Posted on 09/21/2021 5:13:11 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
The 40-year ROTC ban sent a deeper message: that American civilization isn’t worth defending.
Maybe because I have spent my life in education, I have always valued the observation, attributed to the Duke of Wellington, that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” The qualities developed in those British schoolboys produced the soldiering that defeated Napoleon’s forces. Since armies are typically made up of young people who go straight from school to the battlefield, the traits and habits necessary for winning wars must be already ingrained in those we expect to fight them. Afghanistan was lost in the halls of Harvard.
Harvard was the first college to bring the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, to campus in 1916. Its purpose, then as now, was to encourage college students to undergo military training as potential officers. Many campus plaques honor Harvard students who fought for their country, but ROTC came under attack in 1968 as part of opposition to the Vietnam War, the draft and the “military-industrial complex.” As the war became unpopular, antagonism toward the military on campus grew.
By the time I arrived at Harvard to teach in 1993, the ostensible justification for keeping ROTC off campus had shifted from objections to its educational function to rejection of the Clinton-era policy toward gay soldiers. Rather than legitimately opposing “don’t ask, don’t tell” through the political process, faculty used it as moral camouflage for their continuing war on military service.
Harvard’s President Lawrence Bacow told students, “Climate change is the most consequential threat facing humanity.” Much as I respect his leadership, I believe that the university’s dereliction of democratic duty is a far greater and more immediate threat to humanity—one that is in his power to reverse.
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Does anybody graduating Harvard go into the military? Anybody?
Would the military WANT anybody who graduated from Harvard?
Personally I think the universities should be taxed on their endowments retroactively. Let them have to compete on an even playing ground.
Harvard grads are much more likely these days to go into the bloated State Department and Deep Swamp where world affairs are treated like a chess game with our soldiers and battlefield populations the pawns.
Wars for empire is not why this country was founded.
—”Does anybody graduating Harvard go into the military?”
85 ROTC cadets and midshipmen
40 Air Force
27 Army
16 Navy
2 Marine Corps
1 USMC PLC cadets (students who participate in Marine Corps training during their summers and will attend Marine Corps OCS after graduation)
As of September 2021
https://dso.college.harvard.edu/military-affiliates
—”Wars for empire is not why this country was founded.”
Afghanistan not much of an empire?
Joe the jamoke’s over the horizon viewing is not going so well.
And it has been a very long time since diarrhea was part of the job description for our spies, we have high-tech satellites. Close, but not that good.
Having spent so much blood and treasure, the upkeep was minimal.
No empire needed.
And a question.
Since this is not a mission you support, please name some you do support or have in the past?
Afghanistan was lost in the mists of history, when the least capable people were forced to take the most unpromising land. You can guess how that ended up.
Harvard grads were among the first to stampede to the evacuating military aircraft in Kabul. The U.S. State Department is full of communist graduates from ALL Ivy League universities. They hate the USA and are traitors to their country. They are cowards to push aside those in real danger trying to flee Afghanistan to make sure they are the first ones out of the country.
American patriots are not hired by the State Department and need not apply.
Aren’t most things “lost” in the halls of Harvard?.
A holding ground for the worst people in the world.
This would be a systemic change, not quick, not easy. And our fate as a nation depends on it.
, I believe that the university’s dereliction of democratic duty is a far greater and more immediate threat to humanity—one that is in his power to reverse.
Following the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards gay and lesbian service members, Harvard officially recognized both Navy ROTC in 2011 and Army ROTC in 2012 to celebratory fanfare. But for students in the program, the merit of reinstatement was largely symbolic. Besides a few benefits like Harvard-funded Zipcars to and from physical training as well as largely unused office spaces in the Student Organization Center at Hilles, the program is largely unchanged on a logistical level. There’s a sense among students in ROTC, alumni of the program, and veterans at Harvard’s graduate schools that the University could be doing more to accommodate students and to grow ROTC’s once-expansive presence on campus.
The challenges of reuniting two long separated institutional and bureaucratic giants—Harvard University and the United States military—remain.
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Same with Vietnam, it was Robert STRANGE McNamara and the Harvard “Whiz Kids.”
No they don’t. Gandhi was wrong.
“Wars for empire?” I think those ended with the Spanish American war about 1900.
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