With every passing year, the left exhibits greater contempt for America, and that trend is evident in the growing disrespect for Veterans Day on college campuses.
Colleges and universities not only replace patriotic traditions with woke celebrations like Juneteenth, but openly advocate against this day of remembrance for U.S. service members.
Institutions such as Harvard, the University of San Diego, and Montclair State University have been criticized for failing to recognize Veterans Day, whether through social media silence, lack of campus communications, or removal from university holiday calendars.
Radical campus groups have taken this disrespect even further, so consumed by anger and ideology that they fail to appreciate the vast and irreplaceable freedoms America provides.
Last year, for example, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest student organization held an anti-Veterans Day protest, declaring that they “reject this holiday and refuse to celebrate it” because, in their view, “the American war machine should not be honored for the horrors unleashed on others.”
As Kali Jerrard wrote, this disregard for our veterans is also part of a broader failure in higher education to teach military history and civics effectively. This neglect erodes understanding of the sacrifices made by those who serve and of the military’s role in our nation’s story.
Thus, none of us student contributors for Minding the Campus—myself, Alyza Harris, and Leona Salinas—are surprised to find ourselves in class today, even though we are off on other federal holidays.
This is a short point, but an important one: colleges and universities should honor the men and women who were willing to lay down their lives for America. After all, it is because of their sacrifices that higher education—and all of us—enjoy the freedom to learn, debate, and engage as full participants in our civic and intellectual life.
Image: “UniversityofMIchiganDiag” by AndrewHorne on Wikimedia Commons
Classes might meet. Does the university, perhaps working with its ROTC, hold an observation at 11 am?
As to the contempt for the vets, nothing surprises me.
As to public universities themselves, e.g. not observing the holiday, that does surprise me because they are public entities and veterans are a politically powerful block on the state level.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant and I would suggest TELLING the veterans about this.
First, every ROTC department has a commander — I’ve seen rank range between O-3 and O-5 — I’ve found them very helpful with questions about the military (they teach it) and they know about the veterans organizations in your state (or know someone who does). In many states there are veterans agents (Massachusetts requires each town or city to have one) — or your state may have a state veterans office.
Find these people and tell them — my guess is that they don’t know — bring or email a list of holidays observed and point out that it isn’t on the list. My guess is that it will be added to next year’s list.
One other thing: While the 1991 Gulf War was largely fought by troop stationed in Europe for the Cold War (and being rotated home as that had ended), the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had a lot of Guard and Reserve units and for a variety of reasons, a lot of public employees (including university employees) are in the Guard or Reserves.
So a public university will not only have students on GI bill benefits, but also a lot of employees who are actual veterans — and a lot of these are people who can be quite helpful to conservative student organizations, not just because they are themselves conservative but because they have the military sense of procedural fairness.
But as to Veteran’s Day not being observed, my guess is that the state veterans either don’t know about it being observed, or think that the university doesn’t close for any holidays (which was the case decades past). And I think that action will be taken when they find out.
Remember that Veteran’s Day initally was moved to a Monday when the Monday Holiday (3 day weekend) law came out in 1971 — and that it no longer is a Monday holiday. They are not as loud as the leftist loons, but the Veterans do have influence….