ROTC

The award for the week's most depressing opening sentence in a news story goes to this gem by T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post:

The award for the week’s most depressing opening sentence in a news story goes to this gem by T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post:

Having officially re-established its Air Force program after 45 years, Harvard University will once again offer all Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) services.

The Army’s venerable Reserve Officer Training Corps program is finally getting rebooted.

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. 

Cheryl Miller on ROTC returning to New York City:

One year after renewing its ties with Naval ROTC, Columbia University held a welcome ceremony for its returning midshipmen yesterday afternoon.

The reaction of most Americans to the tragedy in Boston was typical: We came together as a nation, mourned our fallen, and applauded our newest heroes.  The sight of first-responders running to the sound of danger within mere seconds of the explosions, not away from disaster as human instinct might…

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…

Krauthammer: "What Obama did to Israel"

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…

Cheryl Miller, at the American Enterprise Institute, has written an informative report on ROTC, titled "A Case Study of ROTC in New York City." Here are some of the reports key findings:

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…

Donald Kagan has a great piece in the New Haven Register on why Yale (and other schools) should bring ROTC back to campus. The piece has a particularly moving passage on the heroism of the American soldier:

The university senate at Columbia just passed a resolution, 51-17-1, expressing support for inviting the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back to campus.

ROTC Returns to Harvard

 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…

“This is a place,” says Columbia University president Lee Bollinger of his Ivy League institution,

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.

A shocking story in the New York Post today. At a hearing about whether ROTC should return to Columbia University now that Don't Ask Don't Tell has been repealed, students openly mocked a disabled Iraq war veteran arguing in favor of the program:

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.

With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, elite colleges now have a chance to make good on their promises and bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus.

For what it's worth: When I saw Colman McCarthy's anti-ROTC Washington Post op-ed online Wednesday evening, I e-mailed it to a few friends with the subject line, "it's helpful to have opponents like this." Allahpundit had a similar thought, and has developed it with characteristic wit and verve:

With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, elite colleges now have a chance to make good on their promises and bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) back to campus.

Now that the lame duck Democratic Congress has repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), the new Congress will have to see to it that the Obama administration manages the implementation of repeal responsibly, and that the concerns of military leaders and troops are taken seriously. But over the next…