ROTC Funded Scholars Can Now Attend Harvard

The Department of Defense lifted a 1971 ban last week that prohibited Defense department-funded graduate students from attending Harvard and thirteen other colleges which had terminated their ROTC programs in the late '60s.

In a directive issued September 30 the department announced that "henceforth equal consideration will be given to all colleges and universities in the placement of Defense department-funded students," whether or not they include ROTC in their program of study.

Blacklist

Charles U. Daly, vice-president for government and community affairs, said yesterday that the recently lifted ban was "clearly an informal blacklist not part of the law or intent of Congress." He said it was "clear that Harvard was a target of this policy."

John Becker, a spokesman for the Pentagon Public Affairs Office said the blacklisting policy was not a retaliation against colleges that cut ROTC.

The policy meant, however, that Defense department funded students could not attend the schools which did not maintain their own ROTC programs.

The blacklist primarily affected the Business School, and to a lesser degree, the Medical School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, spokesmen from the three schools said yesterday.

The Pentagon blacklist policy never affected research grants or contracts, Sidney Roth, vice-chancellor for federal relations at New York University said yesterday.

In an article appearing Monday in the Brown University Herald, Kelsey Murdoch, assistant to Brown President Donald F. Hornig '40, called the ban "patently illegal."

Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, said however that he was uncertain about the legality of the ban, but added he thought "the practice was not an acceptable one."

Prior to the Department of Defense ban in 1971, the military sent 16 students each year to the Advanced Management Program at the Business School.

Daly said yesterday that he did not know the total number of Harvard students affected by the ban. "I'm against the blacklist approach whether one student or 1500 are affected," Daly said.

Schools that were formerly blacklisted include Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale and Stanford. Harvard will be informed of the lifting of the ban in a letter from Sen. Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.), a spokesman from the senator's office revealed yesterday.

Javits consituency includes six of the fourteen formerly blacklisted schools: Columbia, Hobart, Pratt Institute, Colgate, Suny at Buffalo, and NYU