After 40-year standoff, Harvard makes peace with Naval ROTC

By Mary Carmichael

September 20, 2011

4 minutes to read

As gay and lesbian advocates nationwide celebrate the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,’’ another celebration is taking place today at Harvard University: The school is formally recognizing Naval ROTC for the first time in four decades.

This afternoon, in a ceremony freighted with symbolism and timed to coincide with the repeal of the law, Harvard President Drew Faust will dedicate a new office space on campus for the group.

Harvard will also offer Naval ROTC officials access to its athletic facilities and libraries, and it will fund some supplemental activities that its cadets participate in at other schools.

College and military officials both hailed the new agreement, first announced in March, as a historic moment in the university’s long relationship with the armed forces.

But at least one observer said there was work yet to be done. “To use a military analogy, I think this is a very important beachhead,’’ said Paul E. Mawn, a retired Navy captain and 1963 Harvard alumnus. “But as far I’m concerned, the mission is not accomplished.’’

In some ways, the move is a return to an earlier era. In 1926, Harvard became one of the country’s first schools to host a Naval ROTC unit. Only the nation’s military academies have more Medal of Honor winners among their graduates.

“I don’t think there’s any other civilian institution that has had such a profound influence on the Navy,’’ said Curtis Stevens, commanding officer at a Naval ROTC consortium that includes some 120 students from several local schools, including Harvard.

But in the 1960s, as the Vietnam War raged, tensions grew between the university and the military, as they did at many elite colleges. Though Harvard never banned armed forces personnel from its campus — that would be illegal — it did deny the military group some privileges it had previously enjoyed.

The new agreement will likely have little immediate impact on Harvard’s 21 current ROTC students, nine of whom are in the Navy program, said Stevens. For the last four decades, the school’s cadets have jogged down Massachusetts Avenue to MIT for military science classes and training as part of the consortium, and they will continue to do so. No new classes will be offered at Harvard, and no new battalion will form — there is not enough student interest, nor are there enough resources.

“It’s really about the numbers — you couldn’t have a viable unit just at Harvard with the students we have now,’’ said Stevens. “But we’ll see what happens once we get more established.’’

The new agreement is also limited in that it extends only to the Navy. The Army and Air Force have yet to hammer out similar contracts with Harvard.

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Hackathorn, public affairs officer for the US Army Cadet Command, said negotiations were ongoing. “In the wake of [the Navy’s decision], quite frankly, the Army started working. We’re still working,’’ he said. “It’s a matter of getting the details ironed out.’’

Hackathorn said he hoped an eventual Army-Harvard agreement would mirror the Navy’s. “Let me go on the record as saying, ‘Good for the Navy,’’’ he said. “We consider this a positive step for the military in general.’’

But he added that building a full new unit would be challenging and costly. Starting one from scratch could cost about $1.6 million, assuming a goal of commissioning 12 to 15 new second lieutenants per year.

“We want to extend and have more open discussion with all universities, but quite frankly, we’re in an environment of constrained resources,’’ Hackathorn said. “Providing a formal presence on campus is an expensive endeavor and right now, with the way things are, we would have to look very, very closely at how we would move forward. We can’t just blanket across the whole world and have a program everywhere.’’

Yet Mawn, the retired Navy captain, who also heads the group Advocates for Harvard ROTC, said he would not be satisfied until the school had a robust military presence with scholarships targeted at veterans and more programs encouraging students to enlist.

“A quarter of my class served in the military, and about half of them were in ROTC. But the whole concept of what the military does is out of the scope of awareness of these undergraduates,’’ he said. “If Harvard wants to commit itself to excellence in all areas, I think ROTC ought to be among them.’’

The new agreement is one of many among schools that have thawed towards ROTC over the past year, largely because of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,’’ which the schools considered discriminatory. Yale and Columbia universities have also announced that they will extend new, formal recognition to ROTC on their campuses.

Brown University, however, may be a lone holdout. The school commissioned a review of its ROTC policies in the spring, and its president is expected to announce a decision in October. But many students at the school feel military policies are still discriminatory, particularly against transgendered would-be recruits. “The historical context has certainly changed a great deal,’’ said Katherine Bergeron, dean of the college. “But the resolutions made by the faculty [in the 1960s] still seem very reasonable to us.’’