ROTC Policy Opens Columbia to Awkward Comparisons, Criticisms

Columbia’s lack of support for ROTC is becoming inconvenient.

In 1969, on the heels of the legendary riots the year before—the 40th anniversary of which the University will spend much of the coming semester commemorating—the University barred the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps from its vehemently (and violently) anti-war campus.

Since then, Columbia students have had to go off-campus to join the Corps at Fordham or other local universities. Over time, the reasoning for keeping ROTC off campus has shifted, from its origins in opposition to the Vietnam War to the current opposition to the army’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” statute, which conflicts with Columbia’s nondiscrimination policy.

There have been several movements to bring ROTC back to campus. Most recently, in 2005, Advocates for ROTC—an offshoot of Columbia’s Hamilton Society, which supports military service—led a drive to reinstate the program. The University Senate voted the resolution down 53-10, effectively killing the effort.

This has drawn the school into some uncomfortable comparisons. In 2006, in defense of speaking at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, Arizona senator John McCain drew a parallel between the fundamentalist Baptist university and Columbia. McCain noted that he was speaking at a number of universities which did not share all of his views, including Columbia, with its banishment of ROTC. In the wake of the Minutemen incident last year and during the run-up to Iranian head of state Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s on-campus speech in September, several pundits and media outlets attacked what they saw as hypocrisy in the University’s allowing Ahmadinejad to speak but barring the reserve corps.

In a debate in Las Vegas two weeks ago, all three of the leading Democratic candidates for president—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, CC ’83—agreed that they would “vigorously enforce” the Solomon Amendment, which states that colleges and universities can lose federal funding if they fail to offer ROTC programs or provide space for military recruiters on campus. Such enforcement would almost guarantee that Columbia would reinstate ROTC—according to tax returns for fiscal year 2004, the University received more than $600 million in government grants, accounting for 20 percent of its total revenue.

It wasn’t always possible to portray as anti-American. Columbia’s contributions to the Manhattan Project can be directly linked to the end of World War II. After the war, Columbia was honored for its role in helping to train 23,000 midshipmen to enter combat. The most prominent military man of the 20th century, Dwight Eisenhower, was Columbia’s president.

But, fairly or unfairly, student and administrative actions have made it easier for those from outside the University to caricature it as anti-American. As McCain said in a statement, “Rather than rolling out the red carpet for the leader of a terrorist-sponsoring regime, Columbia should be welcoming the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back on campus to honor the men and women who put their lives on the line every day defending our freedom.” This was all the more interesting considering his daughter Meghan is a Columbia alumna.

The caricature appears to be catching on. I don’t even have to leave my family to see the impact—at Thanksgiving, I found myself defending Columbia to an aunt who watches Fox News.

It seems unlikely that the debate over Columbia’s patriotism is going to die down any time soon. Columbia makes for a good political punching bag, as shown by the response to the Ahmadinejad invitation when Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson (who has since dropped out of the race), and McCain all condemned the invitation. When the New York City Council voted on Columbia’s 197-a plan as part of its expansion initiative, one councilman voted against the plan because of the Ahmadinejad speech. And on Tuesday, the Young America’s Foundation purchased an ad in Spectator which cited the Democratic debate in calling on the University to “Bring ROTC Back.”

Columbia’s Office of University Development and Alumni Affairs has consistently stated that such attacks on the University’s reputation have not slowed the donation rate, and that Columbia is consistently among the three toughest major research universities to get into. This year’s numbers have not yet been released.

But as the political climate and the admissions race both heat up, Columbia may have to adapt to changing circumstances or risk irreparable damage to its standing.

josh.hirschland@columbiaspectator.com