Faculty's Analogy Inappropriate

Of the arguments raised in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences against the Corporation's correct but difficult decision to continue participation in ROTC the analogy to discrimination against Jews and to the German faculties' failure to stand up against the expulsion of Jews by the Nazis from their universities seems to me the most moving but also the most inapposite.

The argument ignores the fact that, unlike the Nazi analogy, the military's policies regarding service by homosexuals are embedded in and are a minor, perhaps mistaken, product of a flourishing democratic process and vigorous constitutionalism that goes further to protect all minorities and every liberty than any other regime known to history. Gestures of defiance or disassociation made against such a regime are rarely justified, particularly if those making the gesture pay no price whatever for it while imposing all the costs on others who may not agree with them. In this the objecting members of the Faculty are quite unlike the brave few who raised their voices against the Nazi expulsions. The objectors remain entirely free to urge their arguments in the political realm or in the courts, where they may yet prevail. Charles Pried   Carter Professor of General   Jurisprudence   Harvard Law School