Academic Links for the Defense Department

Just about a year ago Najaab B. Halaby boarded a plane in New York. Halaby, Ford Foundation consultant, took with him two magazines to read during the flight to Boston--Time and Newsweek. Appointed by Foundation trustees to evaluate a novel Defense Studies Program here for possible financial aid, he was surprised to notice articles in both magazines describing the program.

The consultant was equally impressed with the program itself and its founder, W. Barton Leach '21, Story Professor of Law. He reported favorably to the trustees. Three months later Leach received $214,800--enough to place the program on solid ground after a shaky first year.

Since then the idea of providing training to serve as a background for Defense Department employees has spread to other universities--exactly as Leach originally intended. At Dartmouth, John A. Masland and Lawrence W. Radwar, experts in military history, are interested and plan to launch a seminar in the near future. Roger Hilsman at the Center of International Studies at Princeton envisions a seminar "soon." Ohio State University, which has considerable funds available for this type of work is also interested in establishing a program. Other groups at Yale, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Virginia are also considering the establishment of defense seminars.

One Course So Far

The Defense Studies Program at present offers but one course--the Defense Policy Seminar, open only to graduate students. Leach plans eventually, however, to promote a plan for undergraduate courses as well.

His immediate goal is to obtain people directly from the Defense Department to study military history, economics, and policy courses. He had one student last year and one this year from the Department, but neither was here primarily for that purpose.

Now that the program is on solid ground, Leach has started to look toward publishing a journal in the field--an "American Journal of National Defense," as he calls it. The publication would fill the gaps left by service journals today. It would be directed to a foreign affairs audience, and would provide a means for presenting policies as they develop with both sides of each issue printed at the same time, side by side.

Leach had been connected in one way or another with the Defense Department and the Air Force, in addition to holding his Law School post, for a number of years. He wrote to President Pusey in the fall of 1953 to explain an idea which he had thought about for several years. In the letter he explained that every department of the government had some form of unofficial academic tie, with people working in the field and conducting research pertaining to the work of a particular area of the department. Only the Defense Department lacked a breeding ground for future employees.

"Since college should be a place where a student can read, grow, and expand," Leach continued, "and is the beginning and not the end of education," a program in defense work could provide a trained group of people who could go into the Defense Department as a career.

The dearth of training facilities for defense personnel was understandable until the end of World War II, Leach went on, before Great Britain "began to lose its place in the sun and the United States and Russia began to emerge as the major postwar powers." The post-war change became apparent when 60 to 70 percent of the annual budget--equivalent to 15 per cent of the gross national product--was allocated to defense work.

The Bag of Resources

Leach concluded the letter with a challenge to the President. As the need for a defense training course became more apparent, he related, the universities had an obligation to readjust quickly to meet the need. "And no place in the country has a better bag of resources" for doing the job.

Pusey's answer, through Dean Bundy, was nothing but a polite brush-off. They agreed that the idea was "a very good and very interesting one." But the job got no further, and Leach was forced to launch the program without financial aid. Both the Law School and the Graduate School of Public Administration listed a seminar on defense in their 1954-55 catalogues, and Littauer subsequently formally assumed sponsorship of the program.

When Leach started his second year with the seminar this fall, he had come a long way. Instead of only 60 books from his personal library, he had 1,550 pages of reading prepared by last year's students. "Some of it is good, and some very bad," Leach comments. Army Col. Grank A. Osmanski, a Business School student, formed a student group which handled administrative details and preparation of literature for the program last year. "Osmanski literally saved the entire project," Leach entusiastically states. Now Leach's staff, available since the Ford grant, prepares and distributes reading for each week's session, freeing the students for more productive work in the course.

One example of reading prepared for students is the issue created by Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway's farewell letter, written after he had been denied reappointment to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ridgway had sevely criticized the proposed 300,000 man cut in the Army personnel and had been attacked in return. When he left his post, he defended his position and the original size of the Army. Readings on both sides of the question are provided, with appropriate comment. These, as all the readings, are available to anyone who has use for them. Bundy and H. Bradford Westerfield, instructor in Government, use some of the seminar's material in their American foreign policy course--Government 185.

30 Students Registered

After the course had been listed in the 1954-'55 Law School and Littauer catalogues, applications for admission justified Leach's enthusiasm for the program. More than 30 students registered for the seminar, including Col. Trevor N. Dupuy, professor of Military Science and Tactics at the Army ROTC unit, and his adjutant, Capt. Roy G. Simkins, Jr. Nine officers studying at the Business School also enrolled.

A more serious difficulty began to plague Leach. He and his instructors had virtually no materials with which to start, since the program was definitive. The only books Leach could use were those in his personal library. To meet this problem he began in the spring and summer of 1954 to piece together press clippings relative to various fields of defense work.

To show the possibilities of such a collection, Leach categorized all those dealing with Eisenhower's "New Look," announced in late 1953 and used as the basis of the fiscal 1955 defense budget. He took the collection to the Air University at Maxwell Field, Alabama, because he thought it might be of interest to students in the War College there.

The clippings, organized to show how one year's policy in a certain area is formed, included reports of Congressional hearings, budget figures, and commentary to connect the material. Leach asked Air Force officials to publish a book using this material, since both he and the War College could use it for instructional purposes. The Air Force obliged and reproduced the collection in a 600-page volume. Leach received 12 of the books, partially solving his problem. Students filled the remaining gap by selecting and mimeographing readings for each week.

Leach also needed lecturers to put students in closer touch with the situation. He approached friends in the Air Force and asked them to supply good lecturers for the course. They replied in a cautious letter, promising "everything they could do without harming the Air Force." But in the end, Leach neither asked for nor received a single Air Force lecturer. Supposing that half the others he asked would decline, he asked twice as many people as he needed. Not one turned down the invitation, and Leach was faced with twice as many lecturers as he needed.

But Leach also had to teach his two regular courses on property at the Law School, in addition to all the problems he had in straightening out his new program. The strain became so great that in February, 1955, he had to "just go away for three weeks." By then the program was firmly established.

'Carry the Torch'

The plan had acquired enough momentum, largely due to the cooperation of Arthur Smithies, professor of Economics, and Osmanski's planning, that others began to see its potentialities. After Leach returned from his vacation, he saw clearly that if the program was going to continue, it would need both financial support and a full-time administrative staff. He also needed personnel who could "carry the torch to other schools and light the fire of defense study."

The Defense Department was not unaware of the project. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert B. Anderson had heard of the program and invited Leach to Washington to discuss with Carter L. Burgess, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Personnel, the potential of the program as a training course for career defense personnel. Burgess at that time expressed a desire for employing people who had taken Leach's course.

Meanwhile two of his students had taken a Junior Management Assistant's

Cavers Suggests Ford

Leach tried with little success to obtain funds for the project during the summer of 1954. David F. Cavers, associate Dean of the Law School, suggested that Leach try the Ford Foundation.

But the 11-month wait for an answer from the Foundation made it clear that if the program was going to hire more people, Leach couldn't wait for the grant to come through. Bundy took the risk for hiring Edward L. Katzenbach from Columbia. But Katzenbach wasn't enough. Leach needed both senior men in areas relative to defense study and young men to conduch research. He gambled and hired the men he felt necessary, guaranteeing the University that if the grand did not materialize he would pay the salaries of the new staff from his own pocket.

Since neither the Law School nor Littauer had room for his new project, Leach had to find office space. He soon moved into most of the first floor of the Geographical Institute at 2 Divinity Ave., where he and his staff are now comfortably established in furnishings valued at nearly $7,000 by some of his less fortunate colleagues.

Leach envisions inevitable expansion for his project, but he must first find permanent financial backing for the program. Grants from foundations are usually offered for short terms, with the expectation that the projects will be able to find other backers once established. But after Leach recruits some "angels," he plans to develop the program into a field with continuity. He eventually wants related courses of study offered in the College, starting with the junior year. These courses would lead to a series of seminars and graduate courses.

Leach knows he will never be able to place his students directly in the Defense Department and that the Department will probably never establish an official connection with the program. But this does not discourage him. He wants not an evolution toward emphasis on defense programs throughout the country, but an immediate breakthrough.

"With the increasing defense demands of this nation," Leach emphatically states, "comes an immediate obligation for the universities to assume responsibility and provide academic links which are so necessary to successful defense planning. The imperative nature of defense demands makes an immediate course of action a necessity."

And the increasing importance of the Cold War, as well as the interest developing in universities throughout the country, is beginning to prove Leach was correct in anticipating the magnitude and importance of his pilot project.