ROTC Returns to Harvard After 45 Years

All ROTC programs are now back at Harvard University after a more than four-decade absence sparked by Vietnam war protests.

Harvard President Drew Faust and Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James signed an agreement in April re-establishing an Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, Stars and Stripes reports.

Navy and Army ROTC programs returned to the Ivy League campus in 2011, after Congress repealed the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring homosexuals from serving in the military.

"Across time and space, they have given generously of themselves on our behalf, and they deserve our respect, our admiration and our gratitude," Faust said at the signing ceremony, Stars and Stripes reports. "So as we complete our work to return ROTC to campus … let us renew our support for them and our commitment to shared values: service, community, inclusion and opportunity."

Harvard was among the first universities to sign onto the ROTC program when it began in 1916, according to Stars and Stripes. The university cut off its relationship with the programs in 1971.

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