Petraeus To Address ROTC Commissioning Ceremonies at Harvard, MIT

General David H. Petraeus, chief of U.S. military operations in much of the Eastern Hemisphere, including the Middle East, will speak at this spring’s Reserve Officer Training Corps commissioning ceremonies at both Harvard and MIT, a top ROTC official confirmed earlier today.

Petraeus, whose son Stephen will be commissioned at the MIT ceremony, has developed a “personal relationship” with a number of cadets from both schools while attending various ROTC events, according to MIT ROTC Commanding Officer Lt. Colonel Timothy J. Hall.

Cadets from Harvard, MIT, and other Boston-area schools train together on the MIT campus.

The Harvard commissioning ceremony, set for June 3, has generally not drawn significant interest in years past. At the 2008 event, roughly 100 spectators gathered in Tercentenary Theater to see University President Drew G. Faust headline the list of speakers.

This year, Hall said, a group of Harvard cadets decided they wanted to invite Petraeus to speak at the commissioning ceremony, and Petraeus—who spoke at the Kennedy School in 2002—accepted the group’s offer.

Petraeus, who is head of U.S. Central Command and was named a runner-up for Time Magazine’s 2007 Person of the Year, oversaw multinational forces in Iraq from February 2007 until September of last year, and is often credited with effectively overseeing the implementation of the U.S. “surge” strategy in the Middle East.

“I think he’s excited to make it a special day for all the Harvard guys and girls,” said Stephen H. Petraeus, who added that he had not spoken to his father about what he plans to say in his speech.

“We’re very excited to have [Petraeus] coming because it means so much to our students,” Hall said. “As the commander of U.S. Central Command, he oversees areas that will be relevant to them as they move out into the Army.”

Harvard’s strained relationship with ROTC peaked when the program was banned from campus in 1969 amid student protests over the Vietnam War.

In recent years, Harvard and other elite universities have barred military recruiters from their campuses due to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibits gay individuals from serving openly in the military.

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.