Safe Reform

LAST SPRING a Faculty committee reviewing the curriculum of Harvard's ROTC program discovered that two courses required security clearances of their students. "We're going to get on the phone and try to have this straightened out," Dean Glimp commented the day the committee released its report. And sure enough, neither of the courses is still classified.

Security clearances have no place in the undergraduate curriculum. It is good to see them gone and encouraging that Harvard administrators could so quickly convince ROTC officials to revise their program. But a reform like this one is too safe to get excited over.

The real issue--ROTC's peculiarly privileged status at Harvard--has not been touched. Why should students be given academic credit for pre-professional military training? Last year's faculty evaluation of the curriculum glossed over that question, and it is one that this year the Faculty ought to answer.