Ban Lifted, R.O.T.C. to Return to Harvard’s Campus

Source: NYT

Harvard announced on Wednesday that it would open a campus office for the Army R.O.T.C. later this year, a move the Army believes will lead to greater participation in the program by Harvard undergraduates.

The agreement is the latest by several prominent universities to welcome the Reserve Officers Training Corps back on campus four decades after they banned it because of the Vietnam War. Those bans continued into recent years on the grounds that the military discriminated against gay and lesbian troops by barring them from serving openly.

But since Congress lifted that ban, known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, in late 2010, a number of universities have moved to welcome R.O.T.C. back. Last year, Harvard, Columbia and Yale signed agreements to allow the Navy to have an R.O.T.C. office on their campuses.

“This is a welcome step in the long and distinguished history of military service by members of the Harvard community,” Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard, said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/us/ban-lifted-rotc-to-return-to-harvards-campus.html