'Beautiful and brave': Yale holds its first ROTC commissioning ceremony since the '70s [photos]

Brett T. | 10:20 PM on May 23, 2016

At a recent commencement address, National Security Adviser Susan Rice echoed Sen. Bob Graham’s concern that America’s national security workforce is too “white, male, and Yale” and argued that a lack of diversity is making the nation less safe.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, himself a white, male Yale graduate, visited his alma mater Monday to preside over the school’s first ROTC commissioning ceremony in four decades, and in the process gave Americans every reason to believe their nation is all the more safe because of it.

#SecDef lands in New Haven for @Yale ROTC commissioning. Greeted by State Sen Timothy Larson pic.twitter.com/VQMhuc2yyE

— Alyssa Farah (@PentagonPresSec) May 23, 2016

#SecDef returns to his alma mater to commission Yale's first ROTC graduates in four decades. pic.twitter.com/VLbcQGUzai

— Alyssa Farah (@PentagonPresSec) May 23, 2016

https://twitter.com/ElainePetrine/status/734891421610577920

When Def Sec Ash Carter attended Yale in 1970s, ROTC had been booted off campus. Today he commissioned new officers https://t.co/BMrp0G4o17

— Yeganeh Torbati (@yjtorbati) May 24, 2016

Yale was among those Ivy League schools that kicked the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program off campus in the ’70s in protest of the Vietnam War. The program was reinstated in 2012, bringing some much-needed diversity to the school.

"I hear the uniforms are a big hit on campus." Ashton Carter to Yale's first class of ROTC graduates in forty years.

— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson) May 23, 2016

#SecDef Carter speaks at commissioning of 1st ROTC class to spend four years drilling at @yale in over four decades pic.twitter.com/SJ2G11R0R0

— Department of Defense ?? (@DeptofDefense) May 23, 2016

On Sunday, UN Ambassador Samantha Power addressed Yale’s entire graduating class at commencement, where she seemingly urged graduates to leave their safe spaces, much as first lady Michelle Obama told the class of 2015 at Oberlin — the same school where students would later demand the establishment of black-only safe spaces across campus.

Told @Yale grads to find ways to seek out alternative views; as JFK said, don't seek "comfort of opinion w/out the discomfort of thought.”

— Samantha Power (@AmbPower44) May 22, 2016

Congratulations to Yale’s newly commissioned officers, who chose years ago on their own to leave their safe spaces behind.