As published on WSJ.com on June 2, 2009:

The Ivy school sells out its ‘principles.’

This week the 1,600 or so members of Harvard’s Class of 2009 will leave campus with a coveted Ivy degree. Of this number, seven will leave with something else: the gold bars of a second lieutenant.

At a time when institutions from our banks and auto makers to our churches and public schools seem to have trouble honoring their most basic promises, these young officers enter a life where words have meaning, meaning has consequences, and those consequences can include a flag-draped coffin. Tomorrow on Harvard Yard, Gen. David Petraeus will address these young men and women — four Army, three Marines — at their commissioning ceremony. On a campus where the military is officially unwelcome, that ceremony offers an interesting perspective on what the modern academy teaches us about living by our principles.

The operative principle defining Harvard’s relationship to the military is the university’s non-discrimination policy. Specifically, Harvard’s prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation conflicts with the military’s prohibition on gays serving openly. So the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) remains banned from Harvard’s campus. Military recruiters are grudgingly permitted only because the Solomon Amendment requires the university either to grant them access or to give up its government funding — about 15% of its operating budget, according to the latest annual financial report.

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