New Debate, But Old Arguments: Case for ROTC Remains the same

Though the terms of this Fall's debate over ROTC will be new to most Harvard students, the arguments for reinstating ROTC are neither new nor unpredictable.

The seven pro-ROTC arguments in the following assessment are drawn from statements made by President Bok, Col. Robert H. Pell, former professor of Military Science, Boston University faculty who support the reestablishment of B.U. ROTC. representatives of the armed forces, and students who support the reinstatement of ROTC at Harvard.

1) ROTC helps preserve the tradition of a "civilian military" under the direction of an independent-minded officer corps.

For its first 30 years, until the end of World War II, ROTC aimed at recruiting a large corps of "reserve amateurs," men who could fulfill responsible positions in the military because--although they had not risen through the ranks--they had benefitted from both a ROTC and a liberal course of training.

Since World War II, ROTC has shifted towards recruiting highly-skilled career soldiers and professional specialists to meet the needs of a smaller, more technically sophisticated military. During the sixties, only those ROTC students who enlisted to forestall the draft were likely to maintain an independent "civilian consciousness." This reservoir of prospective civilian-oriented ROTC cadets no longer exists.

Even without ROTC, nothing exists to prevent military men from spending time in liberal arts colleges--as many do--or to prevent Congress from authorizing more scholarships to induce non-ROTC students to pledge long terms of military service.

U.S. Army Gen. Hugh B. Hester, ret., has said that ROTC is self-defeating because, in anything, ROTC programs distract students from more useful study in regular Arts and Sciences courses. Because of their rank and because of time wasted on ROTC courses of little value, ROTC graduates, Hester wrote this summer, often prove more difficult to train in complex technical skills than do regular college graduates new to the military.

Finally, it is not clear that ROTC could contribute significantly to an independent-minded military. It is not very likely that a student who volunteers for ROTC under no draft pressure would openly question prevailing U.S. policy.

Critics of the military could easily point to the cover-up of U.S. bombing in Cambodia--a possibly illegal act which required the active cooperation of hundreds of enlisted men and dozens of officers--as one piece of evidence among many calling the independent thinking of military leaders into severe question.

2) Harvard makes a unique contribution to national security by training "brilliant young men" with "God-given leadership abilities," as Pell called them, to lead the army in place of presumably less gifted, less broadminded non-ROTC enlisted men.

A strong case for the moral commitment which liberal Harvard gentlemen bring to the military would be difficult to make. The wounded and homeless of Indochina could best testify to the "humanizing" influence of Harvard men such as Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, James Schlesinger '50, Henry Kissinger '50, Elliot Richardson '41, and Louis F. Fieser, Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry, Emeritus, and the inventor of napalm.

Faculty objections to ROTC in 1969 focused largely on the incompatibility of an outside-controlled, pre- professional military training program with the principles of a liberal arts college and the potential surrender of academic freedom implicit in hiring teachers who might feel reluctant to publicly question executive or military policy.

In its 1968 report to the Faculty, the Harvard-Radcliffe Policy Committee (HRPC) said that "any aspect of the status of ROTC at Harvard which is a disservice to the principles of the liberal arts institution cannot possibly be a true service to the national interest."

In addition, members of Congress along with radicals and other liberals are questioning to what degree the military has been involved in illegal clandestine activities, particularly in Indochina.

Howard Zinn, professor of Political Science at B.U., questioned last month whether, under Federal conspiracy laws, universities which train and recruit military personnel might be held partly responsible for illegal and unconstitutional military activities.

3) The military provides an effective channel of upward mobility for poor people and minorities.

Whether or not the military on the whole provides an avenue of upward mobility, ROTC apparently does not.

Almost none of the 6500 military scholarships Congress authorizes each services to grant each year are awarded on the basis of need.

Major Bruce Peterson, director of personnel for the Pre-Commission Education division of the Air Force, said last month that "need does not enter at all" into the awarding of Air Force grants.

Allowances which all ROTC enrollees receive apply chiefly to ROTC-related expenses. In allowances not related to ROTC requirements, no non-scholarship ROTC cadet receives more than $50 a month during the school year.

In 1968, Army ROTC at Harvard comprised just over 100 members, including only seven scholarship holders. Ninety per cent of the army ROTC courses taken were not taken for credit despite their tuition-free status. Since most students were paying full Harvard tuition (two-thirds of the unit came from the law school and were thus already college-educated), ROTC's contribution to the number of poor students enrolled in Harvard could not have been substantial.

Furthermore, the military provides an unusual degree of upward mobility only in proportion to the lack of other safer, more profitable, more prestigious alternatives. White employers have always proved more predisposed to hire blacks to die in wars for them than to pay blacks equal salaries for steady civilian jobs.

4) Assuming that the nation must have an army, there is no better alternative than ROTC for the training of junior officers.

Any program which permits military personnel to study at colleges without the establishment of permanent on-campus military units under outside control, taught by faculty with other institutional allegiances, which possibly implicate universities in illegal, immoral, or politically repressive military acts would be a better alternative from the universities' point of view.

Any scholarship program which permitted prospective officers to concentrate fully on their academic studies as undergraduates on the promise of future national service would be a better alternative from the students' point of view.

Any training and recruiting program which responded more flexibly to the military's need for junior officers, which permitted future personnel to devote more time to rigorous academic study as undergraduates, and which did not cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars for small, decentralized, inefficient ROTC units spread over hundreds of campuses, should be a better alternative from the armed services' point of view.

5) A free and open University must enable all students to pursue the course of training of their choice.

No one can seriously argue that the range of appropriate subjects for college study is infinite. No popular interest in racketeering or bugging telephones could induce Harvard to initiate even extracurricular programs in these fields. Each proposed program may be accepted or rejected on its merits.

President Bok said last June that Harvard should be willing to "entertain a ROTC program on terms compatible with our usual institutional standards." Presumably, those standards are moral as well as academic in the narrow sense.

Radicals and some liberals have contended that aiding a politically repressive, imperialist military violates the ethical principles of a socially responsible, morally conscious university.

The Faculty, in 1969, argued that ROTC was incompatible--in the kinds of courses it offered, in the lack of Faculty supervision it permitted, in its ties to the government, in its means of appointing the teachers it employed--with Harvard's strictly academic standards as well.

The report of the HRPC argued that "the military training goal of the ROTC program is a clear violation of the liberal arts norm."

In short, many opponents of ROTC maintain that no "free and open university" with any sense of academic integrity or social responsibility would include ROTC study in its curriculum.

6) A university willing to take funds related to defense research should be willing to train military officers.

Liberal Response: To determine academic programs on the basis of sources of outside funds would undercut the very foundations of academic freedon and the independent university.

President Bok said several weeks ago, "Nothing could be worse for the Faculty's credibility than to reconsider ROTC under obvious financial pressure."

Radical Response: Universities should not be willing to do defense research for an imperialist military industrial establishment.8In 1969, two thousand students rallied in Harvard Stadium and voted to strike until ROTC left the Harvard campus.