The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) is a group of military training programs that partner with colleges and universities to offer students pathways to become commissioned officers upon graduation. The majority of commissioned officers in the U.S. Armed Forces are graduates of an ROTC program. Despite the incredible importance of the program to our national security, ROTC has had a controversial history within the Ivy League. Even though they were among the first schools to adopt the program, Ivy League schools have historically sought to distance themselves from ROTC due to sustained pressure from their civilian student bodies. However, relations between the Ivy League and the U.S. military have gradually warmed, and today ROTC cadets can be found on every Ivy League campus.

A Brief History of the ROTC on Ivy League Campuses

The ROTC was created as a provision of the National Defense Act of 1916. Harvard was the first school in the country to adopt an ROTC program, and by 1918, all of the Ivies had adopted at least one program. Ivy League ROTC alumni formed a large part of the military officer class in World War I and World War II. In the middle third of the twentieth century, there was no stigma attached to participation in any of the programs, and students proudly wore their uniforms on campus.

Everything changed during the Vietnam War. As student protest movements flared up across the Ivy League, most of the schools distanced themselves from their ROTC programs and either shut down training procedures or moved them off campus for the remainder of the war. ROTC programs were gradually reintroduced following the war, but then took another hit during the instatement of the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law banning the participation of gays and lesbians in the military. ROTC programs were once again stigmatized at the Ivies until another major turning point was reached in 2011 with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Since then, ROTC programs have returned to Ivy League campuses. Administrators have grown increasingly tolerant of their presence, and the armed forces themselves have begun to reflect the diversity of Ivy League student bodies. 

Ivy League ROTC Programs

	Air Force ROTC	Army ROTC	Navy ROTC
Brown University	Yes (at Worcester Polytechnic Institute)	Yes (at Providence College)	Yes (at College of the Holy Cross)
Columbia University	Yes (at Manhattan College)	Yes (at Fordham University)	Yes
Cornell University	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dartmouth College	No	Yes (at Norwich University)	No
Harvard University	Yes (at Massachusetts Institute of Technology)	Yes (at Massachusetts Institute of Technology)	Yes (at Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Princeton University	Yes (at Rutgers University)	Yes	Yes (at Rutgers University)
University of Pennsylvania	Yes (at St Joseph’s University)	Yes (at Drexel University)	Yes
Yale University	Yes	Yes (at University of New Haven)	Yes

Today, every Ivy League school allows students to reap the benefits of at least one of the three ROTC programs (Air Force, Army, and Navy), although training facilities are usually hosted at other universities. Cornell is the only university that hosts its own training sessions at university facilities for all three programs. Dartmouth is the only school that does not offer Air Force or Navy ROTC programs, but its Army ROTC program (hosted at Norwich University) is one of the oldest and most distinguished in the nation. Dartmouth has historically been one of the military’s most patriotic academic partners. In fact, the late former Dartmouth President James Wright drafted some of the language in the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill that was passed in 2008!

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