Volatile Relationships: ROTC and Universities; Violence and Nonviolence

This is a letter to the editor I wrote in response to the articles in Loyola's Phoenix newspaper.

Read the articles here:

ROTC Rights
Should Ignatius wield a sword? Delving into ROTC presence on a Jesuit Campus

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The volatile relationship between Jesuit education and formation and ROTC is not a new one. All but a few of the twenty-eight Jesuit universities in the U.S. participate in ROTC in some way. In many of the universities the issues are raised in terms of financial responsibility, accessible education, or discrimination. Yet there are critics and supporters on both sides who remain unwilling to dialogue or consider the heart of the issue when talking about this contentious relationship: violence.

The Phoenix ran two opposing sides of the ROTC/Jesuit argument. Pat Leahy’s article, “ROTC Rights,” fervently supported ROTC presence for namely two reasons: 1) The “military is the only entity capable of the difficult task of preserving order on this planet”; 2) Jesuit education can better the military – “By introducing officers to different perspectives and ideological stances, Loyola can push American foreign policy – and the manner in which it is carried – toward Jesuit principles.”

Conversely, in their letter to the editor, “Should Ignatius wield a sword? Delving into ROTC presence on a Jesuit Campus,” Dugan Meyer and Danny Gibboney focus on the militarization of the university through the Solomon Amendment, ROTC discriminatory policies that are inconsistent as a department within Loyola, and the inconsistency of ROTC with Jesuit values such as social justice. While the arguments Meyer and Gibboney present require considerable thought and are worthy of discussion, they do not dive deep enough into the issue of ROTC and violence when they claim “we are […] asserting that this institution cannot simultaneously promote military ROTC programs and the principles of nonviolence and respect for all people.”

What this very important and moral debate on ROTC’s role in higher education may be reduced to is a conversation between violence and nonviolence. Leahy asserts very effectively that the military and the ROTC believe in violence as the only means of preserving peace. Meyer and Gibboney briefly recognize the inherent contradictions of a university being, at the very least, complicit with violence, and permitting and teaching nonviolence.

Perhaps the most illuminating advocate to look to for guidance is St. Ignatius himself. All are quite familiar with his conversion from being an officer in the Spanish military to lay down his sword and follow Christ. At a time when Church teachings of the “War on Terror” are most clearly delineated unjust and immoral, any compliance with the war is to be regarded as unjust and immoral as well. Many veterans are returning from the war with horrific stories and experiences there and committing themselves to helping other soldiers and aspiring soldiers learn the realities of war and to lay down their swords.

The ROTC seeks recruitment for violence, and while in the classroom there may be opportunity for discussion and opinion, there is certainly no room for that on active-duty. The moral formation a Jesuit education seeks to embody would certainly be punished if one questions the ethics of military’s hierarchical command. One will be called upon to, in the very least, train and learn to kill. This sort of violence is contrary to Christian values and Christ’s teachings.

As for Leahy’s faith in violence, a real and honest historical look at social change and “preserving order” reveals that the changes that come out of violence are never lasting or permanent. Aside from this nation’s beatification of violence as salvation, in which Loyola, and most other Jesuit or Catholic institutions, are proponents of in someway, either through word, deed, or silence, violence has also clouded our minds from truly considering nonviolence as a viable and proper Christian alternative.

ROTC has no place in a Jesuit, let alone Catholic institution when it actively seeks to subvert the truth, the immorality, and the injustice of the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, to return to the arguments of what is a university, Meyer and Gibboney rightly conceive of a university as a sacred space – “cathedrals of free inquiry and intellectual growth where all students have the opportunity to pursuer their academic, social, and professional interests as they see fit.” While Leahy’s understanding of this invokes then a justification of ROTC on campus to provide another education, it remains an education rooted in salvific violence. And as Ignacio Ellacuría, SJ, writes in Toward a Society That Serves its People, “It is often said that a university should be impartial. We do not agree. A university should strive to be free and objective, but objectivity and freedom may demand taking sides” (p. 175). See violence, the ROTC, the war on terror for what it really is and who it is really affecting. Then, consider our own faith in violence and ask why…and why not nonviolence. This is the objectivity and freedom Ellacuría advocates for in a university, because impartiality is all too often complicity.

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Unfortunately, the views cited in Leahy's article are all to representative of the "powers that be" and "redemptive violence" (to use the understanding of Walter Wink). William Cavanaugh further contends that the "myth of redemptive violence" has not only entered our consciousness as a means of saving us or protecting us from our enemies, but that our salvation lies in it as well. This soteriology of the state and the state-sponsored or state-endorsed violence has become so pervasive in our souls that we cannot conceive of our faith in any other terms as well. So nonviolence is doubly threatened, or rather, the state and the individual is threatened by nonviolence because a whole new soteriology needs to be understood.