Army Celebration Sparks Anti-War Protest

In an unusual step for the University, Harvard agreed to house military officials during the U.S. Army’s 230th birthday celebration two weeks ago, although a last-minute change in the Army’s plans meant that no troops actually stayed on campus.

Harvard has long had an arms-length relationship with the military. Military personnel have not lodged on campus since 1969, when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to expel the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) from campus in protest of the Vietnam War.

Today, no branch of the armed forces is allowed to have an office on campus.

Police also arrested seven protesters during the celebration, which took place on Cambridge Common on June 14.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned Cambridge Police tactics as unconstitutional, and city leaders later demanded an investigation into Cambridge’s sponsorship of the celebration.

The Army celebrates June 14—which is also Flag Day­—as its birth date because it was on that day in 1775 that a collection of soldiers camping out on Cambridge Common formally became the Continental Army.

Exactly 230 years later, as paratroopers descended on the Common and a helicopter hovered overhead, veterans and dignitaries, including Undersecretary of the Army Raymond F. DuBois and Cambridge mayor Michael A. Sullivan, delivered celebratory speeches.

Harvard had also planned to play a part in the festivities—according to an Army press release issued before the event, “Harvard University is once again opening its doors to the Army, providing billeting for a 12-person Army drill team.”

From 1775 to 1776, more than a thousand Continental Army soldiers inhabited Harvard Yard’s oldest dorms, including Mass. Hall.

Mary Power, Harvard’s director of community relations, said that the City of Cambridge Veterans Service Organization had asked the University to house soldiers in conjunction with the celebration and that Harvard had agreed.

But, Power said, the housing was never needed.

Dave Foster, an Army spokesman, said that the drill team that was supposed to use the Harvard housing did not attend the festivities.

“To my knowledge, no one ended up staying [at Harvard],” Foster said.

True to Cambridge’s long-running opposition to the military—the city council voted unanimously in 2003 to express their opposition to a war in Iraq—several anti-war groups arrived on the scene to protest the Army.

Cambridge police kept dissenters in a “free speech zone”—a part of the Common distant and closed-off from the official festivities.

The seven arrests made by police included four protesters costumed in blood-stained fatigues and traditional Middle Eastern dress who had made their way into the celebration. The remaining three arrests came as police were trying to relocate protesters into the free speech zone.

All seven were later released and will go before a Cambridge judge next month, according to Keith Harvey, the New England director of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that promotes peace and social justice.

Frank Pasquarello, a Cambridge Police Department spokesman, said that although the June 14 protest did not present the same logistical challenges as other recent protests, arrests at such events are sometimes necessary to keep the peace.

“Unfortunately, we have to make arrests,” Pasquarello said.

Questions over the propriety of Cambridge’s involvement in the celebration lingered after the event, both among protesters and in City Hall itself.

At a city council meeting last Monday, eight of the nine councilors requested that Robert W. Healy, the city manager, discuss with the Council whether free speech zones like the one used at the Army celebration were “appropriate for events in public spaces.”

The ACLU of Massachusetts condemned the zones as violations of citizens’ First Amendment rights.

Vice Mayor Marjorie C. Decker asked Healy to divulge how much the event cost the city, and also questioned whether the city’s co-sponsorship violated municipal human rights codes because of the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members.

Kaveri Rajaraman, a student at the University who participated in the protests but was not arrested, said that the celebration had no “obvious references to recruitment.”

But “it paved the way for future recruitment and positive Army PR,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Fliers for the event touted historical reenactments and performances, but did not mention recruiting activities. The only contact information provided on the fliers, however, was an e-mail address and telephone number for the commander of the Army’s Boston Recruiting Company.

—Staff writer Brendan R. Linn can be reached at blinn@fas.harvard.edu.