That is what we have done with the refusal to allow ROTC to recruit on Ivy League campuses. To become an American military officer, you would have to go to another college. Without a doubt, it has influenced foreign policy, including our current missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we in Boston suffer the most. Gone is the memory of Joshua Chamberlain, and although the tourist bus makes its first stop on Boston Common at the monument to the historic Black Civil War Regiment, Robert Gould Shaw, who died and was laid to rest with his men, is likewise lost to our collective memory. As Eliot A. Cohen points out in today's Washington Post, many elite universities kicked ROTC off campus during the Vietnam War and never brought it back. But in truth, the military's policies toward homosexuals were, for the most part, merely an excuse for keeping recruiters at bay.

"The attenuated memories of Vietnam, a restoration of patriotic sentiment, a far less turbulent student body and the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have made it easier to contemplate the return of ROTC. During the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain both supported it," But if they don't allow military officers to be trained on their campuses, they should at least, for the present time, receive not a penny more of federal aid.