The Few, the Proud

Five students may not sound like much, and for a university of Harvard’s size it isn’t. Harvard’s graduating class this year will number somewhere around 1,600. The smallness of the ROTC cohort makes the students literally exceptional. As several of the speakers and attendees at the commissioning ceremony noted, these five determined their path not only after 9/11 but after the Iraq war began. While other high school students won admission to Harvard and began dreaming about the big bucks they might make on Wall Street, the kids who chose ROTC charted a different course.

The commissioning took place on Class Day, the day before Harvard’s elaborate commencement ceremonies. A crowd of over a hundred well-wishers packed the Tercentenary theater; family members’ pride was evident as they buzzed about with cameras. The number of fellow graduates who showed up to offer support and their congratulations in spite of an unseasonably cold rain was impressive.

Also present in impressive numbers were members of Harvard’s Class of 1958. (The 50th reunion class plays a prominent role in Harvard’s commencement week each year.) There’s little wonder that they were drawn to the scene. The featured speaker, Lt. General Tad Oelstrom (USAF, Ret.), noted that in 1958, 150 members of Harvard’s graduating class participated in the ROTC program and joined the armed forces upon graduation. One member of the class of ’58 happily recalled his years in the Army, telling stories about the time he got to train a young soldier named Neil Rudenstine at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Rudenstine would go on to become president of Harvard in 1991, but by that time the ROTC program had long since become persona non grata on campus. In 1969, with the Vietnam war raging, the arts and sciences faculty banished ROTC in order to register its “disapproval of the military.” This was the era in which George Wallace ran for president denouncing “pointy-headed professors who can’t park their bicycles straight”–all of which might sound like ancient history except that Harvard’s anti-ROTC edict remains in force, 39 years later. The Harvard students who sign up for ROTC are folded into MIT’s nearby program and must train off-campus.

If this sounds like a shabby way for a university to treat students who want to serve their country, one can perhaps take consolation in the fact that the university is less hostile to ROTC than in the recent past. After 9/11, Larry Summers, then president, began agitating for Harvard to fully accept an ROTC program as a matter of simple patriotism. While Harvard still refuses to host an ROTC program, the ROTC cohort’s presence is often felt and appreciated. Lt. Col. Leo McGonagle heads the MIT/Harvard ROTC program (which includes five other local colleges). He noted at the commissioning ceremony that Harvard now often allows a color guard at sporting events and that an official ROTC presence was welcomed when Drew Gilpin Faust ascended to Harvard’s presidency in 2007.

Faust triggered a bit of controversy herself when she accepted an invitation to attend this year’s commissioning ceremony and say a few words. The casus belli was the “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military, implemented by the Clinton administration. After hearing of Faust’s plans to attend the commissioning ceremony, the Crimson, the student paper, angrily editorialized that “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” is “so inconsistent with our institution’s humanitarian principles .  .  . that many members of the Harvard community correctly cite the discriminatory policy as the most compelling reason to continue prohibiting ROTC on Harvard’s campus.”

In response to this criticism, Faust promised to express her disapproval of “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” at the commissioning ceremony. This pledge in turn irked various allies of the ROTC program, unhappy that the university president would use the occasion to disparage the institution the grads were pledging to serve.

Faust’s speech did engage “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell,” but in an artful manner. Never mentioning the policy by name, she lamented that there weren’t more Harvard graduates being commissioned that day and then delicately pivoted, commenting, “I believe that every Harvard student should have the opportunity to serve in the military, as you do, and as those honored in the past have done.”

Her comments were subtler and more respectful than many had expected. But taking her words at face value, one wonders whether she truly anticipates that the removal of the “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy would trigger greater participation. Given the percentage of heterosexual students who join ROTC, one would mathematically project the number of homosexual participants to be zero unless Harvard’s gay population has a greater eagerness for ROTC participation than the straight population.

The reason so few members of the Harvard community opt for ROTC is that military service has been declassé in Ivy League circles for more than a generation. While Harvard’s ROTC contingent has the almost unanimous respect of their classmates, a career in the military or even a period of military service isn’t something most Ivy League students even consider.

Perhaps leadership would make a difference. While it was nice that Faust attended the commissioning ceremony, she has declined to champion ROTC. Should she decide to, she could point to Harvard’s noble military tradition, much of which was recounted at the ceremony. The first Harvard man to sign up for battle fought in King Philip’s War in 1675. George Washington not only slept in Harvard Yard, but much of his Continental Army was barracked there in the early days of the American Revolution. Nine Harvard alumni have earned the Medal of Honor.

The handful of men and women who sign up for Harvard’s ROTC program represent the best of their generation. Their country will honor them proudly and unequivocally, even if their university won’t.

Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.