of an ROTC unit on campus. Nearly 300 respondents who are not in ROTC expressed interested in participating in the program, and almost 100 said they would consider joining ROTC if a unit were established at Yale... The YCC concluded its report on the results by urging administrators to meet with officials in the Department of Defense and discuss "the feasibility of establishing a unit on campus.""
23 December 2010 Associated Press article "Colleges reconsider ROTC after 'don't ask' repeal". Note: ""I think it's more than just rhetoric right now," said Donald Downs, a professor of political science, law and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a forthcoming book on the military and universities. "Especially at the administrative level, I think the schools are sincere. The real question is how willing the military might be." Opposition might arise, but universities largely value the positive impact veterans bring to campus, as well as their GI Bill money, Downs said. At the same time, the military long ago shifted officer recruitment to the South, "and a lot of people in the military, they're not sure the Ivy League type of student is the kind that would make a good warrior," he said."
23 December 2010 Weekly Standard blog item "Semper Phi" by Cheryl Miller and Gary Schmitt. Note: "The chief hurdle is that bringing ROTC to campus is expensive. Several liberal commentators and faculty have recently observed—with more than a touch of triumph—that a money-strapped Pentagon is unlikely to establish new units where there has been such limited student interest. The universities will open the doors, these commentators argue, but the military will say no. At the same time, however, top military leadership has become increasingly aware of—and vocal about—the social costs associated with current policy... If the Pentagon is serious about these “costs,” it will have to push its own manpower bureaucracy to invest in a more balanced officer corps." They also detail steps that universities can take: "there’s no reason faculty cannot work with the military to enhance the ROTC curriculum and develop rigorous offerings in such relevant fields as political science, anthropology, or economics. Universities could put this opportunity to even greater use by strengthening their course offerings in weak subject areas, such as military and diplomatic history. Top-tier schools should aim to have top-tier ROTC programs."
24 December 2010 Washington Post editorial "Back to school". Note: "Perhaps the least convincing argument against restoration of Ivy League ROTC is that there won't be enough student interest to warrant the expense. We have a broader notion of cost-effectiveness and a higher opinion of these young scholars' willingness to serve. Leaders in both the Defense Department and the universities should insist that they get the chance."
25 December 2010 Boston Globe letter "‘Don’t ask’ lens blurs schools’ long hostility to the military" by Timothy Lesinski. Note: The writer points out that universities, in trying to fight discrimination against gays, discriminated against the military.
25 December 2010 Boston Globe letter "It may take more than logistics to ease college, military fit" by Lindsey Kiang. Note: "In the early 1980s, when I was the school’s general counsel, Yale president Bart Giamatti asked me to meet discreetly with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps officials to find out what would be involved if the university wanted the program to return to campus. I met accordingly with Navy ROTC program managers in Pensacola, Fla., who explained the situation to me. In short, it was not a simple matter of an Ivy League college asking ROTC to return. There were program requirements, which were the original problems to begin with, such as granting ROTC instructors faculty status and titles, providing satisfactory physical facilities, and giving academic credit for ROTC courses. The Yale faculty had balked at these requirements, and hence gave ROTC no choice but to leave campus. The Vietnam War was the backdrop, but not the publicly stated reason. Moreover, the ROTC officials pointed out that the program was popular, and there was a waiting list of institutions; would it be fair for an Ivy League school to jump ahead of others? And with the military’s interest in greater diversity in the officer corps, wouldn’t state colleges in other sections of the country be of more interest to the military than an “elite’’ Northeastern college?" Note, however, that universities such as MIT and Princeton found workarounds to these issues and kept ROTC programs.
26 December 2010 New York Post column "Fight fiercely, Harvard! Ivies still won’t embrace GIs after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ends" by Kyle Smith. Note: Smith, a Yale ROTC graduate, says that graduates of top colleges won't serve in the military. He chooses Prof. Eliot Cohen, a Harvard ROTC graduate and former official in the administration of George W. Bush, as his example of "writers, even liberal ones", and predicts that Cohen's call for young people to "share the burden of national defense" will not be followed. Smith writes: "Ivy Leaguers are not going to turn down glamour jobs on Wall Street and Hollywood and Silicon Valley in favor of a gig at Fort Dysentery, Afghanistan. Cohen seems to think that the mere presence of ROTC — hey, there’s this thing called the military! — is going to shame young T-shirted slouchers into battle fatigues." Cohen's son addressed these issues in 2004 when he said "I essentially agree with those critics: There shouldn't be such a deep divide between social classes. That's part of why I enlisted"." An account of Cohen's son's Harvard ROTC commissioning is here.
29 December 2010 Big Peace blog post "Bring ROTC Back to Harvard? Who Needs ‘Em" by Chad Garland. Note: The president of the Illini Veterans Student Organization discusses Sandra Korn's anti-ROTC op-ed and weighs the balance between Harvard's capitulation to anti-military militants and Harvard's history of alumni in the military. He writes "I am suspicious that the school’s prevailing values have changed such that self-sacrifice and gallantry are no longer culturally relevant." He points to the determination of Steven Peck '79, who opened up the option for Harvard students to enroll in ROTC at MIT, and suggests that it would be "dishonoring the legacy" of Peck to have an ROTC program at Harvard, since this would encourage less determined people to serve. Peck, however, told Advocates for ROTC "it would be fantastic if Harvard got its own unit again" but suggested that cost considerations by the military could argue for "a joint Harvard-MIT unit that is just physically located at MIT".
30 December 2010 Washington Post op-ed "'Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. ROTC still shouldn't be on campus" by Colman McCarthy. Note: The writer, a former columnist who directs the "Center for Teaching Peace", advises universities to reject ROTC and instead teach peace. As an example of how much resonance this view has among undergraduates, 16.5% of Yale undergraduates surveyed in November held similar views, while almost 70% support establishment of an ROTC unit on campus following DADT repeal. See letters in response.
30 December 2010 USNews column "Obama Should Return ROTC to Elite Universities" by Alvin Felzenberg. Note: "The Ivies see it as their mission to those who will rise to the pinnacle of virtually every sector of American society. The absence of graduates of these institutions among the ranks of the military’s officer corps will perpetuate the cultural divide further, not only between military and civilian society, but between top ranks of the military and those of business, science, the arts, and, above all, the political class." He suggests that President Obama take the lead in restoring ROTC: "He should name a commission of leading academics and military personnel to put in place a plan to facilitate this transition and set a date for the process to begin. The president should not hesitate to ask Congress to provide the necessary funds (perhaps from other accounts in the defense budget) to make this happen. This single act would deprive both sides of a further excuse for delay."
31 December 2010 P.O.W. in the People's Republic of California blog post "Colman McCarthy admits DADT red herring". Note: A military officer with a PhD who was an assistant professor of Military Science at a top public college describes the situation for course credit at the university. Many courses got university credit, but for the military history course, which he describes as being "as rigorous as any history course at any university ... The History department refused to allow course credit toward their major for our Military History course."
~ Late December 2010 Stanford Students for Queer Liberation "Open letter to the Stanford Administration regarding the consideration of transgender students in the debate over ROTC". Note: "In the debate over ROTC, both sides seem to have forgotten about transgender students, who will still face explicitly discriminatory policies in ROTC and the military in general. Transgender status or a Gender Identity Disorder (GID) diagnosis alone can disqualify a student for open military service. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not allow transgender individuals to serve openly (yes, even with the DADT repeal in place). Various military bureaucratic entities include DD-215 forms in the military, the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service do not contain provisions to alter gender (from male to female or vice versa). Furthermore, numerous Veteran's Affairs medical services including prostate exams, pap smears, and mammograms are routinely denied to transgender veterans... Our own non-discrimination clause states, “Stanford University admits qualified students of any race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the University.”" Similar language is in Harvard and Columbia nondiscrimination statements. Stanford Students for Queer Liberation endorses the website of "Stanford Says No to War".

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