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April 16, the state of Massachusetts celebrates "Patriots Day,"
a holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War at
Lexington and Concord. Veterans march in town parades, and at the
original locations, Lexington and Concord are reenacted. When I
was a graduate student at Harvard, I used to love going to those
reenactments, which were just a few miles down the road. It bothered
me that the Boston Marathon, held every Patriots Day, seemed to
drain all the attention away from the reenactments — and from
the meaning of the holiday itself. As my interest in the Revolution
grew, I discovered that, for all the bookstores in Harvard Square,
it was impossible to find the classic accounts of the battles of
Lexington and Concord. I had to track down copies by going to the
gift shops at the sites themselves.
After Lexington
and Concord, the colonial army was headquartered on Cambridge Common,
right in the middle of the Harvard campus. George Washington took
command of the army on the common, and every child in Massachusetts
used to revere "the Washington elm," the tree under which
the great general received his command. When the tree finally died,
it was made into a chair that now sits, hard by Harvard Yard, in
Longfellow House, which served as Washington's headquarters during
his first great victory — the expulsion of the British from
Boston.
The entrance
to the battle site at Concord is dominated by the famous statue
of the Minute Man, the ultimate symbol of patriotism — the
ordinary American who took up his musket to fight the British when
liberty and country were under assault. (For a superb account of
the Minute Men, and of the actions at Lexington and Concord, consult
David Hackett Fischer's Paul
Revere's Ride.) So if patriotism in Massachusetts means
anything, it means honoring and supporting the use of arms in defense
of freedom and country.
But along with
Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and the battle of Boston, the students
and administrators of Harvard University have altogether forgotten
the meaning of patriotism. The shameful, foolish, and hypocritical
policy of banning the Reserve Officers Training Corps from the Harvard
campus was never remotely justifiable. But today, when liberty and
country are directly under attack, the students and administrators
of Harvard University persist in insulting themselves and the rest
of us by forbidding the ROTC from drilling on the grounds of Harvard,
the very spot where George Washington drilled the Continental Army
in preparation for the taking of Bunker Hill.
Why do the
students and administrators of Harvard University do this? Supposedly
it is because of their opposition to the military's "don't
ask, don't tell" policy, but I don't believe that. The ROTC
is banned from Harvard for the same reason that it's banned from
Stanford, Yale, and Dartmouth. Because of a foolish and contemptible
hatred of the military by a bunch of spoiled, elitist, and decidedly
unpatriotic students who do not understand that everything they
have depends upon the willingness of courageous young men to defend
this country. (Women serve honorably as well, of course, but it's
men whose lives are — rightly — most at risk.)
Harvard's policy
is hypocritical, because the students and administrators of Harvard
accept the protection of a military that they themselves will not
support. Harvard's policy is foolish, because the honorable and
courageous students who volunteer for the ROTC are the only thing
standing between the spoiled and self-indulgent students of Harvard
University and a draft. And Harvard's policy is shameful because
it insults the memory and the principles of American patriotism
at the very birthplace of American patriotism. Worse, the students
and administrators of Harvard are so completely ignorant of their
past that they are no longer capable of even recognizing the repudiation
of their heritage that their policy represents.
The Chronicle
of Higher Education reports that despite calls from some illustrious
alumni, Harvard is unlikely to revoke its ban on the ROTC. A single
member of the undergraduate council attempted to initiate a debate
on the ban in October, but the debate was suppressed. Joe Wrinn,
a spokesman for the university, explicitly denied the claim of critics
that Harvard's ban on the ROTC was unpatriotic. Why? Because Harvard
secures donors for the program. So it has come to this. Those who
would volunteer to defend the United States are banned from the
sacred and original ground of American patriotism, and we are told
that money somehow makes it acceptable. I hope the Reserve Officer
Training Corps will take Harvard's money and do with it as Mayor
Giuliani did with the tainted ten million dollars from Saudi Arabia.
I am proud of my country. But I am ashamed of Harvard University.
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