Cheryl Miller is a writer who contributed to The Weekly Standard from 2008 to 2014, covering military and higher education issues with a particular focus on the ROTC debate at elite universities such as Columbia and Brown. She wrote extensively on civil-military relations, campus culture, and defense policy for the magazine.
Princeton University is restoring ties with Navy ROTC (NROTC). Starting this fall, students will be able to participate in a cross-town program with Rutgers University, itself established only recently, in March 2012.
One year after renewing its ties with Naval ROTC, Columbia University held a welcome ceremony for its returning midshipmen yesterday afternoon.
Last year, when elite universities began announcing their intentions to bring back ROTC, Jonathan E. Hillman and I cautioned that if Ivy League ROTC was to succeed, it would require a real commitment from both the schools and the military.
The radicals have won at Brown University. Even as other elite schools are welcoming ROTC back, the corporation, the University’s highest governing body, has affirmed President Ruth Simmons’s recommendation to maintain its campus ban on ROTC.
Navy captain Phil Keith (Ret.), a fighter pilot commissioned through NROTC at Harvard, has just published a history, Crimson Valor, profiling the 17 graduates of Harvard who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Harvard has more alumni Medal of Honor recipients than any other institution of higher…
ROTC will not be returning to Brown University if the corporation, the university’s highest governing body, follows the recommendation just released by President Ruth J. Simmons.
The ROTC is booming, writes the Los Angeles Times. Not only have several elite schools ended their Vietnam-era bans on the program – with Yale, most recently, establishing the only Naval ROTC program in the entire state of Connecticut on its campus – participation has increased by 27 percent…
The Scrapbook had some nice things to say about What So Proudly We Hail, a new anthology of American short stories, speeches, letters, and patriotic songs edited by Amy A. Kass, Leon R. Kass, and Diana Schaub (ISI Books, $35).
As expected, the Yale College faculty voted Thursday to remove all obstacles to hosting an on-campus ROTC program. The Yale Daily News reported a “significant majority” in favor. According to a source, support was so strong a simple show of hands was enough to decide the issue; no ballots…
Yesterday was a big day for ROTC. Just three weeks after Columbia’s university senate voted in favor of engaging with ROTC, Columbia has announced it will reinstate its Navy ROTC program. The agreement between President Lee C. Bollinger and Navy secretary Ray Mabus marks the end of a 42-year ban on…
The university senate at Columbia just passed a resolution, 51-17-1, expressing support for inviting the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back to campus.
Harvard President Drew Faust and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus just signed the agreement officially welcoming ROTC back on Harvard grounds.
Columbia University’s Task Force on Military Engagement just released its full report on ROTC. As previously reported, the student survey went in favor of bringing ROTC back to campus: Sixty percent of students approved restoring the program. A quick look at some of the findings:
The return of ROTC to Harvard might be (as the Politico’s Mike Allen notes) “the most underplayed story.” At the Washington Post’s website, the news has been relegated to a mere blog post, while the New York Times webpage is giving better play to a story about James Franco’s studies at Yale. (In…
Great news: Harvard University will officially recognize its Naval ROTC program tomorrow. The agreement – to be signed by Harvard president Drew Faust and Navy secretary Ray Mabus – marks the end of the school’s 41-year ban against the program.
Why the wait? That's the question ACTA president Anne Neal is asking Harvard about restoring ROTC to campus. As she points out, providing official recognition to ROTC – as opposed to establishing a new unit on campus – is an action that the university can and should undertake immediately.
A group of faculty members at Columbia and Barnard have issued a statement opposing ROTC's return to campus. The statement isn't terribly noteworthy in itself—except that one of the signatories taking issue with the potential "militarization" of the university is Rashid Khalidi, activist Middle…
From the Columbia Spectator, an amusing story about ROTC opponents who are feeling unduly chastised by the media storm over the treatment of Iraq veteran Anthony Maschek at a student forum. Members of the Coalition Against ROTC whine that the student forums "do not provide a safe space” and they…
Today, the Columbia Spectator stated its support for renewing the university’s ROTC program and urged students to vote “yes” in the university Senate’s ongoing survey.
Over at CNAS, Andrew Exum has a somewhat different take on President Obama's ROTC shout-out in the State of the Union speech. He writes:
Attention Columbia, Yale, Stanford, and all the other elite schools dragging their feet on ROTC: President Obama will reaffirm his support for ROTC in tonight's State of the Union. The relevant excerpt [emphasis added]:
CNAS senior fellow Lt. Gen. David Barno, USA (Ret.) has some advice for Gen. Marty Dempsey, the new Army chief of staff. Along with Tim Kane’s recent Atlantic article on reforming the military’s anti-entrepreneurial personnel system, Barno’s top ten list is must reading for how to build tomorrow’s…
It’s disappointing that Princeton University remains unwilling to consider ROTC courses for academic credit, particularly after student calls for the university to reevaluate its relationship to ROTC pending the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Is the Solomon Amendment a dead letter? The statute, enacted in 1996, forbids federal funding to universities that prohibit military recruiters or Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) units from their campuses. Yet today, nearly 15 years since the amendment’s passage—and despite President Barack…
Earlier this year, Massachusetts and New York, blaming budget troubles, pulled the plug on their state tests in U.S. history. Given the strident union rhetoric against “high-stakes” testing— America's Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten has accused reformers of turning schools into “Test Prep,…
Body Shopping