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Whither ROTC?
One of the more interesting books about higher education to appear this year is Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer's AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country. The authors write as liberals who found themselves--quite to their surprise--in the midst of military families; the tension between their unexamined assumptions about the military and their love for family members who work in the military has forced them to think hard about how America's educated elites think about military service, how higher education reinforces that thinking, and how that thinking is fundamentally flawed.
The authors spoke at Dartmouth Friday about citizenship, service, and privilege, and they elaborated further in an interview with The Dartmouth:
According to their book AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country, less than one-third of one percent of Ivy League graduates enroll in the military each year.Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer emphasized the loss of a sense of national duty among the upper class, which they defined as a highly-educated group of people who have a myriad of lifestyle choices.
"Increasingly, the military feels alienated by its upper classes. It feels disrespected by them," said Roth-Douquet, who has been a political strategist and veteran of every presidential campaign of the past 20 years.
Schaeffer and Roth-Douquet said the disconnect between the military and a class that produces many of our political, cultural and business leaders is harming the country, its democratic ideals and its ability to make informed decisions.
"We believe this issue is a pre-political issue," said Schaeffer, who is also the author of non-fiction novels that focus on the experience of military families. "It's about being an American. There are some issues that have nothing to do with who you voted for."
Roth-Douquet described America as a country on the verge of a crisis, steered by civilians and leaders who are increasingly ignorant about the inner workings of the military despite crafting policy that dictates the Armed Forces' actions.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer examined the changing definition of citizenship among the upper class.
In their view, it has shifted from serving the nation in a military capacity to abstaining from national service altogether. Schaeffer said the upper classes need to rise above their indifference toward the military and put aside their feelings of moral superiority. Roth-Douquet said that surprisingly many Americans seem to view themselves as better citizens for dissenting and refusing national service.
"I think we live in a fundamentally selfish society," Schaeffer said. "It's not a culture conducive to the values that actually make life worth living. It's a society focused on personal gain."
Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer are naturally quite interested in elite universities' less-than-welcoming attitude toward ROTC, which they see as a misguided institutionalized anti-militarism. They note that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Brown, and Columbia forbid ROTC recruiting on campus; implicit in this criticism is another important fact: None of these schools has a campus-based ROTC program. Students at these schools--and at a great many similarly exclusive universities--must travel to other schools to train, and don't get credit for the ROTC courses they take elsewhere. In some cases, this amounts to substantial hardship--Yale students have to travel nearly 100 miles to get to their ROTC classes at UConn. Columbia students have rallied to restore ROTC to their campus, and have even passed a student referendum supporting it--but administrators aren't receptive, and "don't ask, don't tell" has a lot to do with it.
It's good to see Dartmouth inviting the sort of discussion that Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer are trying to start on campuses. More schools should follow their example.
Thanks to Maurice Black for the link.
Posted by acta online at November 14, 2006 08:42 AM
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