Monday, September 15, 2008
ROTC at Columbia
Barack Obama apparently rocked the undergraduates at Columbia last week when he, along with John McCain, called for the return of ROTC to his alma mater. For the second time in five years the undergraduates will have a referendum on the subject; the last time, in 2003, 65% of the students who voted supported lifting the ban, but the faculty disagreed and ROTC is still not welcome on campus. The alleged basis of the opposition is that the military's treatment of homosexuals, a requirement of federal law, violates Columbia's policy against discrimination. This is, of course, transportingly disingenuous. Columbia banned ROTC in the 1960s because of opposition to the Vietnam war, and it has been held hostage to the academic left ever since. If Congress changed the law and the status of gays in the military, the same professors would no doubt conjure up another reason to oppose ROTC. You know, because "war crimes" also violate Columbia's policies, or because the laws that restrict the deployment of women constitute gender discrimination, or because the military "does business" with oppressive regimes. As long as the military is the military, Columbia's faculty will oppose it. You know it, I know it, and they know it.
2 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Mon Sep 15, 02:07:00 PM:
I will remain a skeptic until Obama supports ROTC in a school where there is *not* a 65% vote in favor of it, say, perhaps one in San Francisco?
By 
, at
Tue Sep 16, 08:05:00 AM:
The current movement to restore ROTC at Columbia dates back to the 2001-02 academic year. See Advocates for Columbia ROTC.
A difference between the ROTC issue now and the 2005 University Senate vote is that this time the interest is coming from SEAS (Columbia's engineering school) and centers on the Navy ROTC program. There is no practical access to Navy ROTC at Columbia, unlike the limited off-campus access to Air Force and Army programs. Navy ROTC also has a deep and storied history at Columbia.
