Collateral Damage

In March of 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, The Harvard Crimson found that only 34 percent of Harvard students supported America’s impending military action. Over the next five years, as the body count mounted and many of the justifications for invasion proved dubious, that figure dwindled. Given that Harvard boasts more Congressional Medal of Honor winners than any institution other than the service academies, one could be forgiven for being surprised to find that the relationship between the military and the university was so poor. But the once-robust tie between the U.S. military and Harvard University already had frayed dramatically during the decades preceding the Iraq War. The decline began during the Vietnam War, when the Reserve Officer Training Corps was banned from Harvard College. In prior generations, well over a hundred Harvard College graduates donned the uniform of America’s armed forces each year. Yet, in the decades after Vietnam that number shrank precipitously: When I started my freshman year at Harvard in 2001, less than 1 percent of my classmates were on the path to military service.

At Harvard, as the first bombs dropped from American warplanes onto Iraqi soil, the military was an unpopular institution, fighting an unpopular war, led by an unpopular president. It hardly seemed a fertile environment for rebuilding the ties that bound the nation’s most prestigious university to the nation’s all-volunteer armed forces.

Less than a decade later, however, there are more combat veterans on Harvard’s campus than there have been in over a generation. Military service is an increasingly acceptable and, in some circles, even popular post-graduation calling. On campus, spitting on soldiers who return from combat does not happen any longer, it has been replaced by hearty words of thanks and even celebrations to honor the university’s veterans. Harvard contributes money side by side with the Veteran’s Administration to help pay for veterans’ tuition bills. Perhaps the most visible symbol of the military’s rehabilitation on Harvard’s campus is an increasingly audible call from all constituencies – students, faculty, alumni, and administrators – for the reinstatement of ROTC at Harvard College. This sentiment was most clearly displayed by University President Drew G. Faust who announced in November that Harvard would welcome an ROTC program to its campus in the event that the military’s “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy was repealed.

What happened? How has a gap that only widened during times of relative peace and prosperity been narrowed so rapidly during an era of militarism that is decried nowhere more harshly than from the Ivory Tower? And what does it mean for the future relationship between Harvard and the American society?

The change began with a trickle, as a few Harvard men and women, moved by a call to serve their country, chose the path less traveled. September 11th and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq roused passions that moved individuals with boundless possibilities to join the military. Those who would never have joined the military during peacetime, who in other eras would have become bankers or lawyers or doctors, chose to risk their lives in service of an ideal. On the other end, soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan decided to make Harvard College and its graduate schools their first step in reentering civil society after service.

These warriors began to remind Harvard just what the military is all about. These soldiers’ stories brought humanity to a maligned institution and painted a vastly different picture of the military than most of those on campus imagined. It is a place where young people trying to do the right thing wrestle daily with the very ethical dilemmas that are tackled in the university classroom. It is a place where men and women live by trusting each other and where they build relationships that last a lifetime. It is a place where the bridging of cultural gaps often yields the most powerful payoffs. It is a place where learning—new tactics, new people, new places—is a matter of survival. Harvard is slowly coming to see that in many ways, the men and women of America’s military are the types of people that it hopes to produce.

The military is not a perfect institution, but neither is Harvard. Scholars and soldiers who compose these institutions have a great deal to learn from one another. It is my sincere hope that the collateral damage from America’s current wars is the chasm between its military and its elite. And it is in this vein that we hope President Faust will make good on her promise to bring ROTC back to Harvard’s campus. Harvard and the military both will benefit, but the biggest winner will be the American society of which both these institutions are an inextricable part.

W. Robert Wheeler graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2005 before serving for four years in the U.S. Army. He is now a second-year student at Harvard Business School where he is on the leadership team of Crimson Serves, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving veteran students a voice within the Harvard University community.