ROTC makes a comeback at Ivy League schools

In what may be a sign of the military’s return to its former place as one of America’s most trusted institutions, ROTC programs are thriving at the country’s elite colleges. Their renewed popularity comes more than four decades after many were kicked off campuses following the antiwar protests of the 1960s.

At Yale University on Monday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter administered the oath of office to 18 students being commissioned as Navy Ensigns and Air Force Second Lieutenants—the first ROTC commissioning at Yale in more than 40 years.

A 1976 graduate of Yale, Carter was a member of the first class to have no ROTC program on campus.

“Feelings were still raw on campus, including with the faculty,” Carter told reporters during the plane ride to New Haven, Conn., for the ceremony. But during those years, he never “caught the anti-war bug.”

“The climate that was there on campuses when I was in college has really very much dissipated,” he said.

The dissipation of an anti-military stance on elite college campuses comes in part as a result of recent Pentagon policy changes seen as more in line with the politically liberal worldview of many professors and students. Yale did not permit ROTC programs to return until 2012, after the military ended its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays and lesbians.

But Ivy League leaders also increasingly recognize that, as an instrument of U.S. power, the military needs college graduates from across the political and social spectrum.

“We want to produce students who are leaders in every segment of our society,” said Gary Haller, an emeritus professor who led a faculty committee that helped pave the way for the ROTC’s return to Yale. As a young chemistry professor in 1969, Haller voted to kick ROTC off the Yale campus.

“Whether you like the military or not, it is a big segment of our society,”Haller told Reuters.

In his remarks on Monday, Carter told the newly commissioned officers they “helped bridge a divide that persisted for too long,” noting they likely were the first members of the military many of their classmates had ever gotten to know.

In 2016, 122 Navy ROTC midshipmen attended six Ivy League universities, compared to 53 at three Ivy League colleges in 2011. Among Air Force ROTC cadets, 42 studied in the Ivy League in 2016, compared to 28 in 2011. A Navy ROTC program will open at Brown University this fall.

The increasing popularity of a military career among the nation’s elite college graduates also helps the all-volunteer force broaden its geographic and demographic diversity at a time when the armed forces have been drawing from a very small percentage of American society. Military recruiters, who have less difficulty in the South, could find it easier to make their pitch in more urban, coastal areas.

“Even if you’re capturing a small portion, you’re leavening the force with folks who are graduating from elite schools,” Katherine Kidder, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Reuters.

Recruiting at elite schools is also consistent with Carter’s initiatives to attract the best talent from the private sector, including Silicon Valley tech experts and other groups typically outside the Department of Defense orbit.

“Our nation is strongest when we draw from all of our strengths, and when we give our best people every opportunity to serve,” he told Yale graduates. “Competing for good people for an all-volunteer force is a critical part of our military edge, and everyone should understand this need and my commitment to it.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.