Harvard: One of our Lesser Institutions

The Harvard ROTC ban returned to the news last week. University President Drew Gilpin Faust said in an interview that ROTC would be welcomed back to campus, but not until the military repealed its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Until then, Harvard students interested in becoming reserve offices must continue to travel up Mass Ave to train at MIT ( Harvard links ROTC return to end of ‘don’t ask’, The Boston Globe, September 23, 2010).

Ms. Faust’s remarks kindled a bonfire of controversy; Senator Scott Brown added fuel when he said, “It is incomprehensible to me that Harvard does not allow ROTC to use its facilities, but welcomes students who are in this country illegally.’’ ( Brown criticizes Harvard leader on ROTC policy, The Boston Globe, September 24, 2010)

As a member of the military-industrial complex, I have the honor of working with many soldiers and sailors. I know from personal experience that the military has very high standards for its personnel. So I can’t figure out the reason the Pentagon wants to recruit at Harvard.

I doubt it’s the academic standards, which are appallingly low. A Harvard student once told me, “you can get B’s without trying very hard.”

Nor could it be the classes. A cursory examination of the course catalog turned up VES 172b Contemporary Film Theory (“how the study of film and spectatorship have been influenced by semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism, postmodernism, feminism, and gay and lesbian criticism, as well as multiculturalism”), RELI E-1047 Religion, the Arts, and Social Change (“Cross-global cases may also be explored through the lenses of immigration, gay and lesbian rights, global warming, and gender equality.”), and AFRAMER 121 Race, Gender, Class and Ethnicity in the Early Films of Spike Lee (“We will pay special attention to the tension between Lee's passionate oppositional politics and his intensely personal, experimental, and playful approach to film and its expressive idioms, techniques, and styles.”). There’s little here of use to a fledgling soldier.

And the world-renowned professors are poor role models indeed. Dr. Henry Louis Gates made national news last year when he was asked for ID by the Cambridge police and threw a temper tantrum that led to his arrest. While Dr. Gates may be the king of the Cambridge cuckoos, there are many, many others. Mark Richard of the philosophy department, for example, is the author of When Truth Gives Out. According to an Amazon.com review, Dr. Richard “defends the idea that much of everyday thought and talk is only relatively true or false. Truth is inevitably relative, given that we cannot work out in advance how our concepts will apply to the world.” Michael Klarman, of the Law School, ridicules those who revere our nation’s founding documents, accusing them of “constitutional idolatry” (The Perils of Constitution Worship, The Economist, September 23, 2010).

A soldier influenced by any of these professors would not last long. A soldier who flies into a rage when confronted by uniformed authority would find himself in the stockade on the first day of boot camp. A soldier who cannot work out in advance how the concept of a bullet applies to the world would die during his first hour in Afghanistan. And I want every soldier to idolize the Constitution, especially the clauses concerning civilian control of the military.

No, Harvard is clearly one of our lesser institutions of higher learning. I expect the Pentagon will only find a few high caliber individuals there.

Still, those few, those happy few, are worthy of our consideration. Perhaps they did make some bad choices and end up as Harvard students. But they want to volunteer to travel to the worst hellholes on earth, eat lousy food, go without sleep, and enter harm’s way to confront armed men who hate us, all for our benefit. As Kipling said,

“[T]hese rough men stand ready, hard weapons to hand,

To put placaters behind them, draw a line in the sand,

To preserve for the peaceniks what they won't defend,

So their own unearned freedom won't perish, won't end.”

These rough men (and women) deserve enormous respect from the rest of us, and Harvard University should make every accommodation for them. Including restoring ROTC to campus.