The Left's Campus Bigotry

From Glenn Reynolds' essay at NY Post (via Memeorandum):

My daughter is looking through college-recruitment materials, and pretty much all of them go on at great length about "diversity." To judge from the brochures -- not only the text but also the relentless photos of ethnically diverse students in various settings -- it's apparently the single most important thing that any institution of higher learning can offer.

But though the photos contain representatives of almost every group imaginable, I don't see any students in military uniform.

That's because most of the "high-end" schools mailing us bulletins don't offer ROTC -- a failure of diversity that just attracted comment from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In a recent speech at Duke University, Gates noted that, since the end of the draft and the growth of the volunteer army, America's military has grown increasingly distinct from those who view themselves as our nation's intellectual leaders.

Gates chose Duke for his speech, presumably, because it's one of the very few top schools to offer multiple ROTC programs. Elsewhere -- at Harvard, for example -- ROTC has been banished for decades.

Although Harvard expelled ROTC over the Vietnam War four decades ago (after antiwar students burned down the ROTC center), it now gives as a reason for not reinstating the program the military's adherence to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- though that program was instituted under President Bill Clinton, who has not been similarly barred from the Harvard campus.

Nor has Harvard Law alumnus Barack Obama, who has maintained the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," policy -- and who has urged Harvard to end the ROTC ban.

President Obama's other alma mater, Columbia University, booted ROTC from its campus in 1969 and also hasn't reinstated it. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who tortures and imprisons bloggers and other critics, is welcome at Columbia but not a program to train officers for the US military.

Yet the campus ROTC bans aren't just a reminder of the political pettiness that still plagues America's "top tier" universities; they also have serious costs for the nation.

A powerful essay.

More at the link. And see Instapundit for responses, especially the typically inane one at The Moderate Voice.