Why Isn’t ROTC on More Elite Campuses?
26th October 2010
In yesterday’s New York Times, University of Florida law professor and former Air Force officer Diane Mazur seeks to explode the “myth” that Ivy League universities have banned Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs from their campuses. This myth, she argues, is a convenient “fiction” that “lets the military (and to some extent, the universities) off the hook when it comes to the growing distance between civil and military America.”
However, in her haste to hold the military accountable, Mazur goes too easy on elite schools and their faculties. Her main argument is that if there were a ban against ROTC at Ivy schools, the military would have already punished the offenders under the Solomon Amendment, which allows the government to deny federal funding to universities if they bar either ROTC or military recruiters from campus. This is simply not persuasive. First, the military has made clear that it would prefer, for a variety of reasons, to wait to be invited back to campuses rather than strong-arming ROTC’s presence via Solomon. Second, university presidents certainly understand the current situation as a ban against on-campus ROTC. Harvard University President Drew G. Faust, for instance, has repeatedly stated that ROTC is officially unwelcome on campus so long as “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) remains policy. Columbia University’s Lee Bollinger has made similar statements.
‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ is, of course, merely a convenient excuse; if the military were to allow homosexuals to serve openly, the academic Crust would come up with some other specious rationalization.