Enhancing Columbia’s role in the military

As a Columbia College graduate, I wish I had been at last month’s forum debating ROTC. But I was at an Army course studying the Geneva Conventions and listening to guest speakers from the International Federation of the Red Cross whose positions are more robust than those of the US government. The discussion reminded me of the lightning quick classes of our own Core Curriculum.  

As a reservist on active duty, I stand a bit taller knowing my commander in chief and I went to the same school. The USS New York, commissioned last year, is skippered by an MIT graduate. The opportunities for the finest education in our land need to be available to future service members. The ability of future leaders to see people on a daily basis in uniform as people, and not as a sub-species, should be part of a Columbia education. As George Santayana said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” It behooves us to make those future conflicts as brief as possible, assure success, and minimize collateral damage. I for one would prefer to have Columbia graduates part of the group making, implementing, and leading us as warfare and peace-keeping become ever more complex.

In World War II, Columbia commissioned more ensigns than Annapolis. From 1917-1918, in “The War to End All Wars,” 21 Columbia Law Review editors dropped out to enlist. Poet Joyce Kilmer, a 1908 alumnus, wrote about the beauty of trees. His bullet-ridden body lies beneath one in a military cemetery in France. On Dec. 7, 1941, College graduate Herbert Jones earned the Medal of Honor on what started out as a peaceful Sunday in Hawaii. Before writing the Federalist papers, our Alexander Hamilton was George Washington’s captain and colonel. Bullets coming at you do not distinguish between those who went to Columbia or those who dropped out of high school. Their sacrifices humble us. We walk on a campus not just in the shadow of great minds, but in the footsteps of heroic individuals.  

We have all stood at 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, looked left and right, and understood the strategic importance of Morningside Heights when Washington camped here and cannons dominated battlefields. Who would have thought that in 2001, war would again come to our city? How many of us felt the greatness of America when we looked out the windows of the World Trade Center to try and see buildings at Columbia? How many of us still feel their loss? As the 10th anniversary of that attack approaches, I am sure there are 44 other people who would have liked to participate in the current debate over ROTC: They are the 44 University graduates from nine different schools killed on Sept. 11, 2001. They probably also wish our government was populated by more Columbia graduates who might have been able to prevent the aggression against us and would have been able to commence the fight against it better.    

Like generations before us, nobody expected that sunny morning to end with the stench of death in the air. If we want to make sure the future is guided by people who have not been exposed to the diversity of Columbia, the complexity of our city, or learned how to adapt to ever changing circumstances in our vertical metropolis, then we can’t continue acting in an un-Columbian bigoted way rife with a denial of reality. If we want to regain our right to say one of the nation’s oldest schools remains committed to the future, to America, to training and placing graduates as diversely as possible, then the University Senate should support ROTC’s return and call for the President Obama Class of '83 Unit to stand up its first graduate while a Columbia graduate is commander in chief.

The author is a graduate of the Columbia College class of 1979 and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves. He is Columbia College’s highest-ranking active service member.