Pahk Your Wahmongah Values Outside Hahvahd Yahd
My pal Michael Graham on Harvard’s raging hypocrisy re terrorism and ROTC. Boston Herald op-ed:
Forty years ago today, Harvard University caved to pressure from violent student radicals and banned the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) from campus. The ban continues because Harvard finds the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy too offensive to be countenanced.
In those same 40 years, Harvard has hosted at least one terrorist – Yassir Arafat – and the former president of Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime. The latter, Mohammad Khatami, was asked to speak on the eve of 9/11.
Current Harvard policy is to accommodate Muslim fundamentalists who demanded single-sex gym time in the name of Sharia law. They even choked down a $20 million donation from Saudi Sheik Alwaleed bin Talal, who had previously given millions to promote Palestinian suicide attacks.
Yet accommodating ROTC is just too much for Harvard’s delicate ethical constitution to bear?
…
Or perhaps Harvard really believes President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he says there are no gay Iranians?
Any organization that can find room for an Arafat and Khatami – but not for a U.S. soldier – is simply embarrassing itself.
Harvard’s ROTC ban, along with its fight over on-campus recruiters, reflect the left’s hostility toward taorund this time last year.he U.S. military. The only difference between the angry anti-war liberals of Ayers’ youth and Harvard today is that Ayers was honest about his anti-military sentiments.
When you’re planting bombs at the Pentagon, you don’t waste time on disingenuous claims of supporting the troops but opposing the mission.
When Lts. Kristol and West leave Harvard, they’ll be part of the fight against terrorists, pirates and (in Afghanistan) misogynistic homophobes.
You can read Graham ranting about this and other things, plus livestream his crazy rightwing WTKK rants here. Re Kristol, by the way, I had breakfast with him and his old man last year. Nice kid, scion of America’s elite, privileged upbringing, off to go live in the dust getting shot at shortly. Howbout that. Here he is with West at WSJ:
… Harvard today happily pays for future bankers to take accounting courses at MIT, but refuses to pay for aspiring military officers who take ROTC courses. Since 1994, anonymous donors have generously picked up the tab, providing hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for Harvard’s ROTC students.
Sadly, the number of Harvard students who choose military service has dwindled. Harvard, where ROTC was founded in 1916 and which once boasted over 1,000 participants, is now home to only 29 cadets and midshipmen, spread over four years and four branches of service. Recruitment opportunities are deliberately limited, and the student handbook cautions students against joining ROTC, remarking that the program is “inconsistent with Harvard’s values.” And cadets begin every semester seeking to avoid the professors known to exhibit hostility toward students who wear their uniform to class.
Rather than embracing the mutually beneficial relationship Harvard might share with the military, the faculty prefers to stand in the way of progress, abdicating its responsibility to contribute to one of our nation’s most important institutions. The same Harvard that once produced 10 recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and warrior-scholars such as Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, now turns its back on its proud, patriotic history.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:24 am Comments (1) on Monday, April 13, 2009
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April 13th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Jules,
There’s an elegantly simple solution to the problem. Just mandate that any college or university that refuses to allow ROTC on campus as a part of the curriculum is ineligible for any Federal monies. Whether grants for research, Pell grants, federally-backed student loans, whatever. If the school chooses to NOT allow ROTC on campus, then the tap gets turned off for the school, and all students attending it.
Money talks.
You know, of course, why folks in Boston warn tourists driving by Harvard to roll their car windows up? It keeps the regents from throwing a degree into their laps…..