New York, N.Y. — Kudos to Barack Obama. Speaking Thursday at Columbia University, the liberal standard-bearer and idol of most collegians called for the university to end its decades-old ban on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. John McCain did the same, but that’s not news. Obama’s exhortation may actually move Columbia to reconsider the status of ROTC. That would be a good thing.

Columbia banned ROTC from campus in 1969, when anti-Vietnam War fervor was intense. In 2005, the University Senate — a body comprising mostly administrators and faculty, and a few students — preserved the ban by a lopsided vote of 53 to 10 (with 5 abstentions).

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The decisive factor was objection to the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy, which bars openly homosexual soldiers from serving. “Would we agree to an organization on campus,” the university provost persuasively asked, that allowed “African-Americans to join the organization only if they pass for white?” Many at Columbia and beyond are rightly troubled by DADT (and can be pleased that senior military officers and politicians are increasingly questioning the policy’s efficacy), but DADT dates back only to 1993.

What, then, accounted for Columbia’s ROTC ban from 1969 to 1993? The answer is an anti-military sentiment rooted in the antiwar passions of the Vietnam era. Is that sentiment still the decisive motive at Columbia today, with DADT just an extra argument?

Consider Thursday’s event. Sens. Obama and McCain spoke at Columbia as part of ServiceNation, a two-day summit promoting national and community service. Columbia’s involvement in such an event is “entirely fitting,” bragged university president Lee Bollinger, as “[p]ublic service and active involvement in the issues facing our society have always been an essential part of Columbia’s identity and academic mission.” But at Columbia, the public service of America’s soldiers goes largely unacknowledged.

In introducing the summit, Bollinger singled out youth who participate in “service learning, volunteer action and social entrepreneurship” — commendable activities, all — but he did not mention those who become soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, or Coast Guardsmen. Meanwhile, when a coalition of Columbia’s student leaders invited a slate of speakers to address “their own experiences with service and the importance of incorporating service into one’s life,” not one spoke of military service. And then the loudspeakers asked the large student crowd to observe a moment of silence to celebrate our nation’s commitment to service, recognize the seventh anniversary of 9/11, and share hope for the future. There was no tribute to the more than 4,000 soldiers who have died fighting for our country since that terrible day.

Later came the senators’ talk of ROTC. To McCain’s unsurprising endorsement of ROTC, some students responded with boos. But when Obama followed suit, the students were silent. Some interpret this reaction as surprised disappointment that the students’ preferred candidate took a position they opposed. But this assumes a lot. Actually, it’s unclear where Columbia’s students stand on the ROTC question.

Certainly the boos attracted attention — as did the student who concisely conveyed his opinion about ROTC with a loud “Keep it off!” In an April 2003 student referendum, however, 2/3 of students voted to bring ROTC back to campus. (Note: Only 1,000 of Columbia’s 20,000-plus undergraduate and graduate students voted.) And last January, the student editors of the Columbia Spectator printed an editorial titled “ROTC, not DADT,” saying that “for all its faults, the military has too integral a role in American culture and society to be summarily banned from campus.”

If there is sizable support for ROTC among students, it wouldn’t be the only subject on which students in general are to the political right of their professors. Nor is this phenomenon unique to Columbia: at Harvard, where ROTC has also been banned since 1969, the students’ Undergraduate Council voted in 1999 to bring it back.

Perhaps, then, the silent response to Obama’s pro-ROTC statement signaled that students were listening and pondering. In that case, they would have heard Obama note correctly that returning ROTC to campus “does not mean that we disregard any potential differences on various issues…but it does mean that we should have an honest debate while still offering opportunities for everyone to serve.”

By banning ROTC and implying disrespect for the military, Columbia has encouraged political mudslinging about elite anti-Americanism — not vigorous debate about DADT. “Universities are vital when they educate and irrelevant when they boycott,” Columbia astronomy professor James Applegate explained in 2005.

President Bollinger could have used this very language last year to defend his invitation of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to campus. The value of engaging with Ahmadinejad, Bollinger argued, outweighed the costs of sharing a prestigious podium with a murderer of gays (not to mention American troops). Maybe the experience has led Bollinger, who in 2005 voted to uphold the ROTC ban, to reconsider the costs and benefits of sharing a campus with ROTC cadets and drill instructors.

As for Columbia students who wish to serve in the armed forces — their university’s intransigence doesn’t stop them. They travel multiple times a week to the Bronx to participate in Fordham University’s ROTC program. Similarly, their peers at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford also must travel to nearby colleges for officer training. Americans who enjoy freedom and security owe these cadets recognition, respect and gratitude.

— David J. Feith is a senior at Columbia University and was a 2008 Robert L. Bartley fellow at the Wall Street Journal.