Tonight, when Summers speaks at the annual commencement dinner of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus (HGLC), it will be only the second time a Harvard president has taken the podium at the annual event since the alumni group was founded in 1983.
Former University president Neil L. Rudenstine attempted to quiet concerns within the group when he addressed them in June 1993. At that time, Harvard was in the midst of reevaluating its policy on directly funding ROTC—a policy that many equated with institutional support for the military’s discrimination against homosexuals.
Likewise, HGLC members hope Summers will say at tonight’s dinner that he does not plan to reopen a debate resolved seven years ago when Harvard decided to allow alumni to set up a ROTC trust not under University control.
Summers has repeatedly and publicly criticized this arrangement but has remained noncommittal on the possibility of a change.
“I do have some concerns about where he’s going to move,” says Warren Goldfarb ’69, Pearson professor of modern mathematics and mathematical logic in the philosophy department and former co-chair of HGLC. “We hope for some reassurance at the ceremony.”
Although Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 and Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 have attended ROTC commissioning ceremonies for years—just as they have gone to events held by campus gay rights groups—both ROTC cadets and those worried about University ties to the military say that Summers’ presence will be different.
Air Force cadet Brian R. Smith ’02 says the University’s attitude toward ROTC changed dramatically with Summers’ arrival.
“It always felt like Harvard was doing all they could to keep ROTC’s impact or presence as minimal as possible,” Smith says.
Now, he says, Summers’ administration is providing vocal support—a support that members of Harvard’s Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters’ Alliance (BGLTSA) say may be heading too far toward support of a discriminatory policy.
“That’s shady ground to me, as far as exactly what capacity Summers would be attending that event in, and whether his presence symbolically confers a legitimacy on it that his absence would not,” says Marcel A. Q. LaFlamme ’04, political chair of BGLTSA. “I’m not sure I see it as wholly appropriate.”
Whether or not Summers chooses to change Harvard’s carefully maintained distance from ROTC, his advocacy has stirred a debate over how Harvard can separate support of cadets from support of military policy. With pro-military sentiment on the rise around the country since Sept. 11, cadets and their supporters are now asking whether the compromise reached in 1995 should be maintained.
‘An Uncomfortable Compromise’
Summers has been an outspoken supporter of patriotism and respect for ROTC cadets since his arrival at Harvard.
“Patriotism,” he said in an Oct. 26 speech at the Kennedy School of Government, was a word that was “used too infrequently” in academia. He added that he hoped Sept. 11 would create greater respect for military service.
“There is a special nobility, a special grace, to those who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for our country,” Summers said. He echoed these sentiments in a Veterans’ Day letter to Harvard cadets and midshipmen.
On Nov. 27, Summers was filmed in a “video testimonial” for Army ROTC, in which he further praised ROTC cadets.
“Their work is America’s work, and I am proud that they are part of our Harvard community,” he said.
In December, he asked Harvard’s yearbook staff to make ROTC an exception to their policy of excluding activities that are not officially recognized student groups from mention in the book.
Summers’ comments have won him the support of cadets, who say they are “encouraged” and “appreciative.”
And members of Harvard’s gay community say they have no problem with Summers supporting either patriotism or ROTC cadets.
But they are concerned by his repeated comments on the funding situation.
After more than five years of committees, proposals and counter-proposals, Harvard decided in February 1995 to allow alumni to create the trust that covers the costs of cadets cross-registering for ROTC training at MIT.
But since his arrival, “uncomfortable” has been Summers’ catchword in numerous public comments on the funding arrangement.
At a study break in Winthrop House in January, Summers called the unofficial alumni fund “uncomfortable” and “unorthodox” and polled the student audience on whether they would support funding ROTC openly, retaining the status quo or not allowing any funding at all.
At a February Undergraduate Council meeting, Summers reiterated his opposition to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy but called Harvard’s arrangement with alumni an “uncomfortable, back-door policy inconsistent with transparency.”
In a March 26 speech at the Harvard Club of Boston, he again called the situation “an uncomfortable compromise.”
Yet in other statements, he has seemed to distance himself from considerations of change.
At a study break in Mather House in April, Summers told students, “I share your opprobrium for discrimination in all its forms” but added that he thought it was “unclear which [policy] is appropriate.”
“Sometimes in life it’s necessary to have an uncomfortable compromise,” Summers said on May 16—though he said he and other University officials had been discussing the funding situation.
Two weeks later, he continued to equivocate.
“Whether there is, given the conflicting views within the community, a better approach, we’ll have to see over time,” he said.
Two senior administrators say Summers has been convinced to put the issue aside, at least for the time being. One said Summers was very concerned that any change might require a vote of the Faculty.
The Faculty has historically been less friendly to ROTC than has Mass. Hall, having voted in 1993 to exclude the commissioning ceremony from Harvard Yard—a recommendation that was not accepted by the University.
“The Faculty feels very strongly that we should have an atmosphere of non-discrimination in the University,” Illingworth says. “I think it would be, shall we say, a hotly debated item.”
“I suspect that the more [Summers] looked into it, the more he realized it was a serious issue,” Goldfarb says.
A Contentious History
Harvard’s ROTC program dates back to 1916, when the first army drill unit was established and 1,200 students enlisted.
Its acceptance among students has varied over time. Emil B. Fleischaker ’42 says that in the late 1930s, for example, ROTC was “frowned upon and we didn’t wear our uniforms.”
But sentiments shifted again after Pearl Harbor, and even in the late 1960s, when students began agitating for ROTC’s expulsion, over 100 students might participate in the program in any given year.
“ROTC had an honored place at Harvard until 1965 or so,” says Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr. ’59. “There were considerable facilities on campus.”
In April 1969, hundreds of students protesting the Vietnam War took over University Hall, demanding the expulsion of ROTC. That June, after two previous votes had removed privileges and course credit from the ROTC program, the Faculty voted to terminate all ROTC connections to Harvard by June 1971.
But in 1976, the Faculty voted to allow students to cross-register for ROTC courses at MIT. When MIT asked Harvard in October 1983 to contribute a share of the administrative costs for cross-registration, Fox says the Faculty took up the issue again.
Though the Faculty voted in 1984 to fund the costs from its own budget, the discrimination issue was on the horizon.
“By this action,” the Faculty’s resolution stated, “the Faculty does not wish to imply support of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”
In the late 1980s, the military’s position on homosexuals became more widely known, Fox says, and protests increased.
In 1990, the Faculty Council recommended that Harvard again cut ties to ROTC in two years if the military did not satisfactorily change its discriminatory policies.
In 1992, then-president Rudenstine temporarily suspended the Faculty’s resolution of 1990 and created a committee, led by Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney H. Verba ’53, to look into the relationship between Harvard and ROTC.
Verba’s committee recommended in October 1992 that the University stop funding the program at MIT but still accept scholarship funds from ROTC.
“In a way, we thought that ROTC was a good program, with the one exception that it was a program that discriminated against gays, and that went against an explicit University rule,” Verba says.
The Faculty endorsed the committee’s recommendation in May 1993 and recommended that Harvard negotiate an agreement such that students could participate in ROTC at MIT “without financial or other direct support from Harvard.”
The vote recommended the University stop payments to MIT for the class entering in 1994 and ban the annual ROTC commissioning ceremony from Harvard property.
Though some had hoped the election of former president Bill Clinton would lead to the full acceptance of gays in the military, Clinton’s willingness to approve a compromise “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy meant that Harvard would have to revisit the issue.
In February 1994, with the permission of the Faculty, Rudenstine extended by one year the date by which Harvard would halt payments, as discussions of possibilities such as a fee waiver were ongoing with MIT.
In a statement in November 1994, Rudenstine proposed that the University establish a special account to hold contributions from alumni who had volunteered to fund the administrative fee, thereby separating funding support of ROTC from the University’s general endowment funds.
But after Faculty protests led by Goldfarb, administrators came up with another proposal.
In February 1995, Provost Albert Carnesale, who was then-acting president during a leave of absence by Rudenstine, proposed the establishment of the unaffiliated trust that continues to fund ROTC to this day. But Carnesale denied the Faculty’s request that the ROTC commissioning ceremony be removed from Harvard Yard.
The Corporation approved the compromise. Since then, two or three alumni have contributed $130,000 to $160,000 per year to a trust fund, administered by a local law firm, that pays for cadets to train at MIT.
The Lobbying Effort
Michael M. Segal ’76, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, says he never would have learned about the alumni group Advocates for Harvard ROTC if it hadn’t been for media coverage following Sept. 11.
Summers’ support of ROTC has been featured prominently in the national press, including the Wall Street Journal, and the Advocates’ membership has risen sharply as a result. The group now numbers about 1,200 alumni, including such prominent figures as former secretary of defense Caspar W. Weinberger ’38, also a Crimson editor, and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ’38.
Now a member of the group’s steering committee, Segal says that even if Summers does not change the ROTC funding, his support has facilitated their efforts to improve cadets’ experiences.
“The climate President Summers has created in terms of making people in ROTC feel they are respected and welcome, that’s been very important,” he says.
This year, the alumni group and the Harvard Reserve Officers Training Corps Association (HROTCA), an officially recognized student group that Army cadet Charles B. Cromwell ’02 founded in October, have collaborated to invite speakers, including a colonel who was an aide-de-camp to Clinton, to talk with cadets.
Together with Segal, HROTCA organized an April 2 Faculty Club breakfast with the Kennedy School national security fellows, a group of high-ranking military officials who study for a year at Harvard.
Cromwell says that before attacking the funding issue, HROTCA aims to create a better relationship between cadets and other students and make ROTC more prominent on campus.
Some members of the Advocates, however, have made institutional support of ROTC a priority. Group chair David Clayman ’38 says he would like to see Harvard administer the fund “immediately” as a sign of respect for ROTC.
Clayman met with Summers in February and presented him with a list of alumni who supported moving funding to official channels.
In response to the growing scrutiny of ROTC policy, HGLC—which has close to 3,000 members, including Harvard alumni, faculty and staff—issued a statement in October outlining their position that the status quo should be maintained.
“I don’t think we see any problem with Summers supporting the Harvard students that have chosen to do ROTC, so long as he continues to recognize that there is a legitimate reason why the University should not be formally aligned with the ROTC,” says Thomas Kelly ’86, co-chair of HGLC.
While HGLC has been less active this year than the Advocates, members say this is because they are waiting to see whether Summers will go beyond symbolic statements in his opposition to the funding status quo.
“He can be sure there would be a response—we have alumni too,” says Matthew C. Dewitz ’05, BGLTSA press relations chair. “This is something that wouldn’t pass quietly.”
A Symbolic Move
LaFlamme says changing the funding situation would be “polarizing” and counterproductive to the goal of reconciling ROTC and students who oppose University support for it.
“I know that [cadets] have not always felt like Harvard recognizes and appreciates them,” says LaFlamme, who roomed with a cadet last year. “I just feel like this funding issue is such a hot-button issue that it’s only likely to intensify the climate.”
Both sides agree the alumni trust fund is significant mostly because of its symbolism—no matter what happens, someone will pay for ROTC cadets to train at MIT.
Smith says the funding separation is merely a “political statement.”
“A university is a place to debate and discuss ideas, not to try to forcibly change national or international policy,” he says.
Gay rights supporters say official funding crosses the line between individual support of ROTC students and institutional support of military practices.
“There’s a pretty substantial difference between soliciting alumni and actually having it come from Harvard coffers,” LaFlamme says.
Segal says if he had the hypothetical choice between Harvard ROTC being officially supported through funding by the University and Harvard ROTC being the “best program in the country,” he would choose the latter option.
And Cromwell, who calls the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy “inherently discriminatory,” says cadets are aware of and sensitive to community concerns.
“Hopefully, we can come to a compromise in the next several years,” he says. “It’s not all or nothing—we realize a lot of people are very emotional about this issue.”
While those on both sides of the issue say they favor increased dialogue, there is less agreement on where that dialogue should lead.
“I think any policies that allow cadets to be better prepared for the military—to be better educated and better leaders—are policies that the University and ROTC should do together,” Smith says.
On the other hand, members of BGLTSA and HGLC say they do not oppose cadets’ efforts to bring speakers to campus or make other program improvements, but they maintain that any actions by Harvard are both unnecessary and in violation of the principle non-discrimination.
The Advocates, Segal says, hope to push for increased collaboration between Harvard professors and the military, an idea supported by a recent Undergraduate Council resolution.
The resolution specifies that professors should not change their courses but simply discuss their syllabi with military officials, who could then determine whether the courses meet ROTC requirements.
But opponents of the bill, which passed by a 19-12 margin, say encouraging faculty-ROTC collaboration inherently entangles the University with ROTC.
“It’s just a puzzling mingling of spheres that on some level does side-step the non-discrimination policy,” says LaFlamme, who argues that ROTC officials could simply look at syllabi on their own.
Just as they believe faculty-military discussions of course credit would ease cadets’ lives, students in ROTC say allowing open recruitment on campus would help minimize what Smith calls the “roadblock to entry” represented by the MIT location.
Cromwell says he had no idea he could participate in ROTC until, as a first-year, he saw a cadet in uniform on campus and asked him about the program.
Harvard currently prohibits military officials from directly recruiting on campus, though it does allow HROTCA to participate at the first-year activities fair and make information available to students.
The College’s financial aid website currently advertises a letter about ROTC scholarships. But as the program is not a student organization, it is not listed in publications such as the Handbook for Students.
A 1997 law withdraws federal funding from universities that restrict ROTC recruitment, but the military has ruled that Harvard’s policy is acceptable.
Illingworth says the potential effect of direct recruitment on participation remains unclear.
“It would seem to be if there were more recruitment you might get more people, but we’ve managed to get the word out pretty well in the past year that Harvard students can participate in ROTC,” he says.
Goldfarb says HGLC would consider on-campus recruitment by military officials a form of direct University support for a discriminatory policy.
A Cadet’s Life
For the 43 Army, Navy and Air Force cadets who traveled from Harvard to MIT this year, ROTC teaches leadership, personal discipline and patriotism and provides unique opportunities that more than justify the time commitment, they say.
As first-years and sophomores, Army cadets attend weekly classes and physical training sessions, in addition to extras like marksmanship training. Raphael S. Cohen ’04, who says he joined Army ROTC for “patriotism” and the “leadership experience,” spends about five hours a week at MIT.
For upperclassmen, however, the time commitment shoots up.
Smith typically boards a bus to MIT at about 5:50 a.m. en route to Air Force leadership lab at 6:30. After returning to Harvard at about 9 a.m. for classes, he heads back to MIT for coursework in military history and national security.
On some nights, Smith, who estimates that he spends between 10 and 20 hours a week on ROTC, goes back to MIT for a third time for meetings of the wing staff, which is a group of senior cadets that runs activities and reports weekly to the officers in charge of the whole program.
“The [officers] let the cadets lead and manage the entire cadet wing,” Smith says. “When you have cadets who are consistently late to class, it’s up to other cadets to figure out how to make that not happen.”
Similarly, as Army battalion commander last semester, Cromwell coordinated fellow seniors in planning meetings, training sessions and activities for about 50 younger cadets.
“I feel like I’ve matured,” Cromwell says. “Senior year is basically when you run the show.”
Cohen, who will lead about 30 cadets as a platoon sergeant next fall, says he will teach basic classes, like first aid or shelter-building, to younger students.
Once a semester, Army cadets travel to a nearby fort for intensive training in skills like rappelling and marksmanship.
Cadets are separated into squads and must perform missions like assaulting a position or patrolling an area and reporting back to headquarters.
Much of the early training is to prepare cadets for a five-week “Advanced Camp” during the summer after Army cadets’ junior year.
“It’s pretty intense,” Cromwell says. “You’re evaluated on everything. You get very little sleep, it’s like a basic training lifestyle.”
For Air Force cadets, Smith says the boot camp after sophomore year is one of their first real exposures to military discipline. Like in the movies, Smith says, there are five ways a cadet can respond when addressed by an officer: “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Sir, may I ask a question?”, “Sir, I do not know but will find out,” and “Sir, may I make a statement?”
“The most intense part is the mental and psychological stress, which is designed to make you a better leader,” Smith says.
While the time commitment is significant, many cadets say it is perfectly manageable, as officers understand their academic responsibilities at Harvard.
“It’s a little bit difficult, but probably less than a varsity sport,” says Navy midshipman Stephen P. Bosco ’03. “Everyone at Harvard has extracurriculars and things that are dragging on their time.”
Bosco, who spends about 10 hours a week at MIT, says he joined because he wanted to become more “self-disciplined.”
Cromwell, who has been a member of either the varsity swim team or the varsity water polo all four years at Harvard, says he joined ROTC as a first-year for the scholarship money but soon realized what he calls the “peripheral bonuses,” such as working at the Pentagon over the summer.
After graduating today, Cromwell will spend seven months training in Texas before heading to Germany as a second lieutenant in the air defense artillery, where he will be responsible for eight HUMVEEs that fire stinger missiles to protect ground troops.
For Smith, who will work as a weapons acquisitions officer in Dayton, Ohio, in the fall, the scholarship was also his biggest motivation for joining the Air Force program.
Though Smith says he had “no interest in flying” when he was younger, he calls his experiences piloting airplanes ranging from Cessnas to jets “awesome.”
“I did this thing called cloud chasing—you cut back and forth through the clouds,” he says. “I don’t think many Harvard kids get to say they’ve done that.”
Both Cromwell and Smith say they are unsure whether they will stay in the military beyond the required four years.
‘Just Nod and Smile’
Cadets characterize their efforts to bring greater institutional support for ROTC as an issue of respect for the uniform that visibly sets them apart from their fellow students.
Cohen says most students he has encountered have been supportive of ROTC. By contrast, Cohen says that his father, who graduated from Harvard in 1977, recalls being unable to wear his uniform in the dining halls.
But Cromwell wrote an op-ed in The Crimson in February in which he criticized what he called “the persistent anti-ROTC sentiment on Harvard’s campus.”
He says he had been called a “fascist” twice this year by other students.
“It’s in the minority, but when it happens, it gets confrontational,” he said. “We just nod and smile.”
At a panel discussion on ROTC earlier this year at the Institute of Politics, Cromwell says one student stood up and suggested ROTC cadets should have gone to West Point.
Goldfarb says he was disturbed to hear the reports of cadets being called fascists and supports Summers’ statements on respecting those who serve.
For BGLTSA members, next year’s effort will focus on preventing Summers from using patriotic sentiments to open up questions about University policy, LaFlamme says.
“There are ways for the BGLTSA and other organizations that oppose change in ROTC policy not to cede that high ground to him,” he says. “There are [other] ways of being proud of ROTC.”
An End in Sight?
Just like the University, the Undergraduate Council has never been able to make up its mind about ROTC’s relationship with gay students. In 1989 the council voted to urge the Faculty to bring ROTC back to campus, but after protest reversed itself one week later.
In 1996 the council voted to ban the commissioning ceremony from Harvard property, a proposal which was ignored by the University. In 1999 it voted to request that the University permit on-campus recruiting and provide direct funding and shuttle bus service to MIT, a resolution that was also refused.
It remains to be seen how the University will respond to the council’s most recent proposal to encourage faculty to discuss course syllabi with military officials.
Those who helped craft the 1995 compromise say that without any change to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” consensus to change the compromise will be impossible to create.
“The solution that we came up with, the solution that the president then came up with, was an odd one, but one that worked,” Verba says. “I think if something isn’t broken, you don’t fix it.”
But while the 1995 agreement resolved the funding and commencement commissioning issues, it did not address many of the questions that have been debated in the past year—such as mention of ROTC in the yearbook or interaction between professors and the military.
Goldfarb says that, as with the currently allowed Harvard Yard commissioning ceremony, the line between institutional support for ROTC and support for individual cadets remains blurry.
In the end, Summers may not be able to satisfy both sides. Symbolic statements without action can only go so far in making cadets feel that ROTC is welcome on campus, while anything more than statements will likely anger gay students.
After Sept. 11 jolted the campus and country toward a more pro-military outlook, Summers may have believed at one point that he could soften Harvard’s approach to ROTC without inciting backlash from the Harvard community.
But as the attacks move further into the past, the treading water of the past several years seems more and more likely to continue—at least, until “don’t ask, don’t tell” is reconsidered outside Cambridge.
“Traditionally,” Fox notes, “Harvard has always felt this was a problem only the military could solve.”
—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.