ROTC Issue Awaits Final Resolution

It may be the issue that never files.

The year began with a report from the University Committee on the Status of ROTC, and ended with a thumbs-up Faculty of Arts and Sciences vote on that same report. But the issue, which dates back 24 years to the Vietnam War, is still unresolved and promises to live far into the future.

This academic year's chapter in the ongoing epic opened on October 6 with the long-awaited release of the ROTC Committee report, which was intended to resolve the thorny question of Harvard's involvement--against an anti-discrimination policy arrested in 1985--with a program which does not admit gays.

The report took a compromise stance, not advocating that Harvard completely sever ties with ROTC, but calling on the University to stop paying MIT a fee for Harvard student participation. The report recommended that the University cut the funding in 1994 if the Department of Defense policy banning gays from the military remains in effect.

In addition, it recommended that Harvard stop commissioning ROTC cadets at Commencement ceremonies and encouraged "increased involvement...in the national debate" on gays in the military. A "committee or senior university officer" should monitor Harvard's relations with ROTC in the future, the report said.

But even as the report was released, concerns were already emerging about its relevance. At the time, the approaching presidential elections may well have voided all its provisions, faculty members acknowledged, and the Faculty vote was delayed until after the national decision.

Bill Clinton's election was hailed as the nail in the coffin of the ROTC controversy, and ROTC committee chair Sidney Verba '53, Pforzheimer University professor, said likely "the whole thing will go down in history...All the work I've done has been wasted."

But one week after Clinton was elected, on November 10, the report came to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Although no vote was scheduled or taken, the report was hotly debated. Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield '53 spoke strongly against the reports "partisan" stance on a national political issue.

Still, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles said recently he was confident the report had the approval of the Faculty in November and would have passed.

President Neil L. Rudenstine, who expressed support for the report and its conclusions, carried some of them into effect, writing to the Secretary of Defense and to Clinton to urge them to drop the ban on gays in the military.

Rudenstine also attempted to enter into talks with MIT and Department of Defense, but his efforts were put off by both until after the summer.

And as Rudenstine moved forward with the report's recommendations, even as the Faculty held no vote on the issue, the national scene became increasingly complex. Clinton's intentions to lift the ban on gays in the military met opposition from top military officials and powerful senators.

That national controversy erupted once more onto the Harvard scene with the announcement that Gen. Colin L. Powell had been invited to speak at Commencement. Professor of English and Comparative Literature Barbara E. Johnson brought the report to a vote of the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 19.

Johnson's purpose was to "reaf-firm clearly and explicitly our own position against discrimination in the University," she said, and the motion was timed to provide a "counterweight to the implicit endorsement of General Powell's stance by the University."

Again, the report sparked debate, with some of the same players as in the November drama. Mansfield, reading from a student letter, again objected to the Faculty taking a stance on an issue of such a political nature and asked that the motion be tabled.

Lee Professor of Economics Hendrik S. Houthakker said the vote could be seen as a "slap in the face" for Powell and said it "opens up a new area of discrimination, namely against those students who take part in ROTC." He also tried, and failed, to table the report.

Mansfield's stance found some support, as the Faculty voted to drop the report's provision encouraging participation in national debate. But a number of faculty members stood strongly against Houthakker and Mansfield.

Equating the loss of financial aid to ROTC students with the military's ban on gays "lacks a sense of moral proportion that strikes me as disgraceful," said Professor of Afro-American Studies K. Anthony Appiah.

The report passed by a strong majority, but there was little hope the question was resolved forever. In fact, the Faculty vote left the decision where it was from the beginning, with Knowles and Rudenstine.

"The vote, in a way, doesn't change anything," said Verba. "I think it does have symbolic significance."

The vote sent a message, Knowles said, one noted by Rudenstine and himself. But the truth, admitted by nearly everybody involved in the drawn-out ROTC debate, is that pending a move by the Clinton administration, the issue is yet again in stasis.

And even after a Clinton decision which seems unlikely to take a bold stance on either side of the issue, Harvard's ROTC woes are probably just going to drag on.