In theory it’s a perfect match: twenty- and thirtysomethings have the most at stake (after all, it is their children who will inherit an America shaped by this fight), and the country needs their energy, creativity and “can do” attitude to stamp out terrorism. But working for government organizations like the FBI, CIA, Foreign Service–and particularly the military–has not ranked high among recent graduates of America’s elite universities. And many of the universities are at least partly to blame.
Since Vietnam, Ivory Tower disdain for the military and national-security agencies has been a fact of life on many campuses. In some cases, it is official policy. When I attended Harvard in the late 1980s, the Spartacus Youth League, an organization for young communists, was welcome on campus. But the Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC was not. My roommate, who was attending college on an Air Force scholarship, had to ride the subway to MIT twice a week for his training. Fair Harvard, our nation’s oldest, most prestigious university, did not allow America’s future military leaders to train on its soil. Incredibly, this ban, which was first implemented in 1969, continues today. The rationale has morphed from the military’s involvement in Vietnam to the current “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Military recruiters are banned, too, from entering Harvard Yard. The alma mater of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes even prohibits fliers–one of the most basic forms of free speech–promoting military service from being posted on campus.
At other top universities, institutional embarrassment, not pride, has often been the response to students’ military aspirations. A close friend of mine, who is now a Marine F-18 pilot, wanted to attend his graduation at the University of Chicago in his dress blues so that he could be commissioned as a Marine officer after the ceremony. When he mentioned this to the dean of students, the dean forbade him to wear his uniform. My friend–the honor graduate of his Marine Corps OCS class–ended up having a friend pin on his second-lieutenant bars in the beer-stained confines of their fraternity house. None of the faculty members he had invited showed up.
As anyone who has attended a top college in the past three decades knows, patriotism in the eyes of many professors is synonymous with a lack of sophistication at best, racism at worst. I believe this attitude influences students and creates a kind of elitism: the idea that military and government service, like fire and police work, may be necessary, but it is somehow beneath them and their abilities.
Yet, it is clear to me that the antimilitary culture that exists on many campuses is remarkably out of step with the views of the vast majority of Americans. Most of us know, and have known for decades, that our armed forces are composed of men and women for whom duty, honor and country are enduring–not quaint and antiquated–values. Instead of grinding worn-out political axes against such institutions, the faculty at our top universities would do well to remind their students of Thomas Paine’s words: “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must… undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
In the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the recent anthrax scare and the news of suspected terrorists’ studying crop-duster methods of spreading deadly biological and chemical agents, it has become all too clear that the survival of liberty itself is at stake in this new war. The fatigue of safeguarding this precious American ideal will be great. Now is the time for America’s brightest young adults to enlist in this good fight against global terrorism–to join organizations like the military’s Special Forces, the FBI and the CIA, whose members risk their lives on the front lines of this battle. It is also time for America’s universities to support and encourage–not undermine–this call to service.
is a Marine Corps officer serving with Echo Company, Fourth Reconnaissance Battalion, USMCR. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
