Afghanistan Was Lost in the Halls of Harvard

WSJ ^ | 20 sept 2021 | Ruth R. Wisse

[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.

[AZJeep]

85 ROTC cadets and midshipmen etc.
______

Total 85+40+27+16+2+1 = 171 military students at Harvard
Out of 20,970 students total.

That means 171/20970 = 0.815%

0.815% of Harvard in military!
At 3 sigma level barely statistically significant.

[P-Marlowe]

Afghanistan was lost the day our own Military confiscated and then burned the Bibles.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”Robert STRANGE McNamara “

Do not overlook “McNamara’s 100,000”

I served with a few of the ones that made it past basic, no problems.
But had heard about some of the washouts; sad stories.

And all of this so as not to draft any congressman’s sons.

Please, Mister Nixion, drop that bomb!
Cause I don’t wantta go to Vietnam!!
I’M I RIGHT?
YOUR RIGHT!
Your left
Your left
Left..right...left...

[The Westerner]

Thank you for posting facts. If ROTC is still banned from Harvard, where are these undergraduates getting trained?

[The Westerner]

More facts. Thank you.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—” If ROTC is still banned from Harvard, where are these undergraduates getting trained?”

If I understand correctly the ban was lifted and all 85 of them(?) attend Harvard.

[The Westerner]

“...ROTC is back on Harvard's campus now. But more than mere acceptance is needed. Students must be offered an education that demonstrates the exceptional merits of their country and civilization, and gives them the intellectual tools to defend it...”

When our nation's philosophy departments refused to employ professors who taught reason, logic, pro-Aristotelian ideas circa 1980’s. the country was doomed. The writer/Professor identifies the source of our anti-American thus anti-Capitalism ideas held by students from grammar school and on. But I disagree with the reason she cites for their spread. Ideas determine the course of a nation and the place where ideas and how to think about them are taught is in Philosophy Depts. Unfortunately, I've had a front row seat in which to view this destruction of lives and minds. It has been a bitter experience akin to my Grandmother's bitterness when speaking of her family who died in Hitler's camps.