Yielding to Bigotry

Four years ago the Faculty Council took a deep breath and made a rare statement of courageous principle.

Denouncing the military ban on homosexuals, the Faculty announced that if two years passed without substantial progress toward ending this discrimination the College would stop accepting ROTC scholarship money, effectively ending the ROTC program at Harvard.

It was a tough, uncompromising stand. Too bad it didn't last.

The University has been backpedaling ever since, clouding the indisputable fact of ROTC's discrimination against gay students with bureaucratic confusion, redefinitions, qualifications and rationalizations. The latest delay came last week when President Neil L. Rudenstine announced that, contrary to a previous deadline, the class of 1998 will be able to participate fully in the ROTC program through MIT. Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles denied that this was a "turn-around" and he was absolutely right. Such behavior is entirely consistent with the University's inaction on this issue over the last few years.

Two years ago, the University was forced to face the fact that the 1990 deadline was about to expire and the military was still systematically discriminating against homosexuals, squarely in opposition to Harvard's own non-discrimination policy. The administration's solution? Postpone, delay, fudge the issue and hope no one notices.

The 1992 report, prepared by a Faculty committee chaired by Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53, said that rather than refusing scholarship money. Harvard should simply stop paying MIT the roughly $132,000 (as of 1992) annual fee for allowing Harvard students to enroll in the MIT ROTC program. As a further compromise, the Verba report also proposed another two-year delay before acting. The Verba report was endorsed by Rudenstine himself and approved by the Faculty last spring.

Now, just in time to justify yet another postponement, University officials hint that complicated negotiations with MIT are all that is holding them up. Knowles commented that "a withdrawal from the program would be irreversible. We think it would be improper to exclude the entering Class of 1998 at this point."

Yet surely Knowles knows that "at this point" really means "ever." Once ROTC funding is approved for the incoming class, it will hardly be taken away midway through their Harvard career.

This postponement means that Harvard's ties to ROTC will not be severed completely until, at the earliest,eight yearsafter the Faculty Council's initial 1990 statement.

As for the "irreversibility" of such a break, look at history. In 1969, the University terminated its ROTC program over anti-war protests. In 1976, after tensions over the Vietnam War had cooled, Harvard established its current off-campus ROTC program.

This newest delay reveals a glaring absurdity: The Verba report came out two years ago, yet administrators are still working out the details.

How hard was it for the administration to realize that MIT might not be delighted to bear the financial burden of Harvard's uneasy conscience?

The truth is that many members of the faculty and the administration endorsed the Verba report, hoping that the election of Bill Clinton would make its conclusions moot. When it did not, the University once again had to look for cover.

If Rudenstine or Knowles were to announce next month that there will be a two-year "phased withdrawal" of funds, don't be shocked.

Meanwhile, proponents of keeping ROTC at Harvard are again bringing up the same misleading arguments that failed to convince anyone four years ago. Back then the campus was flush with indignation that the military had thrown out one of Harvard's own, Naval ROTC officer David E. Carney '89, and demanded that he return $51,000 in ROTC scholarships. Back then, the issue was clearly discrimination.

That message seems to be lost in the relatively apathetic campus of today. The BGLSA, once a frontrunner on this issue, has grown somnolent.

Even The Crimson, which long called for the severing of ROTC ties, recently reversed itself and declared that refusing ROTC scholarships would hurt Harvard students.

Since few on this campus are willing to argue that discrimination against homosexuals is a positive thing per se, the argument has shifted to more murky ground.

One common tact is to accuse the anti-ROTC camp of hypocrisy. After all, goes this argument, Harvard accepts all sorts of scholarships limited to specific groups: Cuban-Americans, students from a particular town, female science students, etc. Isn't this the same as the ROTC discrimination?

No. This argument ignores the distinction between money that by design promotes the presence of certain groups and that which by design excludes others.

The scholarship given only to those of French Huguenot descent is not designed to eliminate the French Catholic population at Harvard.

ROTC is not intended to promote the presence of any particular group; its purpose is to train college students to be military officers upon their graduation. This opportunity is naturally limited to those who meet the military's description of those fit for duty.

No one argues that physical fitness and mental acuity are not reasonable criteria; to exclude students on the basis of sexual orientation, on the other hand, is a prejudicial and pointless policy. Gays and lesbians have long served their country with distinction.

The second instance of hypocrisy often cited has to do with the University's acceptance of military research grants, estimated at as much as $8 million.

Yet this comparison ignores one very basic fact: no military grant has ever been denied or pulled on the basis of a researcher's sexual orientation.

The military has no interest in the personal lives of its researchers, merely in the work produced by them. Yet it fails to take this common sense approach when it comes to its own personnel, perpetuating a hidebound and irrational bigotry.

Some say that, rather than target innocent students, Harvard should use its clout to pressure Congress and President Clinton to change the military's policy. This argument ignores the problem that any lobbying Harvard might do is greatly weakened if its money is not where its mouth is. University administrators would be put in the awkward position of saying, "Discrimination against homosexuals is bad. But thanks for the check, anyway."

Moreover, the harm to students is grossly exaggerated. To begin with, present ROTC students would no doubt be grandfathered out of any new policy (as they were in 1969). Some then argue that would be Harvard students would be forced to go elsewhere without ROTC.

Indeed, a poll conducted by the Undergraduate Council in 1991 found that 89 percent of then-ROTC students would not have come to Harvard had the University not offered the program. Yet this same poll showed that, for the overwhelming majority of those in that 89 percent, financial reasons were their primary or secondary considerations.

Harvard offers need-based financial aid to every student who qualifies. Trying to make this an issue of "the gays versus the poor" ignores this fact.

And while some would say that such need-based aid ignores the problems faced by middle-class students, the proper solution is to reexamine how to make Harvard more affordable for all, not just for those interested in ROTC.

As a Crimson staff editorial put it in December of 1991: "However beneficial the scholarships are for those who qualify, are we willing, in good conscience, to accept scholarship money that is denied to certain Harvard students out of pure bigotry?"

Two years later, that remains the true issue. Despite attempts by the University to obfuscate and by ROTC supporters to equivocate, the University's current relationship with ROTC supports an atmosphere of intolerance inconsistent with Harvard policy. The Faculty recognized this four years ago. It's time for the administration to do so now.