The College Fix

Harvard University president Drew Faust said Wednesday that, upon the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the school will “fully and formally” restore ROTC.

“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 in an introduction for Adm. Mike Mullen, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Four Ivy League schools — Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown — as well as a handful of other elite universities, like Stanford, do not currently have ROTC programs on campus.

Largely Vietnam-era policies at the outset, in recent years, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has become the centerpiece of the universities’ opposition to on-campus ROTC programs because it conflicts with many anti-discrimination university policies.

“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,” Faust said at the event.

While Faust’s remarks are consistent with the school’s official position, her firm support may set Harvard apart should DADT be repealed.

Stanford’s administration has been non-committal about ROTC on campus (and a student debate is already raging there). Columbia’s position is unchanged on the matter beyond a 2008 statement by President Lee Bollinger, which discusses DADT, but also financial resources and academic concerns.

“It is by no means clear that the military services want to return,” said Allan Silver in September, a professor emeritus of sociology at Columbia. Silver was one of 20 professors who signed a petition to bring ROTC back to the school.

“They have budgetary problems, especially with the high cost of ROTC fellowships at Ivy institutions,” he said. “Some in the services nurse grudges from the Vietnam period and are culturally more comfortable elsewhere.”

Faust, however, has been an advocate for ROTC in the past.

At an ROTC commissioning ceremony in 2008, she told graduates, “I celebrate you on this important day…I wish there were more of you.”

“She is outstanding in her advocacy for ROTC — more so, to my knowledge, than any Ivy league president,” Silver said. “It does not lie within presidents’ powers to institute ROTC programs, as this requires the approval of faculty.”

In 1994 the Harvard Faculty voted that the university’s policy of forbidding discrimination by student groups forbid it from allowing ROTC on campus. ROTC protocol requires the discharge of openly gay, lesbian and bisexual students, violating Harvard’s anti-discrimination policy.

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