Reinstating the ROTC at Harvard
by Mia Zuckerkandel on April 29, 2009 in HKS News
Before a packed crowd at the Forum, which included Dean David Ellwood and U.S. Army General David Petraeus, a Harvard Kennedy School student, Maura Sullivan (MPA/MBA ’09), called on Harvard University to reinstate ROTC, the Reserve Officer Training Corps, which has been effectively banned from campus for 40 years.
Sullivan was one of two speakers at the April 21 event, which was billed as a tribute to student veterans and featured a talk by Petraeus, the man in charge of the United States Central Command. Sullivan, an Iraq War veteran, served five years in the Marines, including one tour of duty in Fallujah. She is currently the co-president of the HBS Armed Forces Alumni Association.
She explained to the audience that she was making her call at the exact hour that President Obama was signing the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law. That act triples the size of the AmeriCorps program and provides middle school and high school students with the opportunity to earn money for college while volunteering.
Sullivan says she chose to speak out at the Forum event because “at a time when the President is asking all of us to think of the greater good, [reinstating ROTC] is something that Harvard can do” for the country. “These are critical times,” she said. “The nation is fighting two wars. Frankly, you want your best and brightest addressing these problems.”
Many in the audience, which included scores of military members dressed in uniform, applauded Sullivan’s remarks, as did General Petraeus. During the question and answer session, no one asked either Ellwood or Petraeus for their response.
When contacted by the Citizen, neither Dean Ellwood nor Harvard President Drew Faust chose to comment on Sullivan’s call. (Ellwood’s office said this was a University matter and referred questions to Faust’s office.)
KSSG President Ben Polk, however, said that he supports Sullivan’s efforts. In an e-mail statement, he said,“I firmly believe that Harvard should reinstate ROTC. There is no more honorable form of public service than the military, and the students that are brave enough to put their lives on the line deserve Harvard’s unequivocal support.”
Harvard severed its ties to ROTC in 1969 in response to student and faculty protests against the Vietnam War. Since then, Harvard College students who want to participate in ROTC have had to train at MIT. They receive no academic credit for their ROTC coursework and no financial aid from Harvard to cover room and board, though ROTC scholarships cover tuition and some living expenses.
Today, many Harvard students and faculty oppose reinstating ROTC because they say the military’s refusal to allow openly gay and lesbian soldiers to serve violates the University’s anti-discrimination policy. Marco Chen, the Co-Chair of Harvard College Queer Students and Allies, argued that Harvard should not allow ROTC back on campus until “the military and the government take steps to deal with homophobia.” He believes the University’s opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” serves as an importer reminder of “the very real discrimination queer people face in the military.”
Isaiah Peterson, a freshman at Harvard and an Air Force ROTC cadet who participated in the military color guard at the Petraeus event, disagrees. He argues Harvard’s stance towards the ROTC “targets the wrong institution” and is “an ineffective way for the University to communicate its desire for change.”
“It’s important to remember that the federal government created the [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell] policy, and the military was forced to comply with it,” he said, referring to the 1993 law passed by Congress prohibiting the military from asking troops about their sexual orientation.
For other students, like Jevan Soo (MPP/MBA ’11), the debate over reinstating ROTC is a more complicated. Soo, who is a member of the HBS LGBT Association and the HKS LGBT community, says he feels “torn” by Harvard’s policy.
“On the one hand, Harvard taking a stand on this issue and refusing to support institutions that are inherently discriminatory is important to me as a member of these communities that are discriminated against,” he said. “That being said, I think that military service is one of the best ways to do public service, so for the university to be shutting off avenues for students to do this kind of service and get these kind of leadership skills, is troubling to me.”
For Soo, the real issue is ensuring that military service is an option considered to be available by all of country’s “best and brightest, gay and straight.” “There has been this evolution in how this country thinks about military service,” Soo said. “For many people, they no longer think that military service is something that is valuable.”
Like Soo, Sullivan is concerned that “only a certain economic class” is going to war. “America has the premier fighting force in the world,” she said. “Harvard is one of the world’s premier universities. By not having ROTC here, we are sending the message that fighting a war in Iraq or Afghanistan is someone else’s problem.”
For Sullivan, the time for Harvard to reinstate ROTC is now. “The military benefits from Harvard, and Harvard benefits from the military. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Soo believes ROTC could return to campus, but under the right conditions. “If Harvard were to bring ROTC back on campus, I would like to see the university, ROTC, or some other entity educate those students on LGBT issues,” he said. “If they are going to be young leaders, they need to understand the legacy of why ROTC wasn’t here.”
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4 Responses to “Reinstating the ROTC at Harvard”
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The students of 1969 had not been transmogrified by the media into robots; they were alive imtellectually, and politically. They spoke out to keep the pipeline of the military off harvard campus. Today, as then , the rotc has no place in this institution. The vietnam war was corrupt, evil, and sold by lying to the hypnotized american masses. The iraq war followed this model, in lock step. the only difference today, 40 years later, is the tragic silence and cowardice most of us have sunken to.
It looks like the Global War on Terror has managed to soften up the minds of even the supposedly cynical Harvard community. Has eight years of relentless propaganda convinced even you that extending the reach and influence of an already oversized military is your patriotic duty? Must the military “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere” in America, even college campuses? The military’s anti-gay stance is only one of many reasons to oppose their presence at Harvard.
ROTC and Military service provides experience and leadership skills.
As I see it, many problems we have today were/are caused by politicians who never served, or barely served yet now command policy. The military, itself, does not dictate policy or run this nation as it does in many other parts of the world.
It would serve many students well to learn what it is to be leaders; not just the sheltered, spoiled, and well-connected Trust-fund babies that so many people view Harvard Graduates.
[…] In high school, I had to take American history and civics, not “social studies.” We learned about the great people and great events of our history, and (to a lesser degree) some of the unhappy events. I took ROTC, where my role models were master sergeants who had fought to defend my freedom. But now, ROTC has been kicked out of many high schools and universities. […]