When the Ivy League seceded from America
This is actually a request that a book (or several) be written.
So far as I know there currently is none on this subject.
ROTC (the Reserve Officer Training Corps) had a long and honorable service on America’s campuses up until 1969.
Then, in protest over the Vietnam War, it was made persona non grata on the Ivy League campuses.
America’s involvement with that war ended in 1973, but ROTC remained persona non grata.
The reason switched to the military’s exclusion of homosexuals.
One would think that the eight Ivy League colleges might show some diversity of thought.
Why should they agree on this controversial and political (there is nothing academic about it) subject, while so many other colleges accept ROTC?
This is clearly groupthink.
What caused it? What is the transmittal method, the mode of thought, that draws these universities together on this subject?
Back in 1969, who drove the drive to push it off campus—who were the faculty and students who did this?
How did they do it?
How has the ban been maintained?
This action took place circa 1970, when the students might have been about 20 and the faculty 30 or 40.
Now, 40 years later, the students are 60 while the faculty are in their 70s and 80s.
Time is running out on when the active participants in those events may be interviewed, while their memories are still viable.
Now is the time to produce a record of who did what to whom and why back then.
Now it the time to write a book describing those days and events.
There should be plenty of opportunity to add colorful events from those dramatic days, and the 40 years of maintaining that ban.
By DIANE H. MAZUR
New York Times Op-Ed, 2010-10-25
[1]
EVERYONE knows that Ivy League universities banned the Reserve Officer Training Corps from their campuses during the Vietnam War. Forty years later, the bans continue, though the reason has shifted from war protest to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay men and women in the military.
[2]
That’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not true. Instead, the bans are a convenient fiction, one that lets the military (and to some extent, universities) off the hook when it comes to the growing distance between civil and military America.
...
Everyone buys into the myth, but at the expense of military readiness.
The military needs to return to the colleges it walked away from,
and everyone needs to stop pretending that
R.O.T.C. programs ended because of a ban.
[I don’t know what the truth is here, but her account is certainly radically different from the conventional wisdom on this.
This is surely an important enough issue that someone in DoD should answer her charge.
One civilian answer is
Harvard's 40-Years of Anti-Army ROTC Rhetoric Unveiled; No Myth.]
So far as I know there currently is none on this subject.
ROTC (the Reserve Officer Training Corps) had a long and honorable service on America’s campuses up until 1969.
Then, in protest over the Vietnam War, it was made persona non grata on the Ivy League campuses.
America’s involvement with that war ended in 1973, but ROTC remained persona non grata.
The reason switched to the military’s exclusion of homosexuals.
One would think that the eight Ivy League colleges might show some diversity of thought.
Why should they agree on this controversial and political (there is nothing academic about it) subject, while so many other colleges accept ROTC?
This is clearly groupthink.
What caused it? What is the transmittal method, the mode of thought, that draws these universities together on this subject?
Back in 1969, who drove the drive to push it off campus—who were the faculty and students who did this?
How did they do it?
How has the ban been maintained?
This action took place circa 1970, when the students might have been about 20 and the faculty 30 or 40.
Now, 40 years later, the students are 60 while the faculty are in their 70s and 80s.
Time is running out on when the active participants in those events may be interviewed, while their memories are still viable.
Now is the time to produce a record of who did what to whom and why back then.
Now it the time to write a book describing those days and events.
There should be plenty of opportunity to add colorful events from those dramatic days, and the 40 years of maintaining that ban.
2010-10-25-NYT-Mazur-ROTC
The R.O.T.C. MythBy DIANE H. MAZUR
New York Times Op-Ed, 2010-10-25
[1]
EVERYONE knows that Ivy League universities banned the Reserve Officer Training Corps from their campuses during the Vietnam War. Forty years later, the bans continue, though the reason has shifted from war protest to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay men and women in the military.
[2]
That’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not true. Instead, the bans are a convenient fiction, one that lets the military (and to some extent, universities) off the hook when it comes to the growing distance between civil and military America.
...
Everyone buys into the myth, but at the expense of military readiness.
The military needs to return to the colleges it walked away from,
and everyone needs to stop pretending that
R.O.T.C. programs ended because of a ban.
[I don’t know what the truth is here, but her account is certainly radically different from the conventional wisdom on this.
This is surely an important enough issue that someone in DoD should answer her charge.
One civilian answer is
Harvard's 40-Years of Anti-Army ROTC Rhetoric Unveiled; No Myth.]
Labels: political correctness
posted by KHarbaugh at 12:00
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