Posted on 05/04/2008 5:32:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Any Harvard student with the balls to participate in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) deserves our respect. Quite frankly, ROTC doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.
For four years, cadets and midshipmen wake up obscenely early in order to trek to MIT and get yelled at by their instructors. That’s an indignity that Harvard usually reserves for accounting students. If you want to know what visceral discomfort looks like, watch a Harvard ROTC student shuffle across campus in his military uniform. Banished by the Faculty in 1969 amid a rising tide of anti-war sentiment on Harvard’s campus, ROTC has more recently been relegated to its pariah status because of the military’s mindless discrimination against homosexuals. Forget the active duty that follows graduation—for our peers in uniform, the years of glory-free self-sacrifice start in Harvard Yard.
Their one moment in the sun comes during the week of Commencement, when Harvard’s cadets and midshipmen receive their commissions and their first salutes in a touching, deeply significant ceremony in Harvard Yard. It’s a chance to celebrate new officers’ past achievements and their future service to the nation. Their recognition is richly deserved.
This year, University President Drew G. Faust will attend the ROTC commissioning, but with an asterisk. Proof to the aged adage—beware geeks bearing gifts—Faust will harness the symbolism of her appearance by criticizing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” (DADT) the federal law that bars openly gay Americans from serving in the military. While she will recognize the value of military service, Faust will also express her wish that, “every Harvard student had the opportunity to serve in the military.”
Few at Harvard disagree with the sentiment. Even Harry R. Lewis ’68, former dean of the College and one of Harvard ROTC’s staunchest advocates, argued on this page last year that, “the ban on homosexuals in the military is unwise.” The dispute here is not over Faust’s message, but rather her timing. “If it’s going to be political, I think everyone would be happier having someone else speak,” one Marine midshipman told The Crimson earlier this week.
But ROTC graduates’ happiness is, unfortunately, not the issue. On June 4, they will be commissioned in a military ceremony in Harvard Yard, despite the fact that the military explicitly violates Harvard’s non-discrimination code by forbidding gays and lesbians to serve.
President Faust should absolutely use the occasion to express this community’s moral outrage at DADT. It would be offensive to our values for Harvard’s ROTC graduates not to begin their service in the shadow of the Pentagon’s repugnant discrimination. (These values are, incidentally, not just President Faust’s—there is no shortage of Harvard ROTC students who oppose DADT, but who are forced to keep their silence because of the military’s restrictions on their free speech.)
Other Americans seem perfectly capable of respecting the military—if, perhaps, from a distance—while remaining deeply ashamed of its intolerance of homosexuals. It is incumbent on the military’s youngest officers to feel the same way, even—indeed, especially—at an event with as much military and personal significance as the commissioning ceremony.
It is hardly extreme to claim that all Americans who value liberty and equality—not just those in uniform—should be deeply embarrassed by the profound systemic discrimination that DADT embodies. What kind of liberal democracy, after all, can passively abide what Faust rightly described last week as “a badge of degradation or second-class citizenship” for gay Americans?
The point, however, is not to hold cadets and midshipmen responsible for their political overlords’ intolerance. The decision to ban gays from the military was not theirs to make. But if this country is to overcome the well-worn prejudices that make DADT possible politically, then moral objections to the status quo must be involved wherever the military and civil society meet—in Harvard Yard, for example. And the generation of military officers now being educated at Harvard and elsewhere should rightly have their service tinted by the discrimination of DADT, at their commissioning and elsewhere.
Some will object, of course, that mine is a deeply political, even partisan view. Paul E. Mawn ’63, who chairs the pressure group Advocates for Harvard ROTC, declared this week that, “it’s not appropriate to talk politics at a military service.” Joseph M. Kristol ’09, a Marine ROTC midshipman, despaired that Faust’s comments would “radicalize” the ceremony.
Opposing discrimination is, however, neither political nor radical. Dismissing Faust’s—and Harvard’s—objections to anti-gay discrimination as “political” cloaks the issue in the mundane. ROTC graduates certainly earn their right to celebrate their commissioning with their peers and their families, but they do not deserve to ignore blithely the military’s formal discrimination in the course of their revelry. On June 4, President Faust owes it to this institution and its values to at least offer a gentle reminder of the discrimination that the military has come to represent.
As they sally forth to serve their country with pride, Harvard’s ROTC graduates should do so with firm misgivings about the discrimination built into the organization of which they will have become part. Only by doing so can they aspire to overcome the generational divide that stands between the status quo and real equality of citizenship for gay Americans.
Too bad the New 2Lt couldn’t stand up in mass a do an about face remaining at attention and facing away from faust for the whole speech. Alas,.. they won’t because of something else, they are “Officers and Gentlemen/Gentlewomen.” They know what is proper and civil behavior for each occasion.
Where’s the Mega-hurl alert?
I agree that “don’t ask, don’t tell” should go away.
It needs to go back to “we don’t want homosexuals in the military and don’t need you. If you lie and join and we catch you, you will be dishonorably discharged.”
DADA was one of the Clinton’s administration’s worst mistakes.
In regards to schools like “Havard” that presecute ROTC students......this school should lose ALL federal funding to include research grants and no one attending this “university” should be able to receive federal loans for education...and the VA should not pay G.I. Bill benefits to veterans that attend this school. Cut off their money and their traitorous tendencies will self correct.
Real long title, so I didn't have room for it.
Congressional Code of Military Criminal Law applicable to all military members worldwide
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ucmj2.htm#925.%20ART.%20125.%20SODOMY
925. ART. 125. SODOMY
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.
DADA is perfectly compatible with toleration of homosexually oriented men and women. It does not say “If you are homosexual, then we don’t want you”. It merely says “We do not want homosexual behavior in the military.”
Her name is appropriate.
DADT ensures privacy of sexual orientation. Since enacted, has the policy been effective? Is Faust just looking for a fight regardless of consequence?
Only after the Harvard grads were "used up" (wasted even!) would anyone else be sent.
This approach to dealing with Harvard's "elitist attitudes" would definitely circuit the whole enterprise in less than a generation.
They achieved this with the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.
Their problem is two fold. First homosexual acts as a preference occur in no more than 4% of the adult, male population; less for female homosexuality. Second, the aim of sexuality is not recreation but procreation. Biologically speaking, using one's sexual organs such as homosexuals do, could never result in procreation.
All that said, homosexuals deserve every civil right and protection; however, anyone who has been in the military will recognize that sexuality between military personnel is demoralizing for those not so chosen of a homosexual bent and disgusting for those who are not of a homosexual bent.
The job of the military is to fight our wars. It is not a laboratory for postmodern, liberal views.
Harvard has enough money already to fund the government of the state of West Virginia for the next 25 years. They don’t deserve federal money because they actively endeavor to undermine the military. They don’t need federal money, either. The long road back to a fiscally responsible government needs to begin somewhere and somehow, and starting out by cutting off Harvard’s allowance sure sounds like a winner to me.
I cannot even express in words just how much this BS pisses me off.
Given Harvard’s sorry record with their law students, and given that I have absolutely no respect for any of their lib arts grads, perhaps ‘twould be better to just turn out those of worth: science, engineering, and medicine. The rest are superfluous, and can be bettered by any decent state school. ROTC students are perhaps the only sole redeeming virtue. Haarvaaad students, you want standards? Try MIT.
“Opposing discrimination is, however, neither political nor radical.”
Right, so if I protest affirmative action it’s not political and liberals wouldn’t think it radical. BS.
‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’ is a bad joke. Either keep homosexuals out, or let them in. None of this, ‘we will let you work for us but we don’t like you so pretend that you’re aren’t what you are because if we ever find out...’
Lately the armed services have been stretched too thin to turn anyone away. And as far as I can tell, they aren’t.
I am as anti-queer as you are, but you lost me with that statement. G.I. Bill benefits are earned by individual service members.
No matter what your level of hatred for a school, you don't have the right to demand that those who have served with honor should be denied the benefits they have earned. Back off!
“I wish that Harvard had a deal with the United States that required every Harvard graduate to “go first” into each and every war whether they approved of it or not...This approach to dealing with Harvard’s “elitist attitudes” would definitely circuit the whole enterprise in less than a generation.”
Bravo. I’d extend that forced service in our country’s wars to the population as a whole by reinstating the draft. Going to war would do a lot of good for a lot of armchair patriots who have no idea of the sacrifices involved.
The elitists at Harvard are a different story. Money is no motivator for them, nor is patriotism. These guys have to be forced.
It was NOT a mistake. It was a deliberate act of social engineering. I remember well the days when a Chapter 18 was a harbinger of doom; now it's openly laughed at.
Yet another Clinton Legacy from the Reign of Terror ('93-'01).
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