DADT and ROTC

Congratulations to all whose negotiation and persuasion over the years led to yesterday's vote repealing the Don't Ask Don't Tell rule for the military.

Among the consequences: this removes the last stated objection to the return of ROTC programs to on-campus operations at Harvard and some other elite universities. I've discussed the background extensively, starting here and here. ROTC left these campuses four decades ago because of bitter disagreements over the Vietnam war. That's long in the past; since the early 1990s, the main argument against ROTC's return has been the military's exclusion of openly gay members.

That policy has now been officially overturned. 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.

Update: I see that even as I was writing this, our new politics writer Garance Franke-Ruta published an item saying that such a move was underway.