Update (02/20): the changes in this post reflect amendments made by Professor Silver and communicated to Bwog this morning

Bwog just received the following e-mail:

Professor Allan Silver asked that this faculty-signed statement in support of ROTC at Columbia be distributed: http://advocatesforrotc.org/columbia/2011faculty.pdf
Prof Silver said signatories were limited to full professors, faculty members with full-time appointments, though other professors have expressed support as well. If you have any questions about the statement, please contact Professor Allan Silver directly at as35@columbia.edu .

The statement declares:

The affirmative case for an ROTC program at Columbia has been crowded out by debate over legislation prohibiting military service by open homosexuals. The repeal of that legislation makes it possible to clearly state that case, which can be briefly summarized:

  • It is damaging to democratic ideals of equality that graduates of highly selective, private universities are so underrepresented in the nation’s officer corps.
  • That the officer corps is drawn disproportionately from non-urban settings and other regions of the nation creates an imbalance that benefits neither American society nor its military.
  • At Columbia, military service should be recognized as a form of public service as is service in civil society.
  • Our students’ prevailing experience is of great personal distance from military service, limiting preparation for citizenship.
  • Reciprocally, military leaders are often uncomprehending of the values for which Columbia and its peer institutions stand. A civil-military gap caused by mutual incomprehension is undesirable.
  • Diversity in the student body including students preparing for military service would help alleviate this situation.
  • The university should not put obstacles in the way of students who wish to serve as commissioned officers and, in so doing, help finance their educations.
  • These propositions are independent of judgments as individual citizens of policies involving the armed forces, and about which the university is institutionally neutral

Faculty signing this statement may not agree fully with all its features but all agree with the following:
Provided that ROTC is subject to the same academic procedures as govern other programs, we support the establishment of an ROTC program

Some notable faculty signatures include Among faculty signatories are: Richard K. Betts, Douglas Chalmers, Robert L. Jervis, Kimberly Martin, and Andrew J. Nathan from the Political Science department, Jagdish Bhagwati and Robert E. Findlay from the Economics department, Columbia and Barnard historians Kenneth T. Jackson and Robert McCaughey, and Mark Lilla (Humanities), Robert E. Pollack (Biological Sciences), and Allan Silver (Sociology).