Senior To Sail Troubled Waters

Like many seniors entering the world of investment banking and consulting, Stephen P. Bosco ’03-’04 will wear a suit to work everyday next year.

He will put in long hours and sleep in cramped quarters—when he gets any rest at all.

But unlike his Brooks Brothers-wearing classmates, Bosco will only have one blue suit in his closet, courtesy of the United States Navy.

Bosco, who took his commission as a Navy ensign in a ceremony held in Tercentenary Theater yesterday, will by the end of this month report aboard the USS Vandegrift (FFG-48), a guided missile frigate based with the Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan.

After coming to Harvard and joining the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in a time of peace, Bosco is leaving the University to take a duty posting that could put him in the Persian Gulf and the conflict in Iraq, a potential flare-up in North Korea or even a high seas encounter with pirates.

Yet Bosco says he is undeterred. Not only did he choose the Vandegrift specifically because of the potential that the vessel will see action, he strongly supports the foreign policy that might steer it into harm’s way. Bosco says he is convinced that President Bush’s vision of the United States on the world stage is fundamentally correct.

Bosco, who is from Washington, D.C., and attended St. Albans School, says he knew he wanted to serve in the military coming into Harvard and had even thought about the Naval Academy.

“I thought it was important both for my personal development, and as a way of serving my country,” says Bosco, whose father was also in the Navy and currently works as a consultant at the Pentagon.

Even at a school where students regularly load themselves down with extracurricular commitments, Bosco and the other ROTC midshipmen have had to take on some exceptional tasks. During the year he had to wake up early twice weekly for 7:15 a.m. military science courses at MIT—which covered subjects ranging from military bearing to naval engineering—and sometimes he woke up even earlier for physical training (PT) with the marine midshipmen.

He also spent three of his summers training full time for the military. He spent one summer shadowing a mechanic on a destroyer stationed in the Adriatic Sea (“He could fix anything,” Bosco recalls), and another attached to the intelligence section aboard an amphibious vessel that had just returned from a deployment supporting operations in Afghanistan.

Bosco says that Sept. 11 has tempered the ROTC experience with the knowledge that he and his classmates could be in a real combat situation very soon.

“Sept. 11 has impressed upon people the seriousness of the job that they’ve volunteered for,” he says.

However, Bosco is nonchalant about the anti-war feelings that at times have permeated the staunchly liberal Harvard campus.

He says that among students, his ROTC service has been met with curiosity.

“I’ve found that almost without fail Harvard students think it’s really great,” he says.

Bosco says that has he been met with hostility only from members of the Faculty, which voted to end Harvard’s on-campus ROTC unit 30 years ago and continues to oppose the program because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And even these have been relatively minor incidents: disparaging comments from a knot of professors as he walked through the Yard in uniform, a debate with a teaching fellow in section.

Neither the anti-war feelings on campus nor his ROTC uniform have dissuaded Bosco from voicing his own opinions, shaped by a brand of conservatism that has left him at odds with liberals, as well as conservatives like Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53.

“I believe the main difference between us is that he is conservative in the sense of being inherently suspicious of change,” Bosco wrote of Mansfield in an e-mail. “He reveres old institutions for their own sake, and deeply admires proponents of aristocracy such as Edmund Burke. Mainstream American conservatism, in contrast, focuses heavily on liberty and the rights of the individual. Such conservatives venerate Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson over proponents of aristocracy like Burke.”

His beliefs have also led him to become an adamant supporter of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

“It’s not that I love Bush, it’s just that I support his vision of U.S. foreign policy,” he says. “He understands that the preservation of human rights requires the U.S. to use its power, sometimes in forceful ways.

About a month ago these convictions led Bosco to speak out at a teach-in on Iraq held by the Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice.

“I made a comment where I expressed my opinion that a lot of what had been said in that debate was not accurate,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk about American human rights abuses, so I asked them how they justified supporting policies that would’ve allowed Saddam Hussein’s regime to remain in power, given the massive and institutional nature of the human rights abuses that occurred under him.”

“They responded pretty negatively,” he adds. “There was sort of an attempt to shout me down as I was speaking.”

Bosco’s strong views on foreign policy extend beyond his support of the Bush administration. He spent last year in Taiwan, working with the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy—an NGO that works to promote democracy in Asia—and last summer interned in the war games section at National Defense University, helping to create crisis scenarios.

He has also authored two articles for the Harvard Political Review on international affairs, and in December 2002 wrote an op-ed for The Crimson in support of U.S. military action in Iraq.

But now Bosco will be the proverbial tip of the spear, carrying out the policies he has so vocally supported in a world that has become increasingly dangerous.

Indeed, the Vandegrift is a modern vessel, built during the Cold War and armed with missiles, torpedoes and a 76 mm gun. But one of Bosco’s jobs next year might be more in the tradition of John Paul Jones: boarding a ship and searching compartment after compartment for terrorists or contraband.

“Typically there are indications that it’s going to be really hostile,” he says of the potential scenario. “Then there have been times when you never know what the reception is going to be like.”

—Staff writer Christopher M. Loomis can be reached at cloomis@post.harvard.edu