Word: rotc
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Harvard's arrogance toward the military and its men and women is an important facet of the ROTC debate which must be addressed. Not merely the standard left-wing, anti-military sentiment of many students, but the subtler arrogance of the contemporary Harvard mind--an arrogance which infects even the pro-ROTC side of the debate...
...reading the September issue of Harvard Magazine. It was morning, I could see my peaceful corner of the Hudson Highlands out the window and I could hear birds chirping and the occasional car go by--I was clearly far from sophisticated Cambridge. I was struck by two quotes about ROTC in Janet Tassel's "The 30 Years War: Cultural conservatives struggle with the Harvard they love." The first was from Undergraduate Council President Noah Z. Seton '00: "ROTC being diminished on campuses means that the higher level officials in the military come from the academies or southern schools...
Aesop said, "its easy to be brave from a safe distance." He was right. For now we continue to debate ROTC on campus and pontificate about military policy. But there's a big world out there full of sacrificing men and women who could teach us a thing or two. Let's open our eyes and ears to them for a change. And let's bring ROTC back to campus with a bit of humility...
Normally I would ignore such talk, chalk it up to harmless Harvard egotism, and be thankful that these gentlemen support ROTC in their own way. But the unaffected atmosphere of home brought their arrogance into focus. Seton implies that Harvard students can do a better job with the military than those academy boys and those God-forsaken southerners. Huntington believes the My Lai massacre in Vietnam could have been avoided had a Harvard man been in command--that judgment and values are by-products of elite conditioning in academic Utopia...
...Some pro-ROTC students believe it's unreasonable to push for the University's full acceptance of ROTC. Or, at least, that it's unreasonable to welcome ROTC without conceding that it should undergo that "liberalizing force." But it's not as unreasonable as Harvard's 30-year cold war with the military and its men and women--who, although imperfect like all of us, devote their lives to our freedom, our ability to pursue the lives we will and our security within these ivory towers...