At the freshman activities fair, sandwiched between REACH and Project Health, was the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) booth, manned by two-cadets and attended by a lone picket-sign holding student, protesting ROTC's presence at the fair. ROTC, which was once housed at Philips Brooks' House, has been absent from Harvard for 32 years, first as a sign of the University's protest of the Vietnam War and later due to its participation as a military organization in the Department of Defense's Exclusionary Policy. This policy, commonly referred to as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," originated when the Clinton administration met stiff resistance in its effort to end bans on gay service in the military entirely, and so sought the mushy middle ground of compromise. According to the United States ROTC homepage, the policy "prohibited military officials from asking about a recruit's sexual orientation but at the same time barred homosexual service members from declaring their sexual preference or from engaging in homosexual conduct."
Harvard, needless to say, does not approve of Clinton's compromise. The Handbook for Students states: "Current federal policy of excluding known lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals from admission to ROTC or of discharging them from service is inconsistent with Harvard's values as stated in its policy on discrimination." The handbook goes on to inform students that it "respects their right" to participate in ROTC, but will give no credit or financial support for participation in the local MIT ROTC chapter. (Harvard's participation in ROTC at MIT is funded entirely by alumni.) The Handbook then warns students that "the military services may impose limitations on the freedom of speech of cadets" and that "the military may require the repayment of scholarship funds if their sexual orientation results in their discharge from ROTC," and refers them to the Harvard Policy of Discrimination.
Forty-three students from Harvard currently participate in ROTC at MIT, spending an average of three hours in transportation to and from MIT per week. ROTC is also banned on many other campuses, including Yale, Stamford, Brown and Columbia, for similar reasons.
Lately, the issue of ROTC at Harvard has been catapulted back into the spotlight, due to both the September II th attack on the United States, and to a push by an alumni group called Advocates for Harvard ROTC, led by David Clayman '38, and including famous alums such as former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger (now chairman of Forbes magazine), and Staples founder Leo Kahn. Advocates for Harvard ROTC has an 800-signature petition which it intends to present to President Summers. In addition to this movement, two years ago, the UC voted to encourage the Administration to return ROTC to Harvard, saying that the University has an obligation both to train soldiers and not to discourage high-school seniors in search of scholarships from attending Harvard.
It is important to consider first the principle upon which the University has based its decision to ban ROTC from Harvard. The University's policy on discrimination is as follows: "Any form of discrimination based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, national or ethnic origin, political beliefs, veteran status, or disability unrelated to course requirements is contrary to the principles and policies of Harvard University." Its more specific Regulation for Undergraduate Organizations is that to be approved they must have "A constitution and by-laws whose membership shall not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, or physical ability."
And yet, are these two principles not mutually exclusive? According to the Policy on Discrimination, it is contrary to the principles of Harvard University to discriminate at all based on religious or political beliefs. But, the University then discriminates in its Regulation for Undergraduate Organizations against groups (like ROTC) that hold the political or religious belief that not all people should be allowed to serve in their organization. The University is trying to claim that it believes in a dogmatic form of tolerance, for all beliefs, but it is falling into the same trap that all relativists fall into. It is impossible for the University to say that it does not believe in discrimination, when it wishes to discriminate against those who discriminate.
In fact, discrimination based on belief makes perfect sense, and we all do it all the time, even the sainted University officials. No one in his right mind would advocate allowing someone who argued in favor of killing children to work in an after-school program. Similarly, for any group with a purpose beyond inclusion (i.e. a group aimed at a certain mission, such as teaching children, or defending our country) certain ideas and the actions linked to them could be detrimental to that group's purpose.
And it seems that in the case of ROTC, the University has been faced with a case in which its own self-contradictory principles fall apart. It has a group that believes, based on ideas about morale and unit cohesion, that it should not be forced to include those who are publicly homosexual. And the University, which doesn't believe in discriminating between the beliefs of its students, suddenly has to deal with the fact that it believes that ROTC's convictions are entirely wrong.
In some sense, we should applaud the University for suddenly standing up for a belief, an actual principle that doesn't cloak itself as a non-principle. "All groups must be open to all." A real belief! A philosophy! A value! Congratulations are in order. And yet, somehow this seems ultimately unsatisfying as a guiding principle, since it would, in theory, allow a "Harvard/Radcliffe Students for Black Slavery" and then turn around and ban ROTC from campus in the midst of a war.
But if Harvard is going to stick to this minimalist rationale — continue to hold that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of a political belief, without actually addressing the question of what the good for human beings is, and how Harvard should promote such goods — then by its own logic, it must allow for ROTC on campus regardless of its political/prudential beliefs on the presence of homosexuals.