When I served as an Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadet at Fordham University in New York City, the Department of War paid for my degree in American Studies. During my coursework, I read books like The New Jim Crow and was bombarded with the claim that the country I had signed up to defend was irredeemably racist and broken. My civilian classmates and professors were overwhelmingly liberal, and the university was in the capital of liberalism. I spent most of my time in that milieu as opposed to dedicated environments conducive to military formation.
ROTC should be nowhere near Fordham University. In fact, the Trump Administration should end ROTC programs in blue states, leftist cities, and anti-American universities, focusing instead on institutions that actually love America. Training military officers in environments that serve the national interest is a critical step toward restoring the U.S. military as a whole.
No longer should ROTC programs be benefactors of the woke and weaponized higher education system. The colleges and universities that ROTC cadets attend—and that the federal government pays for—shouldn’t feature Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) quotas, the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other divisive ideologies, and the promotion of gay and lesbian lifestyles.
The scale of ROTC is vast, and its reach is unparalleled. ROTC programs are found in every state, and a student at any American college has access to ROTC as a path to service as a military officer. ROTC is the largest commissioning source for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, with over 8,000 new officers commissioned each year. The Department of War spends almost $600 million annually on scholarships for these military officers.
ROTC is an essential venue for wresting control of the military away from the Left. The Pentagon should seed officer formation through ROTC in the bastions of conservatism, not metropolises filled with people and ideologies that are committed to everything but instilling patriotic virtue.
Detractors will shriek about supposed missed opportunities for blue-state college students seeking to serve America in ROTC programs. But such proposals to remove ROTC programs from the physical domain of the Left would not be a mandate to discriminate against individuals from blue states who seek to serve. Instead, they would guarantee that those volunteers train and learn in environments that benefit the country and their future military units.
No law or precedent dictates the location of ROTC programs. The service secretaries determine the appropriate placement of programs throughout the country.
Other detractors will lament the lost opportunity to use ROTC programs as a tool to change liberal universities, such as how China would supposedly embrace capitalism and representative government through free trade with America. But recent history belies such notions. Although some universities ended their ROTC programs in the post-Vietnam era, the military and university systems slowly became more intertwined, creating officers who would go on to fill the ranks of the liberal ruling class. In fact, an officer having successive Ivy League degrees is as sure a sign of military advancement as it is of social status.
The time has come for service secretaries to use the authority Congress granted in Title X of the U.S. Code and relocate ROTC programs to institutions that strengthen the country. The Pentagon should stop pouring money into universities and communities that treat America with contempt and redirect those taxpayer dollars to schools and regions that cultivate loyalty, discipline, and service.
This policy does not prevent young men and women from blue states from serving. A young man from Glenview, for instance, might attend the University of Illinois instead of Northwestern. He can still join ROTC, but he should train in an environment where patriotism shapes character and where the academic mission prepares him to lead.
America needs officers who come of age in places that honor the republic, not in institutions that mock it. If we want a military worthy of the flag it defends, we must form its leaders on the campuses that still cherish the republic for which it stands.