The Faculty’s 1969 decision to remove ROTC from campus came in protest of the Vietnam War, but Harvard soon after allowed students to travel to MIT to participate in the program. In April 1990, the Faculty passed a resolution pledging to end cooperation with ROTC because the military does not allow gays and lesbians to serve openly. Three years later, the Faculty voted to stop paying for MIT to train Harvard’s ROTC students. The Faculty also recommended that the University bar ROTC from holding its commissioning ceremony for Harvard cadets in the Yard.

But administrators suspended all three Faculty decisions, keeping the Harvard-MIT consortium alive. Since 1995, however, the University has not directly provided the money for students who cross-register in MIT’s ROTC program, instead allowing a few anonymous philanthropists to donate the funds needed to keep the arrangement going.

Since taking office, University President Lawrence H. Summers has expressed his support for ROTC on multiple occasions—including a November 2001 appearance in an Army videotape promoting the program.

He opposes the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but Summers in the past has repeatedly criticized the ROTC funding arrangement Harvard has with MIT. Speaking to the Undergraduate Council in 2002, Summers called permitting the anonymous alumni to fund the program a “uncomfortable, back-door policy inconsistent with transparency.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has sought to gain broader access to Harvard’s law students. HLS requires that employers who use the school’s official recruiting resources sign an agreement pledging not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The Pentagon has refused to sign the pledge.

In 2002, after the Pentagon threatened to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to Harvard under the Solomon Amendment, then-HLS Dean Robert C. Clark granted military recruiters an exemption from the nondiscrimination pledge.

The House’s action Tuesday came amidst a flurry of litigation challenging the Solomon Amendment. In November, U.S. District Court Judge John C. Lifland, a 1957 HLS graduate, ruled that the statute is constitutional, but questioned the Pentagon’s insistence that schools waive nondiscrimination requirements for military recruiters.

Lifland’s ruling came in a suit filed by the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), a network of 20 law schools challenging the Solomon Amendment. Harvard is not a member of FAIR, but a majority of the HLS faculty filed a friend-of-the-court brief on FAIR’s behalf in January, arguing that the school was in compliance with the amendment even before Clark granted the Pentagon a waiver in 2002.

“I regard the [House] legislation as a concession that we read the current statute correctly,” Professor of Law Janet Halley wrote in an e-mail.

ROTC’S RETURN?

The House measure is the latest development in the effort to bring ROTC back to Harvard’s campus.

David Clayman ’38, chair of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, leads a 1700-member group of faculty, alumni and supporters who are urging the University to offer the military greater support.

“I don’t like the idea of Harvard being forced by legislation to do what they should be doing voluntarily,” said Clayman, who said he never joined the armed services because he could not pass the vision test, but worked as a civilian employee for the Navy.

Although Clayman lamented the need for the House legislation, he said he supports the bill.

“This is something the University should do, and if they don’t do it, they don’t deserve the funding,” Clayman said.

Clayman noted that Congress—not the Pentagon—is responsible for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He said that gay rights advocates who oppose a military presence on campus “have made a statement that is as useful as a hiccup in the wind.”

“Using ROTC as a hostage…serves no purpose,” Clayman said. “Why try to attack the very organization you’re trying to join?”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.