The Conservative Activist

By The Editors

If there is one paradox greater than the Harvard Republican, it is the conservative activist. Usually, the campus conservative’s role is easy: Oppose the Left. But occasionally, conservatives wish to promote constructive change, which requires cooperation from their routine opponents: University Hall and the Campus Left. Unfortunately, conservatives’ overtures typically fail: Liberal activists tend to overlook conservative causes, and University Hall tends to overlook conservatives. As a professor said at a recent meeting of the Harvard Republican Club, conservatives can’t get University Hall to pay attention to them—because they’re in suits.

ROTC Awareness Week—the HRC’s current campaign to bring the Reserve Officers Training Corps back to campus—is a case in point. We know the history: In 1969, University Hall banned ROTC from campus in response to a student uprising against the Vietnam War. In 1993, administrators charged a committee to study the issue—never a good sign—and decided that Harvard still opposed ROTC, but this time because of President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. As a result, Harvard’s few cadets now trek to MIT for training classes, which the Registrar refuses to put on their transcripts. To end this unjustified burden, the HRC is pressuring University Hall to officially recognize ROTC.

The HRC’s campaign is entirely reasonable—and that may be the problem. First, the argument is clear: If Harvard opposes DADT, it can air its objections through more effective means such as rejecting federal funding or sending University President Drew Faust to lecture Congress—the only body that can change the policy. Keeping ROTC off campus penalizes students who have no control over DADT and who in large part disagree with the policy. Few people serve their country by putting themselves at such risk and Harvard at least could try not to inconvenience them. Instead, it should encourage more Harvard students to consider military service.

Second, the tactics are respectable: HRC members brandish signs of encouragement for the cadets outside the Science Center, host panels to discuss the issue, debate opponents at Institute of Politics forums, and sponsor online polls to encourage other students to express their views. No matter how many times University Hall ignores them, the HRC never will attempt to take over a building. But the HRC’s respectability may be its Achilles heel: The administration ignores conservative activists because it knows they won’t cause trouble. This unfortunate reality poses a problem for conservatives: How do they affect change without losing their dignity?

So far, the answer seems to be: Get outside help. For instance, ROTC cadets Joseph Kristol and Daniel West wrote a widely praised Wall Street Journal editorial asking Harvard to correct its error of omission. And the HRC continues to point out President Obama’s stated support for returning ROTC to elite colleges. If the administration refuses to listen to conservative students, then conservative students should promote their views through people to whom the administration can’t refuse an audience.

So the HRC marches on, but the larger issue is University Hall’s baffling people skills. It coddles those students who need disciplining: for example, the Student Labor Action Movement. Because University officials caved into student demands for a meeting with the now infamous hunger strikers, SLAM’s exponents believe that their efforts paid off. Meanwhile, University Hall ignores those students who need attention: ROTC cadets. True, President Faust met with cadets earlier this spring, but the Faculty’s aversion to official recognition is frustrating: Harvard has kept ROTC off campus for 40 years and for constantly shifting reasons. Never mind funding the program or offering on-campus resources, could it at least recognize those students who decide to serve their country in the military? Can’t the University find some other way to oppose DADT?

Unfortunately, we believe that the University can, but won’t. There were over ten years between the end of the Vietnam War and the start of DADT when Harvard maintained its ban of ROTC. Such evidence speaks to a deep-seated anti-military bias throughout the campus, or at least within the Faculty. So until the eggheads change their ways, the only advice we have for those “conservative activists” is: Keep it up.