Harvard ROTC Coverage: 2010 - 2019

• ROTC groups at MIT that include Harvard students: Army (Paul Revere Battalion), Navy (Old Ironsides Battalion) and Air Force (Doolittle's Raiders).

2010:

• 22 January 2010 Stanford Review article "Initiative to Increase Understanding of U.S. Military".  Note:  The Truman Service Initiative aims to educate college students who are likely to become leaders about the nation’s armed forces.  The initiative has programs at Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Yale.  One subject that came up during a "Military 101" lecture at Stanford was making it easier for students to do ROTC.  "Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service currently offers monetary support for car rentals to ROTC members, who need to drive to neighboring educational institutions to undergo training".
• 3 February 2016 Harvard Crimson column "Cadet Land: Caught in the middle of No Man's Land" by Nathan L. Williams '18.  Note:  An Army ROTC student reports that his Army uniform attracts "nothing but unwanted attention".
• 16 February 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Four Harvard Students Receive Gates Scholarships".  Note:  Harvard ROTC graduate Thomas M. Barron ’09, "an Army ROTC cadet at Harvard who is currently training at Fort Benning in Georgia, will put his military service on hold to complete his yearlong degree program at Cambridge.
• 17 February 2016 Harvard Crimson column "So Much for Cover: Camouflaged" by Nathan L. Williams '18.  Note:  An Army ROTC student reports "walking into class in uniform, I feel like I’m on trial. The atmosphere becomes tense; people look at me as if I’m spearheading some sort of military takeover of Harvard."
• 19 February 2010 Harvard Crimson column "ROTC? ROFL! Antipathy for the military infiltrates the faculty" by Brian J. Bolduc '10.  Note:  Bolduc suggests that Harvard "seems headed toward recognition" of ROTC if the "Don't ask, don't tell" law is changed, despite some faculty whom Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, describes as “remnants of what I would call the Woodstock generation. These people supported the Vietcong. They view themselves as veterans of the anti-war movement.”
• 1 March 2010 Boston Herald article "Harvard may end 40-year ROTC ban: Don’t-ask-don’t-tell rule a key obstacle".  Note:  Some predicted that ROTC would return to Harvard if Congress repeals DADT, but others said the issue was more complicated, and expected "full official recognition of ROTC", not necessarily splitting of he Harvard students away from the three service ROTC programs at MIT.
• 24 March 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Minow Joins Protest of ‘Don’t Ask, Don't Tell’".  Note:  The letter from 6 law school deans "raises the question of whether ROTC will be allowed to return to campus if President Barack Obama’s carries out his promise to repeal the policy ...  According to Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC, the organization is seeking official recognition for ROTC on campus with or without the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”"  The original version of the article suggested that military recruiters were also banned from Harvard's campus, but that has not been true since court decisions safeguarding the right to recruit.
• 29 April 2010 Boston Globe editorial "To restore ROTC, end gay ban".  Note:  Citing both Harvard and Brown, the Globe observes that "Reserve Officers Training Corps units deserve a place at the nation’s elite universities, and Congress can make that happen easily by ending the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian service members ... If more graduates of top colleges entered the services, the military and the schools alike would benefit". See letters here and here.
• 3 May 2010 The Harbus op-ed "Memorial Day: The Long Crimson Line" by Bobby Wolfe.  Note:  Wolfe, a veteran and Harvard Business School student, looks forward to the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law and observes "The Harvard students and administration will have a heavy weight lifted from their shoulders, and they should celebrate the diversity that ROTC cadets bring to the community of students".
• 9 May 2010 Second Line of Defense article "Close the Open Wound on Vets: End the Ban on ROTC  at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia Effective Memorial Day 2010" by John Wheeler.  Note:  Discussing discrimination against gays in the military and ROTC in universities, Wheeler notes "There is no systematic evidence that the majority of gays in the military and gay vets want fellow military personnel in ROTC stigmatized to end the stigma on gays.  Stigmatizing one group of youngsters in order to de-stigmatize another group is self-defeating and a policy oxymoron."
• 21 May 2010 Boston Globe article "Harvard's ROTC grads to get full treatment in Yard commissioning".  Note:  Speaking at Harvard ROTC Commissioning on 26 May will be Michael G. Vickers, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, depicted in the film Charlie Wilson's War, former US Senator Paul Kirk '60 and Harvard President Drew Faust. 
• 25 May 2010 The Atlantic column "DADT and Ivy League ROTC" by James Fallows.  Note:  Fallows argues that the "separation between an important military intake system and some of the most elite universities" is "bad for the military, bad for the universities, and bad for the country.  Almost no one urging the anti-ROTC change of those days would have argued or imagined that 35 years after U.S. troops left Vietnam the ban should still be in place."  See responses, but note that the claim that Stanford currently has Army ROTC is not true.
• 26 May 2010 Harvard Crimson op-ed "Lifting the ROTC Ban" by John P. Wheeler MBA ’69. Note:  Wheeler writes that "Our country needs the best that Harvard has to offer in a new century of grave threats" and calls on Harvard to welcome ROTC. 
• 26 May 2010 Harvard Gazette article "From Ivy to military: Harvard’s newest commissioned officers take the stage".  Note:  The article includes background on the speakers at the Harvard ROTC Commissioning ceremony, as well as that of Chuck DePriest '77, who was cited for his role in restoring an ROTC option at Harvard.
• 26 May 2010 Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 2010.
• 26 May 2010 Remarks of LTC Hall at Harvard ROTC Commissioning
• 26 May 2010 Remarks of Senator Kirk at Harvard ROTC Commissioning.
• 27 May 2010 Harvard Crimson article "At ROTC Ceremony, Faust Calls for Strong Relationship With Military".  Note:  "While not commenting directly on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy—which bans homosexuals from serving openly in the military—Faust seemed to allude to the policy when she asked the recently minted officers to “help reinforce the long tradition of ties between Harvard and military service, as we share hopes that changing circumstances will soon enable us to further strengthen those bonds.”"
• 28 May 2010 Harvard Magazine article "“Listen and Learn in Order to Lead”: The ROTC Commissioning Ceremony".  Note:  The article includes an image of the program and complete audio of the ceremony.
• 15 June 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Harvard Gets Its Horn On" by Jules Crittenden. Note: A Boston Herald editor sees "signs of sociological advancement at Harvard Yard" in its relations with ROTC and the military more widely.
• 26 Augst 2010 Time Magazine article "Is ROTC Poised for a Comeback at Elite Colleges?"  Note:  "Michael Segal, a Harvard graduate and member of the coalition group Advocates for ROTC, argues that for schools like Stanford and Columbia, which have strong engineering programs, the benefits of bringing ROTC to these campuses could outweigh the costs of maintaining what will likely be smaller units there. "It may look on paper that these schools get half as much value as ROTC does at other programs, but we need some of these people," he says. "We need very thoughtful people in the military.""  In addition to the Ivy-based units mentioned in the article, Penn also has on campus Naval ROTC.
• 23 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Harvard links ROTC return to end of ‘don’t ask’".  Note:  "Harvard University, which expelled ROTC four decades ago, will welcome the military training program back to campus only when the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members is repealed, the university’s president said yesterday. Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, speaking the day after the US Senate declined to take up a measure that would have repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy, said vestiges of antimilitarism on campus dating to the Vietnam War are largely gone and she would now welcome the opportunity to “regularize our relationship’’ with the armed forces.... Today, Faust said, there is only one reason ROTC is barred from campus: The issue is “entirely linked to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’’’ She said Harvard bars discrimination by all undergraduate groups.... Faust, like Summers before her, has actively engaged Harvard’s military community, attending the commissioning ceremonies of ROTC graduates and publicly displaying support. Last night, Faust invited ROTC cadets to appear with her at Fenway Park when she threw out the first pitch at the Red Sox game."  The article made no mention of whether changing Harvard's position would require 100% of military to be open to non-heterosexuals and whether the openness would need to include all groups included in the "gender identity" wording of its non-discrimination policy.
• 23 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Brown blasts Harvard president for barring ROTC because of 'don't ask, don't tell'".  Note: Noting Harvard President Drew Faust's decision to continue to ban ROTC from its campus, Senator Brown said "“Harvard President Faust has been lobbying on Capitol Hill in support of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants attending college. Harvard has its priorities upside down,” the Massachusetts Republican said in a statement. “They should embrace young people who want to serve their country, rather than promoting a plan that provides amnesty to students who are in this country illegally.”"
• 24 September 2010 WCBV-TV story "Brown Blasts Harvard Over ROTC Ban".  Note:  The video segment includes Paul Mawn, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, saying "We're trying to get official recognition of ROTC, regardless of the politics of Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since it is a federal law.
• 24 September 2010 Boston Globe article "Brown criticizes Harvard leader on ROTC policy".  Note:  In addition to Senator Brown's comments, "Republican gubernatorial [candidate] Charles D. Baker, a 1979 Harvard graduate, also criticized his alma mater. “It’s a bad message to send to the ROTC, to people who serve in our armed services, that somehow they’re not welcome on any campus,’’ Baker said outside the State House, where he was holding a press conference on illegal immigration. “It’s too bad that Harvard doesn’t have ROTC on its campus.’’"  See letters in response here, here and here.
• 24 September 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Senator Brown Faults University's ROTC Policy".  Note:  "Isaiah T. Peterson ’12, an Air Force ROTC cadet, said that while relations with the University have improved, its position based on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” still seems shortsighted. “We’ve been pretty happy that the University has reached out to us in the last couple years,” he said, but added that he thinks “it’s a terrible idea for Harvard to distance itself from the military, especially when it’s not the military making the policy.”"
• 1 October 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Senator Scott Brown Petitions for ROTC at Harvard".  Note:  The petition reads "ROTC (The Reserve Officers' Training Corps) is an honorable service to the United States of America and that all students wishing to serve in ROTC should be allowed to exercise their service on the campus of Harvard."  It is not clear whether this wording is meant to signal Brown's willingness to support inclusion of openly gay people in the military; the wording is evocative of President Faust's statement "I believe that every Harvard student should have the opportunity to serve in the military".  Also note that an ROTC program at Harvard would require approval from both the Pentagon and the university.
• 2 October 2010 American Council of Trustees and Alumni Speech by Anne Neal at Columbia Service & Society Conference.  Note:  ACTA president Anne Neal said "Each campus will need to ask itself tough questions. For example: What kind of presence do we want ROTC to have—an office, a building, a website? ... Are there ways that Columbia and other institutions might develop rigorous offerings in such fields as military history, anthropology, and game theory ...that would create ROTC programs commensurate with the outstanding academic programs of our greatest universities? ... there is a documented and disturbing dearth of courses on military and diplomatic history in elite and major universities. At Harvard today there is not one explicitly military history course offered this year or planned in the near future in the history department. There is only one course dedicated explicitly to US foreign relations. Out of 48 history faculty members, including visiting faculty, none are explicitly focused on foreign policy, diplomatic history or military history. Of Stanford’s full time history faculty, zero are focused on diplomatic or military history. At Brown, there are no courses focused on military history, and no faculty focused on diplomatic or military history, although there is one faculty member who is “probing the politics of knowing about and interacting with birds.”
• 4 October 2010 New York Post op-ed "Every color but camo: Campus bigotry a social threat" by Glenn Harlan Reynolds.  Note:  Reynolds notes how top colleges promote diversity as a central value, yet distance themselves from students in ROTC.  He notes that "Expansive federal powers to solve social ills are widely supported at our "top tier" universities, and we have reached the point where virtually everything is potentially subject to federal control" and the federal government "can surely act to integrate our institutions of higher learning, even if their leaders choose to stand in the schoolhouse door".
• 5 October 2010 Boston Globe article "For ROTC students, an awkward limbo: Cadets would welcome formal recognition by Harvard".  Note:  "MIT hosts students from nine colleges in its ROTC program, but Harvard is the only one that bans ROTC from campus" and Harvard ROTC students "would welcome the increased visibility of formal recognition", helping expose other students to the option of serving in the military.
• 5 October 2010 National Review column "Our Universities Need a Military Presence" by David French.  Note:  "Our universities would be better off if more veterans and active members of the military (such as ROTC faculty) were on campus to present alternative — and more realistic — viewpoints."  French goes on to list what he calls "fantasy-world" "typical elite university nonsense", including "concepts of Islam ... cultural relativism ... views of human nature" and observes that "The success of counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq rested a great deal on truly understanding your area of operations and the people who lived there. That meant seeing them as they were, not as you wanted them to be. That meant understanding the weaknesses of a culture, as well as its strengths.
• 7 October 2010 Harvard Magazine article "Senator Brown Chides Harvard on ROTC".  Note:  The article lists items that attest to President Faust's good relations with the military.
• 13 October 2010 The Atlantic column "DADT Implications: Return of ROTC, Broadening the 'Sliver'" by James Fallows.  Note:  Fallows looks beyond the "Don't ask, don't tell" issue and calls for elite colleges to end their bans on ROTC.
• 25 October 2010 New York Times op-ed "The R.O.T.C. Myth" by Diane H. Mazur.  Note:  The legal co-director of the Palm Center, which the Washington Post describes as "a think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara that is dedicated to repealing the ban" on openly gay people in the military, points out that the absence of ROTC at some elite colleges is technically not a ban because the military withdrew after colleges such as Harvard withdrew faculty appointments and academic credit for ROTC.  However, under provisions of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964, no ROTC unit "may be established or maintained at an institution unless the senior commissioned officer of the armed force concerned who is assigned to the program at that institution is given the academic rank of professor... and the institution adopts, as a part of its curriculum, a four-year course of military instruction ... which the Secretary of the military department concerned prescribes and conducts", provisions that colleges such as Harvard withdrew in the late 1960s.  A contemporaneous account by Capt. Thomas J. Moriarty, then professor of Naval Science at Harvard, pointed out that withdrawal of the faculty appointment for ROTC officers meant that the program must end because of the 1964 law.  In recent years, universities such as MIT have come up with a solution to the faculty appointment issue that meets the provisions of the law by designating the ROTC faculty as visiting professors.  See letters on 1 November and detailed analyses from EnterpriseBlog and Secure Nation.
• 1 November 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Re-legitimizing ROTC" by Michael Segal.  Note:  The Webmaster of Advocates for ROTC discusses the 25 October New York Times op-ed on ROTC, and after referring to many of the original sources observes "Leaving out the 1964 law from the history of ROTC in the 1960s is a serious omission since it ignores the fact that many top colleges knowingly removed the legal basis for ROTC, and thereby left the military no option under the law but to leave.  However, we should also credit top colleges with planting the seeds for the enhanced “ROTC+” programs of the future.  There is much value in the ROTC+ vision of high quality courses with joint university and ROTC credit, whether taught by regular faculty or ROTC commanders."
• 1 November 2010 Army Strong Stories blog post "Harvard's 40-Years of Anti-Army ROTC Rhetoric Unveiled; No Myth" by Andre Dean.  Note: LTC Dean discusses the 25 October New York Times op-ed on ROTC and expresses dismay that Prof. Mazur could sum up the exit of ROTC from Harvard as "the military decided to leave".  He details the violence that occurred between the 4 February 1969 faculty vote to remove the legal basis for ROTC at Harvard and the 19 April 1969 decision of Harvard's governing Corporation to accept the faculty decision.
• 4 November 2010 Harvard Crimson article "The Other Public Service".  Note:  "Harvard talks the talk about service, [Capt. Paul E.] Mawn ['63, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC] fumes, but when it directs its young talent towards the world, it neglects the most important kind. “They don’t consider the military as public service. Anything but the military. They view America as this big bad power with a big stick going after all these Third World countries... The general feeling is that you shouldn’t have anything to do with the military because it’s a trade school,” he says."  Seth W. Moulton ’01, a Platoon Commander in the US Marine Corps who is now a tutor in Quincy House, relates that "Approval was harder to exact from his family, however. His mother told him that she would only have been more disappointed if he had chosen a life of crime.“Yeah,” he drawls, as stern irony pulls smiling creases across his face. “She has a way with words.”"
• 11 November 2010 Callie Crossley Show radio interviews "Thinking Out Loud: ROTC And The Ivy League".  Note:  Crossley interviews Advocates for Columbia ROTC founder Sean Wilkes and Prof. Diane Mazur, who both make the case for the importance of having ROTC at elite colleges. 
• 17 November 2010 Harvard Kennedy School video "Admiral Mike Mullen: The Interplay of Policy & Strategy".  Note:   Harvard President Drew Faust and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen speak and address the ROTC issue.  Faust said "It is my personal belief that Harvard has a responsibility to this nation and its citizens, a responsibility it has embraced since the earliest days of the Republic, with a long tradition of service and more Medal of Honor recipients than any other institution of higher education other than the service academies.  We continue to honor that tradition through initiatives like the National Security Fellows here at the Kennedy School and in our tuition assistance for more than 75 veterans across the university in the Yellow Ribbon Program.  It is my belief that as a further embodiment of that tradition an ROTC program open to all ought to be fully and formally present on our campus.  For it is also my belief that gays and lesbians should have full rights as citizens, including the privilege and the honor of military service ... I want to be the president of Harvard who sees the end of "Don't ask, don't tell" because I want to be able to take the steps to ensure that any and every Harvard student is able to make the honorable and admirable choice to commit him or herself to the nation's defense."  Mullen said "I think it is incredibly important to have ROTC units at institutions like this.  I think President Faust has made it very clear and I certainly would do all in my power to make that happen."
• 18 November 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Drew Faust Endorses Return of ROTC".  Note:  "Harvard University will “fully and formally” recognize the long-banned Reserve Officer Training Corps program upon the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” University President Drew G. Faust said yesterday at the Institute of Politics ... Faust has previously conditioned ROTC’s return to Harvard upon the policy’s repeal, but yesterday marks the first time that she has explicitly said that her administration would welcome ROTC back to Harvard’s campus.  “As a further embodiment of that tradition [of service], a ROTC program open to all ought to be fully and formally present on our campus,” Faust said to a ringing round of applause.  Mullen, who was the primary speaker at yesterday’s event, has forcefully said that he personally believes “don’t ask, don’t tell” ought to be repealed. He said he thinks it is “incredibly important” to have ROTC units at institutions like Harvard, adding that the policy’s repeal is up to Congress."  Faust added: “I want to be the president of Harvard who sees the end of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ because I want to be able to take the steps to ensure that any and every Harvard student can make the honorable and admirable choice to commit him or herself to our nation’s defense”.  "Mullen did not address “don’t ask, don’t tell” during his prepared remarks but said in response to a question from Harvard Kennedy School professor David R. Gergen that he would do everything in his power to bring a ROTC unit to [institutions like] Harvard."
• 18 November 2010 Boston Herald article "If ‘don’t ask’ goes, Harvard pledges to bring back ROTC".  Note:  "Biology student Sean Wilkes, who served in the Army on active duty from 2006 to this year, said he thought the moment showed how the military’s relationship with academia has improved since Vietnam.“Over time, particularly in the last 10 years, there have been inroads,” Wilkes said. “I think this really demonstrates the degree to which that relationship has grown in a very positive way.”"
• 19 November 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Barriers Remain For ROTC Return".  Note:  Despite the positive remarks of Harvard President Faust and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mullen about the prospects for ROTC at Harvard, "the unit’s return to campus remains highly uncertain due to low levels of enrollment, limited Pentagon funding, and logistical hurdles.  Chief among the obstacles is the small size of the corps at Harvard. The number of students enrolled in ROTC would likely have to increase to justify the installation of a campus unit, said Retired Captain Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC ... If ROTC were officially recognized, it would reduce the administrative hurdles that cadets currently have to navigate and would mark an important symbolic gesture toward the military, Faust said in an interview yesterday. Exactly how the University would structure the program is something that would need to be worked out with the military, she said.“I think what’s important is that we signal that ROTC and service in the military is something we want to be available to all our students,” she added. “We don’t want to raise any additional hurdles for them by making it inconvenient and a choice that is scrutinized.”" The article also asserts that "The University would also have to grant credit for ROTC coursework" but this is not done at other universities such as Princeton, as detailed in a 2009 statement from Princeton VP Robert K. Durkee.
• 22 November 2010 Secure Nation blog item "Blueprint for Harvard ROTC" by Michael Segal.  Note:  The Webmaster of Advocates for ROTC notes that "Harvard President Drew Faust and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen made strong statements of support for Harvard ROTC on 17 November 2010.  Their support raises two important questions: what do they mean by support for Harvard ROTC, and how can we translate such support into reality."  He outlines a basic model for ROTC that is acceptable to top universities and how the university, military and alumni can enhance this to create an "ROTC+" model of the future.
• 24 November 2010 Harvard Crimson column "Keep ROTC Out of Range" by Sandra Y. L. Korn.  Note:  A first year student opposes "blindly supporting ROTC" because "the U.S. military is far from blameless" and "has faced allegations of abuse".  She adds, "apart from its ongoing history of discrimination based on sexual orientation, the military maintains a well-established policy of gender discrimination.  Although many strong women serve in the armed forces, the military does not draft women or place them in active combat roles, perpetuating a stereotype of female weakness and subordination."  She says the President Faust "incorrectly presumes that DADT is the only viable objection to the U.S. armed forces".  See related blog posts here and here.
• 1 December 2010 Harvard Crimson editorial "Even Stronger Support: If DADT is repealed, Harvard should recognize the military on campus".  Note:  "Whether the military establishes a ROTC chapter on campus is out of Harvard’s hands, although Harvard should do everything it can to encourage that such a chapter flourishes, if one is ever reinstated. If the military stays, and permanently becomes more open, then the onus will be on Harvard to open itself up to ROTC."
• 1 December 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Dems, QSA Debate Impact of DADT Repeal on ROTC at Harvard".  Note:  Harvard College Democrats Campaigns Director Katie R. Zavadski ’13 said that "students could do more to combat the military’s discrimination from within its ranks than through protest.“The ROTC students we have here at Harvard are probably very enlightened and egalitarian—the people we would want to be going into the military to make it more welcoming for women and queer people ... If there are students with a more progressive world view in the military, it will probably become a safer place for women and queer service members alike.”"
• 1 December 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Marine, Father, Harvard Freshman".  Note:  The Crimson profiles Taylor B. Evans, who is a first year student at Harvard after 5 years in the Marine Corps.  His obligations as an ROTC student and Harvard coursework keep him very busy, but he has the perspective that "I have to worry about not seeing my wife for a couple of days... there are guys who have to worry about not seeing their wives for months".  "Students have reacted to his story more with interest and awe than with disdain or derision and have shown interest in learning more about his life and experiences, Evans says."
• 7 December 2010 Boston Globe column "Crimson with shame" by Kevin Cullen.  Note:  Cullen claims that Senator Scott Brown "changed his mind" on "Don't ask, don't tell" and that "Now it’s Harvard’s turn" to change its mind on ROTC. Actually, Brown and Faust had long expressed hopes both to make the military more welcoming to gays and Harvard more welcoming to the military, and both have acted on those hopes in recent weeks.  See letter on 9 December.
• 8 December 2010 Harvard Crimson op-ed "In Defense of ROTC" by Lucas E. Swisher ’14.  Note:  Swisher argues that it is unfair to exclude ROTC from campus over "Don't ask, don't tell" because it is specified by federal law, beyond the control of ROTC students.
• 9 December 2010 Boston Globe letter "Brown, Faust both working toward change, in careful consideration" by Michael Segal.  Note:  The webmaster of Advocates for ROTC points out how the positions of Senator Scott Brown and Harvard President Drew Faust have been steady and are "advancing the same vision" of promoting gay rights and the relationship between Harvard and the military.
• 18 December 2010 Weekly Standard blog item "Gays in the Military, ROTC back on Campus? Time to end to that discrimination, too." by William Kristol.  Note:  "One trusts the presidents and trustees of colleges that have been keeping ROTC at arm's length, allegedly because of DADT, will move posthaste to ensure a hearty welcome and full equality for ROTC at their universities... One would hope that prominent individuals, like Yale alum Joe Lieberman, who played so crucial a role in ending DADT, would lose no time in writing president Richard Levin to urge the re-installing of ROTC at Yale, that Crimson alums like Chuck Schumer will be in touch with Harvard president Drew Faust, and that Columbia graduate Barack Obama will weigh in with Fair Columbia's Lee Bollinger."
• 18 December 2010 Harvard University "President Faust's statement on DADT".  Note:  Faust wrote "It was no accident that Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation not only guaranteed freedom to black Americans, but at the same time opened the Union Army to their participation. Because of today’s action by the Senate, gay and lesbian Americans will now also have the right to pursue this honorable calling, and we as a nation will have the benefit of their service. I look forward to pursuing discussions with military officials and others to achieve Harvard’s full and formal recognition of ROTC. I am very pleased that more students will now have the opportunity to serve their country. I am grateful to the Massachusetts congressional delegation for its unified support for repeal." 
• 18 December 2010 Politico blog item "Harvard, Yale moving on ROTC".  Note:  "Harvard University President Drew Faust today signaled that she would move to restore ROTC to the campus. "Because of today's action by the Senate, gay and lesbian Americans will now also have the right to pursue this honorable calling, and we as a nation will have the benefit of their service," she said in a statement through a spokesman. "I look forward to pursuing discussions with military officials and others to achieve Harvard's full and formal recognition of ROTC.""  The wording is somewhat different from her statement of 17 November.  The Politico item also notes that "Some gay advocates ... would prefer the schools wait until repeal has been fully implemented. Americablog's John Aravosis wrote that the schools should only let up "when the discharges stop and the ban is fully lifted.""
• 18 December 2010 Harvard Republican Oasis blog item "Recognize ROTC".  Note:  "President Faust should fulfill her promise to “fully and formally” recognize ROTC upon the repeal of DADT... the Harvard Republican Club hopes that President Faust and Harvard University will do everything in its power to recognize ROTC immediately and provide as much support to ROTC cadets as it can."
• 19 December 2010 The Atlantic blog item "DADT and ROTC" by James Fallows.  Note: The repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law "removes the last stated objection to the return of ROTC programs to on-campus operations at Harvard and some other elite universities  ... It is time for Harvard, which took an early lead in removing ROTC programs in the Vietnam era, to set an example in bringing them back."
• 19 December 2010 Harvard Crimson article "Senate Repeals DADT, Stalls on DREAM Act".  Note:  The repeal "opens the door for the potential return of the Reserve Officer Training Corps to Harvard’s campus.... However, according to retired Captain Paul E. Mawn ’63, chairman of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC, even with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” many obstacles remain to bringing back a ROTC program to Harvard’s campus.“There’s several issues that need to be addressed by the Pentagon and the politicians,” Mawn said, listing funding and recruitment as examples. “I think this is going to be an issue for many years.”"
• 19 December 2010 The Boston Channel TV item "Harvard May Reconsider ROTC Ban".  Note:  Advocates for Harvard ROTC chairman Paul Mawn said "What needs to be done, from Harvard's viewpoint, is to officially recognize [ROTC] and then take a pro-active stand in getting people that may participate in ROTC". 
• 20 December 2010 AEI Center for Defense Studies blog item "DADT, ROTC, and the Civil-Military Divide" by Raphael S. Cohen.  Note: Cohen, a recent Harvard ROTC graduate, writes "as an active duty officer, my soldiers wondered why anyone with a Harvard diploma would ever join the military in the first place.  For many of them, Harvard grads were the people who sent them half-way around the world to some forgotten hell-hole, not the ones who went there with them."  He expresses concern that the military will undervalue the importance of ROTC at top colleges: "In an era of defense budget cuts, the military may want to avoid these costly ventures in favor of cheaper gestures—sending recruiters to campus and calling it a victory.  Cheap gestures, however, are often just that—gestures with only a marginal real impact."  He suggests that "ROTC programs will need to attract and commission enough students from a sufficiently wide demographic base (i.e. not simply the more conservative members of the student body) to effect real change... While it may not immediately help the balance sheet, however, bringing ROTC back to elite schools might at least start the long, slow healing of the civil-military rift that has plagued the United States for almost the last half century."
• 20 December 2010 Harvard Magazine article "After “Don’t Ask, Don't Tell”".  Note:  Harvard's alumni magazine observes (emphasis in the original) "This decision does not necessarily mean that ROTC training will appear on the Harvard campus per se; the military services have organized such training on a clustered basis, serving multiple campuses with common facilities. Harvard cadets travel to MIT for their classes."
• 21 December 2010 Wall Street Journal column "The Army and the Ivy: Now that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is no more, President Obama can follow up by seeing that elite universities welcome the military back to campus" by William McGurn.  Note:  McGurn offers advice to President Obama on his State of the Union address "When you take the victory lap you are entitled to for ending the prohibition on gays serving openly in the military, follow up with a call to end the remaining discrimination faced by members of our military—the second-class status of Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) cadets on some of our leading college campuses... But it's not just the Harvards and Columbias that need encouragement here. Alas, the Pentagon could use a little prodding, too. The dirty little secret is that our military brass has been too willing to abandon whole swaths of America (mostly in the Northeast and urban areas) where they find recruitment more difficult."  See letters in response.
• 21 December 2010 Boston Herald article "ROTC still a long way off at Harvard".   Note:  Retired Lt. Gen. Tad Oelstrom of the Harvard Kennedy School said that even if Harvard invites ROTC back, a budget-conscious Pentagon may decline. "The military would have a large say in this ... Setting up an ROTC detachment . . . is an expensive thing to do."  Sarah Harvey, 22, who graduated in May and is in the National Guard, said "I think it will make a huge difference to students simply because it sends a message to them that ROTC is not only acceptable but encouraged".
• 21 December 2010 Boston Globe article "After 4 decades, Harvard opens door to ROTC".  Note:  "A Pentagon spokeswoman said it is too early to say whether the decision could result in a ROTC unit being established on campus, but student interest and the military budget are two potential factors. "It is premature to speculate," said Eileen Lainez, the spokeswoman. "Services must maintain a delicate balance of units, cadre manpower, and officer production in light of fiscal constraints and competing wartime requirements." While Harvard officials would not elaborate on what formal recognition would entail, advocates said they would like the university to set aside office space on campus for ROTC students to gather, take a more active role in enrolling veterans and others interested in the military as students, and promote the military as a legitimate career option for its graduates. “At Harvard, ROTC has been like the crazy uncle in the attic: We know he’s up there but we don’t want to tell anyone that he’s there,’’ said Paul E. Mawn, a 1963 Harvard graduate and retired Navy captain who is chairman of Harvard Advocates for ROTC.  Nicole Unis, a Harvard graduate student in Army ROTC, said that while she does not expect Harvard’s formal recognition of ROTC to change her day-to-day life, she hopes it will help the program recruit more students.  Harvard alumni subsidize student involvement in ROTC, paying MIT between $100,000 and $400,000 a year, a cost that Mawn said Harvard should pick up if the university is serious about recognition. "It’s not just up to president Faust to bring ROTC back on campus," Mawn said. "For ROTC to survive at Harvard, you need to have more people, and right now, there is not enough people to justify it. You can’t have a battalion with only five people in it." Over the past 20 years, the battalion has typically counted between 15 and 20 Harvard undergraduates a year, [Lieutenant Colonel Timothy] Hall [commander of the Army ROTC battalion based at MIT] said. Currently, he said, only six from Harvard are enrolled. Over the past two years, the Army ROTC has enrolled only one Harvard freshman, while 11 members have graduated, he said... The program would also be costly for the Department of Defense, which would have to provide scholarships, facilities, and salaries of military officers to teach. Nationwide, 327 schools host ROTC units, and nearly 1,800, including Harvard, have cross-town affiliations with host units, according to the Department of Defense."
• 21 December 2010 Commentary Contentions blog post "DADT Will Soon Be a Non-Event" by Max Boot.  Note:  Discussing the repeal of DADT, Boot writes "Perhaps the most lasting impact of this policy change will be the return of ROTC to Ivy League campuses. Already Harvard and Yale are talking about reinstating their ROTC programs. This, too, will not make much of a change in either the Ivy League or the military, but it is a small, welcome step toward bridging the chasm that separates the armed forces from society’s elites."
• 22 December 2010 New York Times article "Elite Colleges Rethink Ties to R.O.T.C. After ‘Don’t Ask’ Repeal".  Note:  The number of students at elite colleges doing ROTC at other colleges is: Harvard 19, Columbia 6, Yale 4, Brown 1, and Stanford 15.  Harvard is the only one to have cross-town Army, Navy and Air Force opportunities nearby.
• 22 December 2010 Boston Globe editorial "End of ‘don’t ask’ should begin new era for military on campus".  Note:  "Bringing ROTC back would prove that the universities’ steadfast stances had been the product of honest and open concerns about discrimination, rather than an expression of reflexive anti-military sentiments. Students would have a better chance to serve their country, and the Pentagon would find itself with a new source of highly educated recruits at a time when its need for men and women with special training is at an all-time high. Whether in foreign languages or science, the skills learned at top universities are increasingly applicable to the military."  The editorial also claims that "Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t actual ROTC bans in place at these universities, as this would render them ineligible for federal funding under the 1994 Solomon Amendment."  This is incorrect.  The Solomon Amendment applies applies to an institution that "prohibits, or in effect prevents" establishment of an ROTC program, so the universities have done enough to trigger the Solomon Amendment since they deny even nominal faculty appointments for ROTC faculty, failing a key provision of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964. By doing so in the 1960s, the universities knowingly removed the legal basis for ROTC programs, obligating ROTC programs to leave.   The reason the Solomon Amendment has not been triggered is that only the Secretary of Defense has the authority to invoke the law, but even the Bush administration was reluctant to do so. This reluctance may have been due in part to uncertainty over the constitutionality of the Solomon amendment with regards to ROTC. Although the Supreme Court upheld Solomon in the context of military recruiting, it signaled that its decision did not include ROTC by noting that "recruiters are not part of the law school", an argument that would cut the other way in the case of ROTC.  See letters on 25 December here and here.
• 22 December 2010 ABC News article "Repeal of Gay Ban Opens Door to ROTC Return at Top Schools".  Note:  "Allowing ROTC to operate on-campus would also facilitate integration the nation's top students into military leadership roles and potentially broaden connections between military decision-makers and other high-profile alumni from the elite schools, advocates say. "The alternative is a civil-military divide, and you get situations like people who've trained in Ivy League institutions or places like Stanford who are represented in leadership of the country but who don't have friends in the military, or they don't know enough about the military to manage it properly, or just have discussions about military-related issues," said Michael Segal, founder and director of Advocates for ROTC, an umbrella group promoting the return of the military program to top colleges and universities.... Eric Chen, a recent Columbia graduate and Army veteran, said the military and universities need to understand the mutual benefits of bringing ROTC back to all schools in the Ivy League. "In an increasingly complex global security environment, America needs military leaders able to adapt on a full spectrum, which means officers who are creative critical thinkers and lifelong learners with the best possible academic foundation," he said. "Columbia already hosts innovative cross-cutting programs that rely upon the special reach and multi-dimensional resources of a global flagship university in a world city."" The article notes that "skeptics have questioned whether there would be enough student interest to merit the time and resources of bringing ROTC back. Chen said the military and university administrators need to give students a chance. "You first have to plant the seed in order to grow the tree," he said. "Building the cadet population at Columbia first requires ROTC on campus. Then, as Columbia ROTC is nurtured into a fully integrated member of the university, the cadet population will grow over time.""
• 25 December 2010 Boston Globe letter "‘Don’t ask’ lens blurs schools’ long hostility to the military" by Timothy Lesinski.  Note:  The writer points out that universities, in trying to fight discrimination against gays, discriminated against the military.
• 25 December 2010 Boston Globe letter "It may take more than logistics to ease college, military fit" by Lindsey Kiang.  Note:  "In the early 1980s, when I was the school’s general counsel, Yale president Bart Giamatti asked me to meet discreetly with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps officials to find out what would be involved if the university wanted the program to return to campus. I met accordingly with Navy ROTC program managers in Pensacola, Fla., who explained the situation to me. In short, it was not a simple matter of an Ivy League college asking ROTC to return. There were program requirements, which were the original problems to begin with, such as granting ROTC instructors faculty status and titles, providing satisfactory physical facilities, and giving academic credit for ROTC courses. The Yale faculty had balked at these requirements, and hence gave ROTC no choice but to leave campus. The Vietnam War was the backdrop, but not the publicly stated reason. Moreover, the ROTC officials pointed out that the program was popular, and there was a waiting list of institutions; would it be fair for an Ivy League school to jump ahead of others? And with the military’s interest in greater diversity in the officer corps, wouldn’t state colleges in other sections of the country be of more interest to the military than an “elite’’ Northeastern college?"  Note, however, that universities such as MIT and Princeton found workarounds to these issues and kept ROTC programs.
• 26 December 2010 New York Post column "Fight fiercely, Harvard! Ivies still won’t embrace GIs after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ends" by Kyle Smith.  Note:  Smith, a Yale ROTC graduate, says that graduates of top colleges won't serve in the military.  He chooses Prof. Eliot Cohen, a Harvard ROTC graduate and former official in the administration of George W. Bush, as his example of "writers, even liberal ones", and predicts that Cohen's call for young people to "share the burden of national defense" will not be followed.  Smith writes: "Ivy Leaguers are not going to turn down glamour jobs on Wall Street and Hollywood and Silicon Valley in favor of a gig at Fort Dysentery, Afghanistan. Cohen seems to think that the mere presence of ROTC — hey, there’s this thing called the military! — is going to shame young T-shirted slouchers into battle fatigues."  Cohen's son addressed these issues in 2004 when he said "I essentially agree with those critics: There shouldn't be such a deep divide between social classes. That's part of why I enlisted"."  An account of Cohen's son's Harvard ROTC commissioning is here.
• 29 December 2010 Big Peace blog post "Bring ROTC Back to Harvard? Who Needs ‘Em" by Chad Garland.  Note: The president of the Illini Veterans Student Organization discusses Sandra Korn's anti-ROTC op-ed and weighs the balance between Harvard's capitulation to anti-military militants and Harvard's history of alumni in the military.  He writes "I am suspicious that the school’s prevailing values have changed such that self-sacrifice and gallantry are no longer culturally relevant." He points to the determination of Steven Peck '79, who opened up the option for Harvard students to enroll in ROTC at MIT, and suggests that it would be "dishonoring the legacy" of Peck to have an ROTC program at Harvard, since this would encourage less determined people to serve.  Peck, however, told Advocates for ROTC "it would be fantastic if Harvard got its own unit again" but suggested that cost considerations by the military could argue for "a joint Harvard-MIT unit that is just physically located at MIT".

2011:

• 4 January 2011 The Atlantic bog item "ROTC and Columbia: the Jack Wheeler Legacy" by James Fallows.  Note:  Noting the "blueprint" articles for Harvard and Columbia ROTC, Fallows observes, "Part of the reason a blueprint is necessary: resinstatement would involve significant complications and headaches on the military's side, not just for the universities, so it shouldn't be done in a slapdash way. Worth reading, along with Wheeler's own impassioned statement on the subject last spring. And worth acting on."
• 9 January 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education article "After Repeal of 'Don't Ask,' Elite Colleges Rethink ROTC".   Note:  The article discusses ways in which top colleges could provide the military with crucial skills, due to the diversity on their campuses and their ability to provide an ROTC+ experience, leveraging the expertise of their non-military faculty.
• 10 January 2011 David Clayman '38, 1917-2011.  Note:  The life of the founder of Advocates for Harvard ROTC is recounted.
• 26 January 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Obama: Time for ROTC to Return".  Note:  Echoing President Obama's call for colleges to open their doors to ROTC, Harvard lecturer and former Clinton administration official Elaine C. Kamarck said “There is nothing more symbolically important than Harvard getting ROTC back ... The preeminent university in the country should have ROTC.”
• 28 January 2011 Harvard Crimson op-ed "Continued Discrimination in ROTC" by Samuel Bakkila and Jia Hui Lee.  Note:  The authors, members of "Harvard Queer Students and Allies", argue that ROTC should be excluded from Harvard until transgender people can serve openly in the military.
• 31 January 2011 Harvard Crimson editorial "The Return of ROTC: It is time for Harvard to spearhead a rapprochement with America’s military".  Note:  "Just as DADT represented an outdated prejudice directed toward gay American citizens, the absence of ROTC now stands as a relic of an outdated bias against the American armed forces... We welcome the perspective of the military to Harvard’s marketplace of ideas, and believe that there can be no better context for an ROTC education than within Harvard’s curriculum and values... We remind those who would oppose this move that President Faust and other Harvard administrators have repeatedly predicated the return of ROTC upon the repeal of DADT. Thus, should the university backtrack on its public commitment, its political credibility will be greatly impaired, as will Harvard’s ability to influence future legislation with similar pronouncements... While we remain concerned about the continued exclusion of transgendered and intersex individuals from military service, we do not feel that this is sufficient justification for singling out the military for campus opprobrium. Furthermore, as such objections to ROTC only emerged in the public discourse after the repeal of DADT, to base rejection of ROTC on them now would be disingenuous and erode the credibility of Harvard as a good faith actor in this debate."  See letters here and here.
• 31 January 2011 Harvard Crimson video "Roving Reporter: ROTC".  Note:  The Crimson interviews Harvard students about ROTC, and the sentiment is overwhelmingly in favor of welcoming it to campus.
• 3 February 2011 Harvard Crimson article "ROTC Faces Uphill Battle".  Note:  Associate Professor Kevin Kit Parker, who is a Major in the active US Army Reserve and a combat veteran, said "Harvard should endeavor to have the best ROTC program as part of endeavoring to be the best university. We will draw the very best ROTC students if we have the very best program".
• 3 February 2011 Harvard Political Review item "Speaking Out Against ROTC" by Sandra Korn. Note:  Korn writes that "perhaps it is true that, consciously or unconsciously, Americans who simply don’t want ROTC to return are focusing more on the issue of transgender rights than they were before. In fact, I admit that I might be one of them. I took the paragraph about transgender discrimination out of my November 24th Crimson article before publication, but now frequently bring the issue up in discussions about ROTC. However, I don’t see this as hypocrisy. I don’t want the military to recruit on my college campus—so why should I not use the most potent persuasive devices at my disposal to keep it away?"
• 7 February 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Activists Say Military's Policy Remains Biased".  Note:  Harvard Trans Task Force is circulating a petition against return of ROTC "until the military allows Americans of any sex or gender identity to enlist".  However, others disagree.  "Nathaniel G. Butler ’68, a Navy veteran and board member of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus, was an advocate for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. While he said that he would like to see trans-identified and intersex individuals granted the ability to serve, Butler said that their exclusion should not be a barrier for ROTC’s return to Harvard."
• 9 February 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Dems Open to ROTC Return".  Note:  "Members of the Harvard College Democrats gathered last night to discuss whether the exclusion of trans-identified individuals from the military should prevent the return of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program to campus. Though the organization did not take a formal vote on the matter, those who spoke at the meeting by and large said that ROTC should be welcomed back to Harvard, despite objections over trans exclusion."
• 17 February 2011 Letter from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni to the Harvard Corporation.  Note:  The letter urges the Harvard Corporation to commit Harvard to official recognition of ROTC now, "whether or not there is an official ROTC unit on campus".  It also notes that Harvard has only two undergraduates under the GI Bill Yellow Ribbon Program, while other colleges such as Columbia have orders of magnitude more.  The letter notes that this "may be due to Harvard's interpretation of Ivy Scholarship rules, which were written for the laudable purpose of avoiding bidding wars for top student scholars or athletes.  But Harvard's implementation of those rules may have the unintended consequence of limiting service-based undergraduate scholarships... We ask you to ensure that Harvard's application of the rules is not impeding its ability to support veterans."
• 18 February 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard Political Union Debates ROTC".  Note:  Some promoted ROTC as a form of public service that Harvard should support, but Christian C. Anderson ’13 responded that “Harvard should promote public service, but supporting the military as a particular form of service is problematic. Not everything the military does constitutes public service” and suggested that the proper "neutral stance" was to exclude ROTC but not prohibit Harvard students from participating in ROTC, as long as it was somewhere else.
• March 2011 Aviation History article "America's First Homegrown Ace".  Note:  The article describes Douglas Campbell, the son of the president of the University of California and the "first American-trained fighter pilot to shoot down a German plane in World War I" and "the first USAS airman to notch five confirmed aerial victories".  He dropped out of Harvard "with his friend Quentin Roosevelt, youngest son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, in order to join the Air Service".
• 1 March 2011 Harvard Crimson article "ACTA Advocates for ROTC Recognition".  Note:  The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has asked Harvard's governing Corporation to "commit Harvard to official recognition of ROTC... That can be done by the Corporation immediately—whether or not there is an official ROTC unit on campus".  "Some have argued that there is not enough interest on campus to justify creating a unit at Harvard. But [ACTA President Anne] Neal ['77] said that she believes that this is a “chicken and egg” problem, and that recognition and publicity of ROTC will lead to greater interest and participation in the program."
• 3 March 2011 Boston Globe article "Harvard to officially recognize Naval ROTC".  Note: "Harvard will appoint a director of Naval ROTC and will assume financial responsibility for the costs of its students’ participation in the program, but students will still be participating through a consortium unit at MIT, which has hosted the unit for many years.  The Navy has determined that maintaining the consortium, which encompasses students from several colleges, is the best for the “efficiency and effectiveness of the ‘Old Ironsides Battalion,’” Harvard officials said. Harvard, though, will provide Naval ROTC with office space and access to classrooms and athletic fields for participating students."  The arrangement sounds similar to that at Dartmouth, where Army ROTC uses Dartmouth facilities but is an extension of the program at Norwich University.  Dartmouth gives faculty appointments, and the "director of Naval ROTC" title at Harvard sounds similar to the "Director of Army Officer Education Program ... indicating a rank equivalent to the senior academic rank of professor" title given to the head of Army ROTC at Princeton.  There is no word on course credit, but even before this announcement "Specific naval seminars courses can be taken by cross-registration and count toward a student's undergraduate degree".
• 3 March 2011 Harvard Gazette article "Harvard welcomes back ROTC: Navy Secretary Mabus joins President Faust to sign agreement".  Note:  In addition, "Harvard also has begun pursuing discussions about renewing formal ties with ROTC programs associated with other branches of the Armed Forces.  In addition to signing the agreement with the Navy, Faust announced the intended formation of an ROTC implementation committee, to be chaired by Kevin “Kit” Parker, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Applied Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as an Army major who has served three tours in Afghanistan. The committee, whose work is expected to span not only issues concerning Naval ROTC but eventually other service branches as well, will explore ways to enhance the experience of Harvard ROTC students consistent with the broad framework outlined in the new agreement."
• 3 March 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard to Officially Recognize Naval ROTC: An agreement to be signed tomorrow ends a 40 year standoff between the University and the military".  Note:  Prof Kevin “Kit” Parker, chair of the newly created ROTC implementation committee, said that "We have to put Harvard’s assets on the table and say it is worth your while to train your cadets here". Parker said he believes that with recognition, the admissions office will have more traction in communities where the military is highly valued. "It is time to scoop that talent" he said.
• 4 March 2011 Boston Herald article "ROTC is back at Harvard".  Note:  David Gergen, the director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, who has supported efforts to restore ROTC on campus, said "It has long been apparent that only a small proportion of the population is fighting our wars today, and it’s essential that students from elite universities be among them".
• 4 March 2011 Boston Globe article "Harvard, Navy to sign ROTC pact: Repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was key".  Note:  "The university will begin making payments to MIT to cover the costs of its students’ participation. The amount has not been determined, but currently, a group of Harvard alumni pays MIT between $100,000 and $400,000 a year to subsidize Harvard ROTC students’ participation... One Harvard professor, though, said the university should go a step further and woo the military to establish a separate ROTC unit at Harvard. “Just inviting ROTC back to campus is not enough. We have to sell Harvard to the military,’’ said Kit Parker, an engineering professor and Army major who has served three tours in Afghanistan. “There might be some hard feelings in the Department of Defense and frankly, I don’t blame them,’’ he added. “We need to put something on the table and say we’re going to make this worth your while, because we can help you build better commissioned officers than other schools.’’".
• 4 March 2011 Brown Daily Herald article "ROTC reinstated on Harvard’s campus".  Note: "Chair of the Harvard Trans Task Force Jia Hui Lee said the announcement was a "rude shock" to transgender advocates, who say the military's policies violate the school nondiscrimination code, despite the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell.""Since Harvard prides itself of being one of the leading institutions in the U.S., this sets a very dangerous precedent for other schools to disregard their (transgender) students," Lee said. He is organizing a protest that will take place outside Faust's office this afternoon as she signs the agreement." 
• 4 March 2011 Huffington Post article "ROTC at Harvard: Welcome Back" by Daniel Koh.  Note:  A Harvard MBA student writes "My ROTC friends at Harvard are among the bravest and most respectable people I know. They could have taken any number of well-paying, high-prestige jobs, yet felt compelled to serve their country first after graduation. They weren't in it for glory, power, or some other ulterior motive -- they simply wanted to give back to the country that had given them so much."
• 4 March 2011 Fiat Lux (Stanford Review) blog item "Harvard Announces Return of ROTC".  Note:  Alok Vaid-Menon, president of Stanford Students for Queer Liberation, wrote of Harvard President Drew Faust (who is female) "Harvard was never transparent about the procedure they were adopting for this question. Last time they had a vote by the faculty. This time it seems like the President made a decision himself. This is a violation of student rights and faculty rights and is in direct violation of Harvard’s non-discrimination clause."  However, as pointed out in the comments, Harvard's policy refers to discrimination "unrelated to course requirements", and since eligibility for military commissioning is a pre-requisite for certain ROTC courses Harvard is not violating its policy.
• 4 March 2011 Contentions (Commentary) blog item "ROTC Returns to Harvard but Remains AWOL from Some Ivy League Campuses" by Max Boot.  Note:  "Now it is high time for other elite institutions that have been dragging their feet — that means you, Columbia; you too, Stanford — to invite ROTC back on campus. And it is equally important for the armed forces to accept the invitation."
• 4 March 2011 Harvard - Navy ROTC Agreement Signed.
• 4 March 2011 Harvard University text of remarks "President Drew Faust: Harvard Welcomes Back ROTC". 
• 4 March 2011 US Navy transcript "Remarks by the Honorable Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, Harvard University". 
• 4 March 2011 Harvard Gazette article "Signing ceremony welcomes ROTC: Program to return to Harvard campus".  Note:  "Maura Sullivan, M.P.A./M.B.A. ’09, a former captain in the Marines who served as co-president of the Armed Forces Alumni Association while at Harvard, always found that the University “embraced” her military service. “I very much felt my service was way beyond tolerated — it was welcomed, it was championed, it was encouraged, and it was respected,” she said. Sullivan has been a longtime advocate of bringing ROTC back to Harvard, calling for it publicly in 2009 at a campus event with Army Gen. David Petraeus, key strategist of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Friday’s signing might have seemed to come out of the blue to observers, she said, but in fact it represents “a culmination of a lot of people’s efforts.”  David Gergen, the Public Service Professor of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Center for Public Leadership, echoed Sullivan’s statements. “Drew Faust has taken the lead among the presidents of elite universities in restoring ROTC,” said Gergen, a former member of the Navy Reserves and an advocate of Harvard-military relations. “Harvard creates a ripple effect, and other universities are much more likely to follow that.”".  Also represented was Advocates for Harvard ROTC, and the article noted that the event traced its roots to the founding of the Advocates "in 1988 by David Clayman ’38, who died just six weeks ago". 
• 4 March 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard Signs Agreement to Officially Recognize Naval ROTC".  Note:  Responding to demonstrators over the transgender issue, "Several faculty members at the ceremony acknowledged the protesters’ concerns, noting that they intend to work toward reconciling this issue."
• 5 March 2011 Boston Globe article ""Harvard welcomes ROTC back to campus".  Note:  Navy Secretary Ray Mabus "said he hopes Harvard’s decision to reestablish the program on campus will cause other universities to reconsider their policies.  "I really hope that they see it the same way Harvard sees it, which is the opening up of opportunity" Mabus said.  Senator John F. Kerry sent a letter yesterday to Yale University, his alma mater, asking the school to follow Harvard’s lead in reestablishing ROTC on campus. The agreement also drew praise from the White House. “The decision by Harvard University to formally welcome the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps to its campus is an important step in moving past the old divisions that often kept many Americans from seeing what we share with one another, including love of country and a profound respect for our brave men and women in uniform,’’ White House press secretary Jay Carney said yesterday in a prepared statement." See letter on 11 March.
• 7 March 2011 Wall Street Journal video "ROTC Back at Harvard".  Note:  Anne Neal, head of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni discusses whether trustees or faculty should decide on allowing ROTC.  She said "It's time for the trustees to say, yes, we will formally recognize ROTC, and then to call on the faculty to undertake the effort it needs to figure out how to have courses that can receive credit for ROTC on campus".
• 8 March 2011 Harvard Crimson editorial "Moving Forward with the Military: As a ROTC participant, Harvard should advocate for the right of all students to serve".  Note:  The Crimson calls for the two elements of the ROTC+ approach: "the military science courses that ROTC students are required to take should be eligible for university credit. More should also be done to add components of military history to the College’s history course offerings at large, very few of which deal with topics relating to military history."
• 9 March 2011 Christian Science Monitor op-ed "With DADT out of the way, Harvard and military make a great couple" by Dan Caldwell.  Note:  A professor of political science at Pepperdine University and former Naval officer outlines 8 reasons why ROTC should return to elite university campuses.  One is "I found that officers educated at universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford often had markedly different attitudes than their peers from the military academies or state universities with large ROTC programs. I believe that the presence of such officers in the military is highly desirable; they are representative of an important segment of American society that is currently under-represented in the military. They are more likely to question unreasonable or illegal orders or policies than those educated in a more militarily, hierarchically oriented environment."  Another is "I served on a university committee at Stanford University that negotiated with the Department of Defense (DOD) concerning academic credit for ROTC courses. In these negotiations, the Department of Defense indicated its willingness to grant ROTC credit for courses taught by Stanford professors. For example, a course on war and conflict taught by the respected Professor Peter Paret, a translator of Clausewitz’s “On War,” would have been granted credit for the required ROTC course on military history. If DOD were now willing to accept such courses, the objection to having non-Stanford professors teaching courses for academic credit would be lessened."
• 10 March 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Faculty Recall ROTC History".  Note:  Faculty members discuss factors underlying the greater support for the military now than 40 years ago, including a higher percentage of students coming from communities in which the military is valued.  Faculty interviewed generally expressed support for ROTC, but wanted the faculty to be involved in decisions about course credit.
• 11 March 2011 Boston Globe letter "Sweet elation as barrier to ROTC falls at Harvard" by Willard K. Rice. Note:  A board member of Advocates for Harvard ROTC stresses the far larger number of people who turned out to support the return of ROTC than oppose it.
• 14 March 2011 Washington Post editorial "ROTC's return".  Note:  The editors applaud the Harvard-Navy ROTC agreement and write "Once the Ivy taboo is gone, the nation's military and its universities can reengage on the subject of how best to support student achievement and military manpower needs in the new educational and security environment of the 21st century."
• 24 March 2011 Harvard Crimson op-ed "Rethinking War" by Felix de Rosen ’13.  Note:  Discussing ROTC, he writes "what continues to surprise and shock me is why nobody at Harvard opposes the presence of the military on principle... We need to reexamine our respect for the military... We take war too casually, and delegate the responsibilities of war away from us and to our army".
• 30 March 2011 Christian Science Monitor article "ROTC returns to Harvard: Does officer training program need Ivy League?"  Note:  Many point out the advantages of ROTC at top colleges in reducing the civil-military gap, but Columbia math professor Michael Thaddeus says "The military is the focal point of a lot of debate and criticism in society, and ... we need to be institutionally separate from it in order to criticize it effectively."
• 4 April 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Columbia Senate Supports ROTC".  Note:  Some expressed concern that Harvard's process for welcoming ROTC was less open than that of Columbia, but Columbia and Harvard graduate Michael Segal pointed to the prospect of an on-campus Naval ROTC unit at Columbia and the history of radicalism at Columbia as factors necessitating a broader process at Columbia.  In addition, as mentioned in the ROTC resolution that passed in Columbia's University Senate, "the 1976 Tien Special Committee specifically empowers the University Senate to discuss and decide on any future relationships with the Armed Forces".
• 6 April 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard Development Office Had Role in ROTC Funding, Alumni Say".  Note:  The "Friends of Harvard ROTC Trust" was set up following a 1995 decision by Acting President Albert Carnesale that "A trust separate from the university will be created to receive and disburse contributions made by Harvard alumni or other individuals toward payment of fees associated with Harvard students' participation in ROTC programs at MIT".  Despite the passive voice used in the statement, Harvard kept close ties with the fund, with university staff members involved in raising the money from alumni and the donations to the trust counting towards Harvard class gifts.
• 6 April 2011 Fox News story "'O'Reilly Factor' Producer Jesse Watters Grills Harvard Students About ROTC Discrimination".  Note:  The "Harvard students" are 3 of the 5 people shown in the report.  Based on finding these people in Harvard square the report concludes that "Sometimes you can be too educated".  See Harvard Crimson blog item on 11 April.
• 11 April 2011 Flyby (Harvard Crimson) blog item "O'Reilly Factor Questions Cantabs About ROTC".  Note:  discussing the Fox News item, the Crimson notes how strikingly different it was from interviews done by the Harvard Crimson.
• 12 April 2011 Sudbury Town Crier article "Sudbury man recognized for helping to return Navy ROTC to Harvard University".  Note:  the role of Paul E. Mawn USN (Ret.) of Sudbury as Chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC is described.
• 29 April 2011 Bloomberg News article "Yale Weighs ROTC Decision as Ivy League Schools Restore Programs".  Note:  Paul Mawn, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, said that in order to reach the scale needed for an on-campus ROTC program, some colleges may "have to take a more proactive stance of promoting ROTC, as Harvard has done in the past." "Institutions of higher education should enroll more ROTC students as part of their efforts to increase campus diversity, said Mawn, a retired U.S. Navy captain. More Ivy League colleges can create a positive campus environment for ROTC students by seeking applications from military veterans, as Columbia and Dartmouth have done, he said."
• May-June 2011 Humanities article "Drew Gilpin Faust, Daughter of the South, President of Harvard".  Note: "I felt that Harvard and Harvard students should have connections that would promote this kind of integration of the military with civilian forces and civilian realities. I felt our students would learn a lot, and I felt that it was important for the military as well. I also am very conscious of what General David Petraeus articulated here in a commissioning ceremony for the ROTC cadets a couple of years ago, which is that a soldier’s most important weapon is ideas. And it seems to me very important that the education that Harvard has to offer be something that individuals in the military are able to experience and are encouraged to experience. That was a significant driver in this decision as well."
• 6 May 2011 Harvard Crimson op-ed "“Don’t Ask” about ROTC?" by Sandra Y. L. Korn and James R. Sares.  Note:  The authors describe how the process for reconciling with ROTC has been more open at Columbia, Yale and Stanford than the process at Harvard, and that "the Harvard community still knows little about the process of negotiations or the terms of the deal".  They also note that "Harvard’s anti-discrimination policy promises to protect members of our community from discrimination based on “gender identity.”" but don't mention that the policy refers only to discrimination that is "unrelated to course requirements" as discussed on the Transgender issues page. 
• 9 May 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Due to Ban, Trans Man at Harvard Law School Cannot Serve in U.S. Military".  Note:  Jack K., a vereran who served as a female and now is a Harvard Law School student who would like to serve as a JAG as a male, said of the 4 March 2011 Harvard-Navy signing ceremony "It was incredibly difficult as a vet to stand by the sidelines and watch service members in uniform and ROTC cadets take pride in that moment."  The comments section has an extensive discussion of the transgender issue.
• 23 May 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Before the Military's Estrangement, ROTC Members Do Their Part".  Note:  "At a time when financial aid was not prevalent, a number of participants in ROTC received scholarships from the military. Some, like John R. Verani ’61, received money that covered their entire tuition, plus room and board. He says that when he agreed to serve four years in the Navy, the financial aid he received allowed him to go to Harvard, as his parents could not have afforded the tuition.“It was an opportunity for me to have a Harvard education in exchange for the commitment,” he says. Other students received funding only to pay for the extra ROTC courses they took."
• 24 May 2011 Harvard Gazette article "Harvard in the military: Recent ROTC grads have trained, traveled, and seen combat".  Note:  The article profiles recent graduates now serving in the military.  Among them, Shawna Sinnott ’10 is now an intelligence officer, “where I will be directly applying the knowledge I gained at Harvard through my special concentration in ‘Understanding Terrorism... Nowhere else would I have been able to create such an interdisciplinary concentration, learning from experts in every academic field. With this basis, I am much more confident in how I will be able to approach the threat and aggressively address it.”
• 25 May 2011 Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony.
• 25 May 2011 Remarks at the Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony by MG James McConville.
• 25 May 2011 Harvard Gazette article "Officers of the day: Three commissioned in ROTC ceremony".  Note:  Incoming commander of the 101st Airborne Division Major General James McConville "praised the new officers for taking “a path of service different than your peers,” and called the commissioning ceremony “the defining moment in your life.”"
• 25 May 2011 Harvard Magazine article “Harvard Soldier Scholars”.  Note:  The article includes audio and text of President Faust's remarks at the ROTC Commissioning Ceremony.
• 26 May 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard ROTC Commissions Three Officers".  Note:  "Though the speakers made little mention of the return of Harvard’s ROTC program—choosing instead to focus on the accomplishments of the men being honored—Faust hinted at the renewed relationship between Harvard and the armed forces.“I hope that your place in a long and now fully-invigorated Harvard tradition of military service and sacrifice supports and inspires you in the months and years to come,” Faust said, speaking in front of a crowd that spanned the front row sections of Tercentenary Theatre."
• 26 May 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Soldiers and Students".  Note:  The article describes the atmosphere at the time ROTC was effectively barred from Harvard in 1969, and how the atmosphere shifted in the early 1990s from an antimilitary one to concerns about the right of gays to serve, which Advocates for Harvard ROTC member Michael Segal described as a "patriotic cause".
• 26 May 2011 Harvard Crimson editorial "Welcoming back ROTC".  Note:  The editors agree with the pro-ROTC dissenting opinion of a minority of the editors in 1968, and commends President Faust for restoring official recognition of ROTC. The editors write that "there can be no better context for an ROTC education than within Harvard’s curriculum and values. It is here that the complexities of moral philosophy, modern politics, and military instruction can be put into dialogue in the grand humanistic tradition of America’s greatest university. Students and teachers of all disciplines and political persuasions challenge and edify each other, and we are confident that the fruits of their considered conversations will redound to the benefit of our nation."  Noting the transgender issue, the editors write "In the spirit of the Edmund Burke, who famously wrote that no one “makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could only do a little,” Harvard should recognize ROTC in the attempt to reform from within a system with a major institutional flaw. We would all benefit from a more tolerant military, and, in true Burkean fashion, recognizing ROTC—rather than rejecting it—seems the most promising route to accomplishing that necessary goal at this point in time." 
• 2 June 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Yale Will Get ROTC Unit on Campus".  Note:  The article observes that Yale getting an on-campus ROTC unit “one-ups” Harvard, but notes that the avaiability of MIT as a nearby host institution for Harvard accounts for the difference.
• 3 August 2011 USA Today article "ROTCs return to Ivy League".  Note:  "In 2010, only 54 students from the Ivy League schools were commissioned through ROTC programs, about 1% of the total students commissioned that year, according to the Pentagon. That was down from 123 in 1993, or about 2%... The number of Navy ROTC midshipmen enrolled in Ivy League schools was 62 last fall, down from 130 in 2005, according to the Navy."  Describing the atmosphere before the thaw this year between elite colleges and ROTC, Paul Mawn, Chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, said "These cadets and midshipmen have been treated by Harvard as if they were members of a banned fraternity".  Referring to attempts to evoke against ROTC the arguments of the Vietnam war protest movement, Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies at Columbia, said "The argument had almost no traction... "I think they were stunned by that."
• 7 September 2011 talk by Paul Mawn at Military Order of the World Wars "Harvard and ROTC: A Current Sitrep".  Note:  The Chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC looks beyond the Harvard-Navy announcement to steps needed for Harvard and the military to work together, both in the short-term through the MIT hosting of ROTC, and in the long run with possible Harvard hosting.
• 19 September 2011 Harvard video "U.S. Navy Captain Curtis R. Stevens, Midshipman 1st class Evan Roth '12, and Midshipman 3rd class Catherine Philbin '14 discuss the demands and rewards of life in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at Harvard University."
• 20 September 2011 WBUR item "ROTC Returns To Harvard Campus".  Note:  "Harvard President Drew Faust said the real change will be in the program’s visibility, with a director and office on campus.“That office will be in a building that houses many undergraduate activities and so students will see it, have access to it and the presence of the military on campus will be evident to them,” Faust said. The school will also start taking direct financial responsibility for the costs of the program, which have previously been covered by alumni donations. For now, the agreement extends only to the Naval ROTC, but Faust said Harvard is talking with other branches about their possible return to campus."
• 20 September 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard Officially Welcomes ROTC: Naval ROTC office's opening is first concrete step in renewed relationship".  Note:  "A ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday afternoon celebrated the opening of a satellite office for the Navy on Harvard’s campus... The newly created Naval ROTC office will be housed on the second floor of the Student Organization Center at Hilles and will seek to support cadets on campus."
• 20 September 2011 Harvard Gazette article "Opening day: Campus office for Naval ROTC is first in 40 years".  Note:  "Harvard-ROTC implementation committee co-chair Kevin Kit Parker, an Army major, could not attend. He is now on his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan."
• 21 September 2011 Boston Globe article "ROTC back at Harvard after 40 years: Navy is first branch to have privileges restored".  Note:  "“To use a military analogy, I think this is a very important beachhead,’’ said Paul E. Mawn, a retired Navy captain and 1963 Harvard graduate. “But as far I’m concerned, the mission is not accomplished.’’... Mawn, who also heads the group Advocates for Harvard ROTC, said he would not be satisfied until the school had a robust military presence with scholarships targeted at veterans and more programs encouraging students to enlist."  See video here.
• 21 September 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Hopes High for More Cadets with Return of NROTC".  Note:  Harvard is working on improving the logistics of transportation to ROTC classes at MIT.
• 21 September 2011 Harvard Gazette article "Of brass and khakis: Harvard students learn military life, on land, sea, and in air".  Note:  "Sebastian Raul Saldivar of Dallas was one of the Harvard freshmen who took the oath on Aug. 21. “I remember watching 9/11 unfold in a third-grade class,” Saldivar explained as his main inspiration to serve. “I saw innocent and helpless men and women attacked. I knew I wanted to protect. I saw so many Americans unite to help, I knew I wanted to serve.”"
• 22 October 2011 Harvard ROTC Aviation Award 2011. Note:  Harvard Navy ROTC graduate James Reach '11 took two flights in vintage east-block aircraft as winner of the 2011 Harvard ROTC Aviation Award.
• 27 October 2011 Harvard Gazette article "A Harvard perspective on military service".  Note:  The Office of Career Services just published “After Harvard: Considering Military Service,” its newest informational guide... The 20-page guide was written by three members of Crimson Serves, a nonprofit group run by veterans currently at Harvard".  One of the authors said “The fact that it’s on the wall next to the investment banking and consulting brochures.. gives this career path a level of visibility and a level of legitimacy I don’t think it had in the past."
• 7 November 2011 Harvard Crimson editorial "Saluting the Military".  Note:  "the Office of Career Services hosted a panel on careers in the military. Graduate students who had served in the Marine Corps, Navy, Army, and Air Force spoke to current students, fellow military alumni, and military policy experts. The popularity of this event attests to the military’s heightened role on campus, after President Drew Faust welcomed back the Reserve Officer Training Corps earlier this year.  This was a highly positive move, as the new policy reversed an antiquated antagonism against the military and better reflects where the University stands on the institution at this point in its history. In this context, the panel—and the military’s presence at other career fairs this year—reflects career counseling at its best, providing students with the resources to explore a variety of professional options."
• 10 November 2011 Harvard Gazette article "To honor the living and the dead: Veterans Day ceremony on 11/11/11 will unveil new memorial tablet".  Note:  "The holiday is especially significant for Harvard, since it’s the first Veterans Day in 40 years when there has been a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) office on campus."  The new memorial tablet reflecting all 17 known Medal of Honor recipients from Harvard was timed for Veterans Day.
• 11 November 2011 National Review article "Crimson Valor: Harvard embraces its long-forgotten military past" by Brian Bolduc.  Note:  The article describes how Harvard's reconciliation with the military goes beyond the welcoming of ROTC.
• 11 November 2011 National Review article "Harvard Veterans Mark Holiday".  Note:  "Thomas Reardon, president of the Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization said “For the first time in 40 years", the university had “something to celebrate” on Veterans’ Day. Gone was “the ominous pall” that had descended on the campus in 1969, when the university ejected ROTC in protest of the Vietnam War."
• 22 November 2011 Harvard Crimson article "Female ROTC Member Challenges Stereotypes".  Note:  A woman decided to transfer to the Marine option in the Navy ROTC unit, and is not only beating the physical ability goals for females but approaching those for males.

2012:

• 18 January 2012 Wall Street Journal letter "Navy Working to Restore Relations With Elite Colleges" by Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Juan Garcia.  Note:  Garcia, the Pentagon's point man in negotiating the Naval ROTC deals with elite colleges, responds to a 30 December op-ed by writing that those deals "go well beyond the opening of an office. Both Columbia and Harvard agreed to permit access to classrooms, auditoriums, athletic facilities and outdoor fields for ROTC activities. Naval ROTC instructors will conduct office hours for both ROTC midshipmen and non-ROTC students, and the universities will now denote NROTC activities on student transcripts and in the course catalog."  Texts of those agreements have not been released.  Garcia noted that in the past 2 years the Navy opened "host units at Yale University, Arizona State University, the largest undergraduate population in the country, and at Rutgers University, a top-ranked engineering school".  He states that "NROTC is at 15 of the nation's top 25 universities", though that statistic includes colleges such as Harvard in which all classes are taught at cross-town programs. 
• 21 March 2012 Harvard University Gazette article "Harvard formally recognizes Army SROTC: Signed an agreement with U.S. Army to re-establish on-campus relationship".  Note:  The arrangement is similar to the 2011 agreement with the Navy.  Harvard Army ROTC students will continue to train at MIT but Harvard will now "will resume direct financial responsibility for the costs of its students’ participation in the program and it will provide the Army with office space and access to classrooms and athletic fields."
• 22 March 2012 New York Times article "Ban Lifted, R.O.T.C. to Return to Harvard’s Campus".  Note:  "Under its agreement with the Army, Harvard will provide office space for the local R.O.T.C. commander to conduct classes and counseling sessions with cadets. It will also make classrooms and athletic facilities available for training. And it will assume financial responsibility for administrative costs associated with the program. Those costs were covered by a Harvard alumni group since the R.O.T.C. left the campus... Colonel Hall, who is a visiting professor of military science at M.I.T., said that he was considering recommending that the program hold some its classes and physical training sessions at Harvard. “I’ve gotten to see a lot of prospects and I’ve heard Harvard students say, ‘I would do R.O.T.C. if it were on campus,’ ” the colonel said. “This is going to make R.O.T.C. a little more accessible.”"
• 22 March 2012 Harvard Crimson article "After 43 Years, Army Welcomed in Harvard Yard Once More".  Note:  "Jia Hui Lee ’12, a former member of the Trans Task Force. said that the administration had invited the Trans Task Force to the official recognition ceremony for Army SROTC—a gesture he said he appreciated."
• 28 March 2012 Harvard Army ROTC Office Opening Ceremony.
• 28 March 2012 Remarks by President Faust: Army ROTC ribbon-cutting ceremony and reception.
• 28 March 2012 Remarks by Harvard College Dean Evelynn Hammonds at the Army ROTC Welcoming Ceremony to Harvard.
• 28 March 2012 Remarks by Col. Twala D. Mathis at the Army ROTC Welcoming Ceremony to Harvard.
• 28 March 2012 Remarks by Lt. Col. Timothy J. Hall at the Army ROTC Welcoming Ceremony to Harvard. 
• 28 March 2012 Harvard University Gazette article "Renewing Harvard-Army ties: Ceremony marks opening of ROTC office".  Note:  "Starting immediately, ROTC cadets will conduct physical training on campus once a week. And by September, some ROTC freshman courses in military science will be offered in a Harvard classroom as part of a pilot program."
• 28 March 2012 US Army article "Army ROTC officially welcomed back to Harvard".  Note:  LTC Tim Hall announced "starting in the fall of 2012, we will offer our freshmen courses on Harvard's campus, in addition to my offerings at MIT, on a pilot basis, to determine if there is sufficient student interest to justify further offerings of courses at Harvard". The article relates that the atmosphere was "joyous and positive" and "One of the tasks Hall performed after the ceremony was remounting a historic saber presented to the first commander of the Harvard Regiment. Capt. Constant Cordier so impressed the members of the Harvard Regiment that they presented him with an Army officer's saber May 30, 1916."
• 29 March 2012 Harvard Crimson article "With Ceremony, Army ROTC Moves In to the Quad".  Note:  "Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds said that Harvard’s distance from MIT had in the past deterred some students who might have been interested in ROTC.  “The two-mile trek to MIT for our students was a distance not only physical but also metaphorical,” she said. “I believe today we create a space for our future civic leaders to form relationships with our future military leaders, deepening the perspective for all concerned.”...  Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that his office would look for applicants interested in ROTC during the admissions process."
• 2 April 2012 Harvard Crimson editorial "The Army Arrives: New ROTC program merits welcome, offers opportunities".  Note:  "Harvard opened the door for a valuable form of public service—military service—to return to a place heavily steeped in the civic tradition of the armed services".
• 4 April 2012 Harvard Crimson column "Making ROTC Work at Harvard" by William H. Ryan ’14.  Note:  Ryan argues that ROTC being effectively barred from Harvard in the 1960s was due to academic issues, not the Vietnam War, an hypothesis given little credence by those who lived through the era.  The article fails to mention that the arrangements on course credit and faculty appointments now are very different from those in the 1960s, and indeed bear a lot of similarity to the reform proposals in the 1960s that were thrown aside as anti-war fervor escalated.
• 7 May 2012 New York Times article "After War Room, Heading Ivy League Classroom".  Note:  "In the last year, Harvard, Yale and Columbia have invited R.O.T.C. back to campus after banning the program during Vietnam, citing the end of the military’s ban on openly gay troops as the reason. The hiring of retired military officers as teachers in the Ivy League is part of the same evolution... “There is almost no antimilitary bias among students,” said John Lewis Gaddis, a Yale history professor and the recipient of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for biography, who has welcomed General McChrystal to Yale. “I wouldn’t say it’s true among the faculty.”"  Also, Ivy League colleges "still shy from teaching military history, although that is changing. (The Yale historian Paul Kennedy is developing a course on the military history of the West for undergraduates and Air Force R.O.T.C. students at Yale this fall.)"
• 23 May 2012 Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony
• 23 May 2012 Harvard President Drew Faust Remarks at the 2012 ROTC Commissioning Ceremony.  Note: President Faust said "The Founding Fathers cautioned that we as a nation must not permit the military to become separated from its society and its citizenry. In the era of the All-Volunteer Force, we must be particularly attentive to this imperative. And as Harvard seeks to shape that society and educate its citizens, it must necessarily be connected to its military. We must ensure that Harvard students understand military service as a choice to consider and honor, even if – and perhaps especially if – they pursue other paths. And we hope that students from Harvard will dedicate themselves to military service in increasing numbers, using their remarkable talents to play a significant part in the responsibility and the privilege of defending our nation. I am pleased to see that indication of interest in participation in ROTC from members of next year’s freshman class is very high, and I hope to see many of them on this stage four years from now."
• 23 May 2012 LTC Timothy Hall Remarks at Harvard ROTC Commissioning. 
• 23 May 2012 Navy Secretary Ray Mabus Remarks at Harvard ROTC Commissioning. 
• 23 May 2012 Harvard Magazine article "Harvard ROTC Commissions Four Officers".  Note:  Navy Secretary Ray Mabus '75 said "when I ended my military service and came to law school here, ROTC was gone. I am very proud that our country today may debate the purpose of a war, but is united in the support of the warriors who fight. And I am proud to have been a partner with President Drew Faust…in bringing ROTC back to Harvard—one of the great delights I’ve had in this job."
• 24 May 2012 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard ROTC Commissions Four".  Note:  The graduates reflected on the progress in the Harvard-ROTC relationship in recent years with the Army and Navy, and the desire for similar progress with the Air Force.
• 24 May 2012 Harvard Crimson op-ed "ROTC Is Not Any Other Scholarship" by Adam M. Guren '08.  Note:  A former Crimson editorial chair writes that Harvard "should take steps to mitigate the extent to which its generous financial aid undermines the military’s ability to recruit Harvard students to ROTC...  Harvard treats ROTC scholarships as any other non-Harvard scholarship: it first reduces students’ term-time and summer earnings expectations and uses any remaining funds to replace Harvard grants. For many families, the net effect of an ROTC scholarship is still positive, but the financial benefit of ROTC is far smaller than at institutions without such generous financial aid... the University should consider other ways in which an ROTC scholarship should be treated differently from a standard outside scholarship... Some may argue that ROTC scholarships should be treated the same as other non-Harvard scholarships. But ROTC scholarships are different. They come with a quid pro quo of four years of military service that makes them a singular recruiting device for a unique form of service the University has deemed particularly honorable."  As noted in the comments, "One possibility would be to allow ROTC and Harvard scholarships to combine to produce a full scholarship, without any loan burden. This has been raised with Harvard officials at the highest levels, and it appears that there is concern this would violate Ivy scholarship rules and the principles that underlie them. But as argued in this article, ROTC is not any other scholarship, and this issue needs to be re-opened at the highest levels, even if that means an Ivy-wide re-examination of the scholarship rules."
• 16 July 2012 Sudbury Town Crier article "Sudbury Navy officers meet with Secretary of the Navy".  Note:  At Harvard ROTC Commissioning Advocates for Harvard ROTC chairman Paul Mawn met with Navy Secretary Ray Mabus.
• 11 September 2012 Wall Street Journal article "ROTC Returns to Harvard: Armed Services Training Is Back After Exiting Some Schools Over Vietnam War".  Note:  Army ROTC students reported to duty on 10 September at Harvard university; "under new agreements with the Navy and Army, Harvard will offer ROTC funding, prominently placed offices, military-science classes and campus-based training - from combat first aid to land navigation."  See associated photos and video.
• 11 September 2012 Harvard Gazette Article "Back to basics: Army cadets work out at Harvard for first time in 41 years".  Note:  On 13 September "Harvard will host the first military science class taught on campus since 1971, when ROTC was banned from University property in the wake of Vietnam-era protests".
• 25 September 2012 Wall Street Journal op-ed "ROTC Returns to the Ivies: This month, the first military-science class is being taught at Harvard since the Vietnam War era" by Jonathan E. Hillman.  Note:  A graduate student at Harvard, who also leads Brown Alumni for ROTC, describes the first ROTC class at Harvard of this century.  He noted "the standing invitation for any Harvard student or faculty member to attend the course shows that the program has nothing to hide.  I was there to witness history, but the students making it were there for many reasons. During a round of introductions, one cadet explained that he chose Harvard for its academic rigor but wanted "to challenge both body and mind.""  See letters on 29 September.
• October 2012 Military Order of the World Wars article (pp. 16-17) "Harvard Honored: Harvard Leaders Receive Silver Patrick Henry Awards at the Greater Boston Chapter".  Note:  Silver Patrick Henry Awards were presented to CAPT Paul E. Mawn, USN (Ret), and LT Malcolm T. Hill, Jr., USNR (Fmr) for their role in the return of ROTC to Harvard.
• October 2012 Upcoming Harvard Club of Boston talk "Philip Keith '68, Author of "Crimson Valor"".  Note:  The talk about the book about Harvard's Medal of Honor recipients is scheduled for 16 October 2012.
• October 2012 Upcoming Harvard Club of New York dedication "Harvard Club of New York and its Medal of Honor Members".  The dedication is scheduled for 7 November 2012.
• 25 October 2012 Harvard Crimson column "Welcome to East Point? Harvard welcomes ROTC, but not critique of the military" by Sandra Korn.  Note:  Korn criticizes the Harvard Gazette for having "made a concerted effort to publicize one of Harvard’s newest student organizations, the Reserve Officer Training Corps Association" and President Faust for restoring ROTC "without room for critical discourse".
• 29 October 2012 The Atlantic article "For Transgendered Soldiers, Don't Ask Don't Tell Carries On" by Colin Daileda.  Note:  The article cites several reasons why changing the status quo on the issue of transgender people in the military could be less of a battle than occurred for inclusion of gays and lesbians.  One is that no change in law is needed, and another is that faculty of top medical schools would get taken more seriously by the military now that their universities have welcomed ROTC.  The article cites claims by some that gender is as simple as XX versus XY, a notion belied by extensive knowledge of the genetics of gender determination and by changes over recent decades in medical policies on neonatal surgery for ambiguous genitalia.  The article notes that transgender people are twice as likely to have served in the military than the general population, evidently making their transition in post-military years. 
• 13 November 2012 Fox News article "Harvard slammed for “anti-military” ROTC policy".  Note:  Harvard does not consider its financial aid and ROTC scholarships to be additive in any way.  A student getting an ROTC scholarship has the corresponding amount deducted from Harvard financial aid.  Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel Rick Coveno said of his daughter, an Army ROTC student at Harvard, "From our perspective, ROTC is earned money from her five-year service commitment in the military and it's not some grant or other free money... That's very little incentive, almost a disincentive, to do all that extra work for ROTC when if you do nothing you get about the same amount of financial aid."
• 16 November 2012 Harvard University Gazette article "Stars and stripes at The Game: Harvard-Yale game to include special recognition of military".  Note:  In addition to the flyover, "At the end of the first quarter, all attendees who have served, as well as all active members of the military, will be asked to stand and will be recognized for their service to the United States."
• 17 November 2012 Harvard-Yale game flyover.  Note:  One of the F18s was piloted by piloted by Harvard ROTC graduate Lieutenant Danielle Thiriot ’07.

2013:

• January 2013 American Legion Magazine article "The Return of ROTC".  Note:  The article details the history of universities and military training, going back to 1775, and including the Morrill Act of 1862 and the Preparedness Movement founded in 1914, for which the Ivy League was "a hotbed".
• 17 January 2013 Fox News article "Harvard ROTC policy less generous than other schools".  Note:  If a Harvard student gets an ROTC scholarship, the university will reduce or eliminate its financial aid, even if the student still ends up paying university fees. Rick Coveno, father of a Harvard student whose financial aid was stopped by Harvard.  "From our perspective, ROTC is earned money from her five-year service commitment in the military and it's not some grant or other free money.. That's very little incentive, almost a disincentive to do all that extra work for ROTC when, if you do nothing you get about the same amount of financial aid."  "MIT and Boston University say the size of ROTC scholarships varies from cadet to cadet, but they allow students to eliminate loans and the amount they're expected to earn working before cutting need-based financial aid"
• 7 February 2013 Harvard Crimson article "Women on the Battlefield: ROTC Responds".  Note:  In discussing the need for women in combat units, Carolyn F. Pushaw ’16, a Naval ROTC student notes that in many Middle Eastern cultures, “There’s such a gender divide that we need women to associate with Middle Eastern women in situations where men can’t really do that”.
• 26 February 2013 The Sagamore (Brookline High School, Massachusetts) article "Joining the US military".  Note: Brookline High School guidance counselor Clifton Jones notes that “In more affluent communities, families are against the military coming in and doing presentations... For the Marines, it is difficult for them to come in. And that is why we think we have less and less kids” going into the military.  Undeterred, a high school student writes an article about serving in the military and ROTC.
• 15 March 2013 Harvard Crimson article "U.S. Navy Awards Faust for Welcoming ROTC".  Note: "Navy Secretary Ray E. Mabus presented the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award to Faust in a surprise ceremony in his Pentagon office for her “total commitment to the NROTC.”"
• 29 May 2013 Harvard ROTC Commissioning Ceremony.
• 29 May 2013 Harvard Magazine article "The Right Way to Honor Veterans".  Note:  At the ROTC Commissioning ceremony, Harvard President Drew Faust "quoted Admiral Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at West Point, who said the military’s work was appreciated, but added that he feared that people “do not know us” and the burden service members endure."
• 29 May 2013 "Remarks at 2013 ROTC Commissioning Ceremony" by Harvard President Drew Faust.  Note:  Faust said "We are in danger of becoming what Admiral Mullen calls “a people uninformed.” That was a significant part of why I was committed to welcoming ROTC back to Harvard. As citizens, we have an obligation to understand our military and to ensure that it and its members do not stand apart from our national life. We must take responsibility for our interdependence."
• 29 May 2013 Address by LTC David R. Downer '63 at Harvard ROTC Commissioning.
• 30 May 2013 Harvard Crimson article "ROTC Commissioning Ceremony 2013".  Note: A photo gallery from the ceremony.

2014

• 28 May 2014 Harvard Magazine article "Service, and Families".  Note:  Seven graduating from Harvard College received commissions as officers in a ceremony in Harvard Yard.  The page has links to the audio of the ceremony and a PDF of the program.
• 28 May 2014 Harvard Gazette "Moving on to the military: Ceremony launches seven ROTC graduates in Marines, Navy, Air Force".  Note:  Harvard president "Faust recalled the hundreds of former Harvard students who died in World War I and whose names and memories are preserved in the Memorial Church. She also recounted the words of Capt. Constant Cordier, commander of the new 1,000-student Harvard Regiment, precursor of the Army ROTC, who said in 1916: “In all this land, there is no better material for officers than is found in the student body of Harvard.”"
• 28 May 2014 Remarks at ROTC Commissioning Ceremony by Harvard President Drew Faust.  Note:  President Faust told the graduates "You are distinguished among your classmates and fellow citizens by virtue of your connections to two institutions with lasting and storied legacies: the Unites States military and Harvard University. Your accomplishments are intertwined with their histories, and you will and have shaped them as they have shaped and will shape you. Just as many professors and fellow classmates have learned about the military by having you in their House, or section, or classroom, there will be many—in the military and elsewhere—who will come to know Harvard through you."
• 1 June 2014 Second Line of Defense article "Harvard University and the US Military: Shaping An Effective Future Relationship".  Note:  The chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC outlines goals for strengthening the ties between Harvard and the military.
• 1 June 2014 "Harvard University & the US Military – an introspection" by Paul Mawn, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC.
• 8 July 2014 Harvard Gazette article "Academic boot camp: Harvard hosts program that smoothes way for veterans to attend college".  Note:  Harvard hosted a weeklong pilot program presented by the Warrior-Scholar Project for veterans thinking of making a transition from the military to college.  “There are some important lessons in the combination of the warrior-scholar,” Harvard president Drew Faust said, including discipline, leadership, teamwork, and selflessness. “You have such important messages and lessons to bring.”
• 21 October 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed "Vote for Tom Cotton—and Redeem Harvard".  Note: A retired Harvard professor looks back at the era in which Harvard shunned ROTC, "A university conveys as much through its policies as it does in classrooms, and to dissuade students from considering military service could mean only one of several things: “Democracy needs no defenders,” or “This country is not worth defending,” or “Let some losers do the fighting for you”".  She adds that "Although ROTC is now formally tolerated at Harvard, there has been no faculty initiative to educate for patriotism and military service" but doesn't elaborate on what such an initiative would look like.  See responses on 27 October and 10 November.
• 27 October Wall Street Journal letters "Arms and the Man: Harvard’s Long Military History".  Responding to Prof. Ruth Wisse's op-ed, Bruce S. Lane ’52 writes that he is "saddened by Harvard’s 40-year removal of ROTC from the campus—an act of overreaction to the Vietnam War that was taken at the behest of students as well as faculty at Harvard and many other colleges, including Yale and other Ivy League schools. Fortunately, Harvard’s current president, Drew Faust, and the current faculty have righted that wrong."  However, Harvard's restoration of ROTC was carried out without a faculty vote.  See another letter on 10 November.

2015

• 26 February 2015 Harvard Crimson article "Boots on the Ground: ROTC at Harvard".  Note:  The article describes how little has changed for ROTC students at Harvard since formal recognition of Navy and Army ROTC in 2011 and 2012. Potential changes being discussed include coordinating the ROTC and Harvard admissions processes better, paying for student living expenses not covered by ROTC scholarships, and a more clear liaison within the Harvard administration to ROTC students.  One change appreciated by the students is the mentorship program with veterans affiliated with Harvard, organized by the Harvard Veterans Organization.  The article also includes film of the 1969 anti-ROTC demonstrations. 
• 25 May 2015 The Long Crimson Line: White Paper on the Integration of Harvard University and the US Military by Everett S. P. Spain, DBA ’14 & Daniel T. Fisher, MPP/MBA ’16, Harvard Veterans Organization. Note: The paper focuses on ROTC and how Harvard has fallen behind comparable schools. The paper includes suggestions of changes in financial aid, appointments and admissions to address these differences.
• 27 May 2015 Harvard Gazette article Graduating to a life in service: ROTC commissioning ceremony honors four Harvard seniors.  
• 27 May 2015 Harvard Magazine article “The Spirit of Commitment and Sacrifice”.  Note:  4 Harvard ROTC students were commissioned as officers.
• 23 June 2015 AM red skies – Harvard & the various ROTC programs by Paul Mawn '63, Chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC.
• 30 December 2015 Wall Street Journal op-ed "At Last, Some Campus Sanity: ROTC Gains" by Jonathan E. Hillman and Cheryl Miller.  Note:  "Yale, with 41 midshipmen, boasts the largest NROTC unit in the Ivy League. Harvard senior Charlotte Falletta was recognized as one of the top 10 Army cadets in the nation... There are plenty of opportunities to improve recruitment efforts. Cornell, MIT and other universities allow prospective students to indicate their interest in the military on their application and pursue ROTC scholarships. Once admitted, interested students receive more information and guidance from ROTC staff. More institutions should adopt this practice... Faculty should also consider designing courses that meet both ROTC and university standards, such as Professor Paul Kennedy ’s popular military history course at Yale... As former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates told an audience at Duke University five years ago: “A return of ROTC back to some of these campuses will not do much good without the willingness of our nation’s most gifted students to step forward.” But if this year’s talented graduates are any indication, many more young Americans will answer that call."
• 23 November 2015 Conversations with Bill Kristol interview with Prof. Larry Summers.  Note:  The former Harvard president discussed ROTC from 49:52 - 55:55 of this interview.  Summers said "There’s a serious issue of the degree of estrangement between people who wear uniforms and people who are in academic communities. Public service is always a value that's being extolled in universities. I was always careful when I spoke about public service to include military service as an example of public service. That is very much the exception. I have not served in the military, but I don't understand how one can regard working in a school, though it’s not morally inferior, as morally superior to being involved in the direct defense of freedom. It seems to me it's very important to recognize that."

2016

• 4 February 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Four-Star General McDew Emphasizes Importance of ROTC".  Note:  "McDew, who is the commander of the United States Transportation Command— which controls all transportation for the Department of Defense— emphasized the importance of ROTC at Harvard and more generally, saying such programs “allow the American public to better understand its military.”“In our democratic society, it’s vitally important that we have the support of the American public,” he said."
• 18 March 2016 Boston Globe article "At Harvard, Garland urged debate on ROTC".  Note:  "As a Harvard student government leader in the early 1970s, Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, played a key role in efforts to hold a referendum that would have asked students if the university should end its campus ban on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps... More than 40 years later, it could give Senate Republicans opposing his nomination to the high court ammunition to say he did not sufficiently defend the US military in the face of left-wing activists. Under pressure from a leftist group called the New American Movement, which had gathered 2,500 signatures, Garland asked a student-faculty steering committee to formally initiate debate on a campuswide referendum in October 1973 that asked whether the university should allow ROTC to return to campus, or keep its policy that effectively banned the group... At a time of anti-Vietnam War protests and student activism, such a vote probably would have shown the student body overwhelmingly favored keeping the ban in place — placing intense pressure on the Harvard administration to continue the ban. Indeed, as the threat of a referendum loomed, the administration signaled that no move was afoot to relax the ROTC ban, according to Crimson reports at the time. As a result, the larger student committee, including Garland, voted to scuttle the referendum effort — but on a provisional basis, as long as the administration did not propose lifting the ROTC ban. “It was not the time to revisit that issue,” said David Johnson, who was at Harvard with Garland and was also a student representative who voted on the ROTC issue."
• 24 March 2016 speech at West Point "To Be “A Speaker of Words and a Doer of Deeds:” Literature and Leadership" by Harvard President Drew Faust.  Note: President Faust stressed the importance of communication skills for leaders.
• 6 April 2016 Harvard Crimson column "Thank You for Your Service: Worshipped, yet forgotten" by Nathan L. Williams '18.  Note:  An Army ROTC student writes "When someone confronts me with the phrase “thank you for your service,” my mind freezes. Do I respond to this with another “thank you”? Should I silently nod, or would that come off as rude? Or should I tell them the truth: that I’m a cadet, not a soldier. I’ve never been deployed."
• 7 April 2016 Harvard Crimson op-ed "Recognized, Not Respected " by Charley Falletta '16.  Note:  A Harvard senior in Army ROTC noted remarks by President Faust at West Point and observed that Faust "has been frustratingly slow to respond to the cadets and midshipmen on her own campus."  Falletta notes that Yale has made ROTC a priority, and its ROTC programs are growing, while Harvard's programs are shrinking.
• 21 April 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard to Officially Recognize Air Force ROTC".  Note:  "President Drew G. Faust and Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James will sign an agreement in Loeb House on Friday morning to renew the relationship between the two institutions... “ROTC students bring different and important perspectives that enhance and enrich the educational experience for the entire Harvard community, and we are delighted to have Air Force ROTC represented again at Harvard,” Anna Cowenhoven, a spokesperson for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in a statement." 
• 21 April 2016 USAToday column "Ivy League should do more to promote ROTC" by ML Cavanaugh. Note: An Army major notes that the number of students in ROTC at Harvard has declined under President Faust and suggests that Harvard and other Ivy League schools can do more to encourage and support ROTC students.
• 21 April 2016 Boston Globe op-ed "Harvard and the Air Force, together again" by Deborah Lee James.  Note:  The Secretary of the Air Force wrote "For our country to remain a beacon of freedom and progress, we must continue to seek and embrace the intellect across America, both in and out of uniform. Our Air Force and our nation need the contributions that ROTC cadets offer, and we are proud to help them make the transition from Harvard Crimson to Air Force Blue."
• 22 April 2015 Harvard Gazette article "Air Force ROTC returns to Harvard".  Note:  "[Harvard President Drew] Faust said. “So as we complete our work to return ROTC to campus with today’s signing, let us renew our support for them and our commitment to shared values: service, community, inclusion, and opportunity.”"
• 25 April 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Faust Signs Agreement to Recognize Air Force ROTC".  Note: Harvard President Drew Faust said “We honor today the courage, devotion, and skill of women and men who continue to regard military service as public service and whose numbers I hope increase in the years ahead”.  Although numbers of ROTC students fell during the years in which Faust has been president, the number of admitted students with ROTC scholarships has increased for the class of 2020.
• 26 April 2016 Harvard Crimson editorial "Thank You, ROTC: Harvard’s recognition of Air Force ROTC is a long overdue step of gratitude".  Note:  The editors wrote "The best way for us to show thanks to our classmates in uniform is to support the ROTC program and to encourage it to grow and flourish.... Ensuring that ROTC students feel included on campus is not simply a matter of practicality, but one of diversity as well. At Harvard, conversations surrounding diversity usually take place in the context of racial and socioeconomic inequality. But as important as those conversations are, we must not lose sight of the value of maintaining different kinds of diversity—diversity of experience, perspective, and even future career paths."
• 23 May 2016 Harvard Gazette article "The military-humanities connection".  Note: Harvard students in ROTC "say they have been ambassadors of a kind to their classmates, who have had a mix of reactions to their decision to become military officers, from curiosity to respect to anxiety and even astonishment.  “For many of my classmates at the College, both from the U.S. and abroad, I was one of the only, if not the only member of the military they had ever met,” said Christian Yoo ’13, now a lieutenant junior grade studying at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in South Carolina. “I think it’s a good thing for them to have had some exposure to and a chance to learn about the U.S. military from their undergraduate classmates, and I’m glad I could play a role in facilitating that growth in understanding.”"  ROTC training includes some highly generalizable skills: Marine Catherine Brown ’14 said “I was trained to be calm and decisive in stressful situations, and to be rational and cognizant of my teammates and environment while hot, tired, hungry, and uncomfortable.”
• 24 May 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Governing the Past: Faust the Historian".  Note:  In a retrospective on the presidency of Drew Faust at Harvard, her welcoming of ROTC is listed as one of her major achievements.
• 25 May 2016  Remarks at ROTC Commissioning by LTC Peter Godfrin, Commander of the Paul Revere Battalion
• 25 May 2016 Harvard Gazette article "Inspired to serve, and lead: 12 seniors honored at ROTC commissioning ceremony".  Note:  12 seniors honored at the ceremony. "It was the largest crop of commissioned officers at Harvard since 2010, President Drew Faust said in her remarks".
• 26 May 2016 Harvard Magazine article "Joining the “Long Crimson Line”".  Note: "2016 marks the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the National Defense Act of 1916, which established ROTC nationwide, as well as the centennial of the establishment of the “Harvard Regiment” that predated ROTC by several months."  Also, President Faust "said Harvard in turn would be participating in the Veterans Administration’s Yellow Ribbon Program by making additional funds available for the first time ever to an unlimited number of eligible students across the University."  David Gergen, J.D. ’67, professor of public service and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School also spoke.  "Citing Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus as his source, he praised Faust for being the only member of a select group of college presidents willing to begin working with the Obama administration on the eventual reintroduction of ROTC units to campus even before “Don’t ask, don’t tell” had been repealed."  Gergen said "The enlisted people know what they’re doing. Please listen to them, please respect them, please get to know them, get to know their lives, because this country needs to be drawn back together, and you, as military officers, are going to be some of the finest people, the most promising people, in the country to do that—once you understand how the rest of the country works, the rest of the country that’s so separated out from us. You can close those gaps.  Use these moments to think about America, the future of America, the place of America in the world. You can become the leaders of the future. We need you, we are hugely proud of you, and we count on you."
• 1 November 2016 US Department of Defense "Carter Announces New Recruiting, ROTC Links to Force of the Future".  Note:  "To make sure ROTC keeps attracting great participants, the department will offer more graduate school scholarships -- especially for law and medical school -- for cadets who are college seniors, the secretary added.  More two- and three-year ROTC scholarships will be offered, he said, and the department will sponsor more high school students interested in science, technology, engineering or math to shadow ROTC cadets at schools that specialize in those fields. To make being a ROTC instructor more attractive to service members, the secretary is directing the military services to ensure their officer promotion and selection boards more appropriately value those who serve as ROTC instructors and not penalize them for it. "
• 1 November 2016 Harvard Crimson column "Repeating History" by Phillip M. Ramirez '18. Note:  The writer, a Naval ROTC student, criticizes Harvard for not having ROTC classes on campus.  However, this is allowed and was tried by Army ROTC recently and there were not enough students to make this practical.  ROTC does currently receive institutional support such as space for offices, physical education and classes.  Also, Harvard did not ban ROTC per se in 1969; rather, it refused to abide by the conditions of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964, forcing the military to withdraw. 
• 10 November 2016 Harvard Gazette article "Harvard ROTC: Soldiers and Scholars".  Note:  One of the photos documents that the Air Force is holding some ROTC classes on the Harvard campus.
• 25 November 2016 Second Line of Defense article "Harvard Alumni and the Origins of US Military and Naval Aviation".  Note: "Following the start of World War I in August 1914, the war clouds on the European horizon motivated over 565 adventurous young men in the United States to volunteer to serve as military aviators for the British and French of which over 11% were Harvard alumni." 

2017

• 20 January 2017 Harvard Gazette article "The long Crimson line: University archives depict Harvard military history".  Note:  The exhibit of four centuries of Harvard and the military runs until 21 February.
• 3 February 2017 Harvard Crimson article "At Exhibit, Faust Honors Harvard’s Military History".  Note:  Harvard President Drew Faust showcased an exhibit about Harvard's long history with the armed services.  "The name of the exhibit itself—“To Serve Better Thy Country”—is part of the inscription etched onto Dexter Gate, which students walk beneath to exit the Yard: “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”"  In her remarks, President Faust noted the relative absence of material from the Vietnam war era, and attendees were given a flyer saying "If you would like to donate material, or have any questions or ideas to share, please contact the University Archives at (617) 495-5961".
• 24 May 2017 Harvard Gazette article "Departing as leaders: Praise, counsel, gratitude for six seniors at ROTC commissioning ceremony".  Note:  Gen. John Hyten ’81 "recalled his own commissioning, which took place at MIT because Harvard had ended ROTC’s formal University presence during the Vietnam War, and praised Faust for her efforts to return ROTC to campus, starting in 2011."
• 24 May 2017 Harvard Magazine article "To Lead Must Necessarily Mean to Serve".  Note:  Gen. John Hyten ’81 discussed the oath for officers: "the cool part about that oath is that it swears allegiance to the ideals written down on a piece of paper—not to a king, not to a monarch, not to a political party, not to a president—to a Constitution."
• 24 May 2017 speech by Harvard President Drew Faust "2017 Remarks at ROTC Commissioning Ceremony".  Note: She said: "our free and open society and our democracy are dependent on citizens’ trust. Yet individuals and institutions are unlikely to be trusted if they seem to be only about themselves. To lead must necessarily mean to serve... Only when there is trust can there be effective leadership."
• 17 August 2017 Dorchester Reporter article "From two Neponset boys, a vote for ROTC and the value of a military life".  Note:  Brothers Patrick and Michael Murray did ROTC at Harvard, joining the traditions in their family and Harvard's long history of military service.
• 27 October 2017 On Point article "The Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps: A Hundred Years Old and Still Going Strong" by Colonel Woolf Gross, USA-Ret.  Note:  The article describes the inception of ROTC at a 1913 meeting at the Harvard Club of New York of Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood and former President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as others, including Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell.  It also describes the 1916 Defense Act, which turned this plan into legislation, and its implementation: "the very first ROTC unit off the mark was Harvard’s. The Roosevelt-Wood-Lowell triumvirate ensured that the university would become the laboratory for the program. Taking the lead as is so often the case resulted in significant overkill with the Harvard Yard becoming, at least initially, a sort of auxiliary West Point. Under President Lowell’s guiding hand, virtually the entire student body became the basis for participation in the ROTC program."  The refinement of ROTC in the National Defense Act of 1920 is also described.

2018

• 10 April 2018 Harvard Crimson column "M16s and MREs: Real weapons, military rations, college kids, no sleep—what could possibly go wrong?" by Garce M. Chao '19.  Note:  A Harvard Army ROTC student discusses how ROTC training involves nontrivial real-life thinking and wider lessons.  "You can perfectly plot your points, plan an ingenious route, shoot perfect compass azimuths, but the woods and terrain will still have the final say" and "as is the case with many events in Army ROTC, the ultimate goal of seemingly irrelevant training is not necessarily developing perfect compass skills, but developing the mental skills to stay calm and collected under pressure... The goal is to develop resilient leaders and effective communicators. Every cadet will need those soft skills, whether they’re leading a real Infantry platoon or commanding a Cyber task force."
• 23 May 2018 Harvard Magazine article "A Profession Based on Honor and Trust".  Note: Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter described how foreigners told him that the United States is widely admired because of the high ethical standards of the US Military, and advised the graduating students to “Always remember to behave yourself as though someone’s mother is watching.”  Six students were commissioned; a 7th, Kirstin Anderson ’18, was commissioned earlier because she is a varsity sailor and "competing with her teammates at the ICSA Women’s National Championship in Norfolk, Virginia this week".
• 23 May 2018 Harvard Gazette article "Purpose in service: Warrior-scholars assume new leadership roles at ROTC commissioning ceremony". 
• 23 May 2018 "2018 Remarks at ROTC Commissioning Ceremony" by Harvard President Drew Faust.  Note:  President Faust said "I have believed it is imperative that Harvard and the military maintain a close relationship... strong connections between Harvard and our armed forces are essential to Harvard’s—and the nation’s—present and future. Harvard students aspiring to be leaders and influencers in America and the world need to understand the military. And the military has and will continue to benefit from the contributions of the extraordinary leaders educated here." 
• 27 October 2018 "Oil & War" by Paul Mawn '63. 

2019

• 25 April 2019 World Magazine article "A league of their own".  Note:  Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Paul E. Mawn, chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, describes the history of Harvard's relationship with ROTC in an article exploring other cases in which universities objected to other organizations besides the military.
• 9 May 2019 Harvard Gazette article "Strong yield for the Class of 2023".  Note:  "Six veterans and 28 students who expressed an interest in ROTC are among the members of the Class of 2023. In recent years, Harvard has increased efforts to recruit individuals who have served in the U.S. military, working with the Defense Department, joining Service to School’s Vetlink program in 2017, and conducting outreach via community college centers for veterans."
• 29 May 2019 Harvard Magazine article "The Greatest Demonstration of Public Service".  Note:  "The ceremony's stentorian guest speaker, General Mark A. Milley, currently Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Princeton graduate joked about infiltrating enemy lines before admitting to having a Harvard brother, but then turned serious. “The probability of your being deployed in harm’s way is very high,” he told the officer candidates—and in the face of that challenge, he offered advice. “Being a military officer is unlike any profession on earth. It’s not just a job, it’s a way of life,” he asserted. The new ensigns and lieutenants would need to be extraordinarily competent as part of their obligation to the men and women looking to them not only for personal leadership but for evidence of competence and character. Those troops “don’t want to follow someone who’s immoral, who’s out there doing things like lying, cheating…They’re looking to you to have the spine to stand up and do that which is right, even when it’s going to cost you your career…who is not afraid to speak truth to power no matter what the cost will be to yourselves. Someone who is honest, who has standards, ….”"
• 29 May 2019 "Remarks at ROTC Commissioning" by Harvard president Lawrence Bacow.  Note:  President Bacow said "Military service is the greatest demonstration of public service. In the years to come, I hope to strengthen the ways in which Harvard acknowledges the contributions of students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps and of active duty and veteran students and alumni from across the University. And I hope to see more undergraduates on this platform in the future, inspired and emboldened by the example you have set for them, and those who have come before you."  He also noted that both the office and home of Harvard presidents had been used by George Washington and his troops during the Revolutionary War.

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