The magnitude of the reaction to Bok's first public mention of ROTC reflects the importance ROTC itself attaches to having even an undersized unit at Harvard.
"As Harvard goes, so goes the Army ROTC program," Col. R.H. Pell, former professor of Military Science and commanding officer of Harvard Army ROTC, wrote in a 1969 memo to the Faculty.
After 53 years at Harvard and in the wake of a struggle that almost irreparably split the University, ROTC finally withdrew in 1969.
While student radicals attacked what they called Harvard's complicity in a criminal and imperialist military, student and Faculty committees produced studies attacking ROTC on more traditional academic grounds.
The Faculty voted 207 to 125 on February 4, 1969 to recommend to the Corporation that course credit, Faculty appointments, and free facilities be denied to ROTC.
The Corporation announced in March 1969 that it would accept the Faculty's recommendation on course credit, but would "do everything possible to keep ROTC" at Harvard.
Three to four hundred protesters occupied University Hall on April 9 demanding an end to Harvard's ROTC program. A bloody police bust ordered by the Administration polarized the Faculty and precipitated an immediate student strike.
The Faculty reaffirmed its earlier vote in a resolution passed 385 to 25 on April 17.
The Corporation subsequently accepted the Faculty's guidelines, and, without the status of regular academic programs, Harvard's ROTC units withdrew.
ROTC's return to Harvard is unlikely. Both Bok and Dean Rosovsky say they have no plans for introducing the issue. No students responded to the Young Republicans' notice last Spring inviting interested students to contact the club. And neither the Faculty nor the Faculty Council currently has ROTC on its agenda.