ROTC and the Ivies

Donald Alexander Downs; Ilia Murtazashvili

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511844447.007

5 - ROTC and the Ivies

The Divorce

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Donald Alexander Downs and

Ilia Murtazashvili

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Donald Alexander Downs: Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Ilia Murtazashvili: Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh

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Summary

In the years around 1968, a utopian exhilaration swept across the student universe and across several adult universes as well, and almost everyone in my own circle of friends and classmates was swept up in it. . . . Four enormous revolutions were roiling the world, at that one moment. . . . And from each of those revolutions, and from the combination of all four, radiated an intense excitement, which came beaming down on us and on people like ourselves in scattered university towns all over the world . . .

[In later years] it was obvious that those long-ago efforts to change the shape of the world were a young people’s rehearsal, preparatory for adult events that only came later. Suddenly it was obvious that the authentic political revolution of our era was now, not then; liberal and democratic, not radical leftist in the ’68 style; real, not imaginary.

– Paul Berman

Stupidly, we thought revolution was imminent. Our rage blinded us. I now believe that the war in Vietnam drove us crazy.

– Mark Rudd, former leader of Students for a Democratic Society, Columbia University, speaking at the university’s twentieth anniversary of the 1968 crisis

In this chapter, we examine ROTC’s exodus from the Ivy League in the late 1960s, preparing us to look in the next two chapters at the movement to bring the program back after September 11, 2001, including the major steps taken at Harvard and Columbia in early 2011 to recall ROTC after a decades-long exodus. We begin by considering trends in the Ivy League and the nation, focusing later on Columbia University, where the major action took place.

Type: Chapter
Information: Arms and the University
Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military Students
, pp. 131 - 160

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511844447.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

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References

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Student Group Seeks to Cut NROTC CreditColumbia Spectator 23 1965

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Dispute Competence of NROTC FacultyColumbia Spectator 19 1965

Group Wants ROTC to Leave ColumbiaColumbia Spectator 1 1967

College Warns Nine Students to Discontinue NROTC Sit-InColumbia Spectator 7 1968

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Resolution Represents Strongest Move by Major University Against ROTCColumbia Spectator 14 1969

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5 - ROTC and the Ivies

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