Harvard links ROTC return to end of ‘don’t ask’
By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe Staff | September 23, 2010
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welcome the military training program back to campus only when the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members is repealed, the university’s president said yesterday.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president, Drew Gilpin Faust, speaking the day after the US Senate declined to take up a measure that would have repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy, said vestiges of antimilitarism on campus dating to the Vietnam War are largely gone and she would now welcome the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.
“We are very much looking forward to the end of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ’’ Faust said. “It will be a very important moment to us when that happens.’’
Harvard’s strained relationship with the military has been controversial for years, and came to the nation’s attention again in June, when the Senate grilled a former Harvard Law School dean, Elena Kagan, about a period when that school barred military recruiters. The Senate went on to confirm Kagan as a Supreme Court justice.
Harvard had expelled ROTC from campus in 1969, amid protests against the Vietnam War. 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.
But Harvard students do participate in ROTC, with the university’s blessing, by joining the program at MIT. And 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.
Can you spot the gay soldier?