Paul E. Brennan ’61 points to a name on the Vietnam War section of the Veterans Memorial. Photograph: Lee Pellegrini

On November 11, with a Veterans Day Mass at St. Ignatius Church and a solemn outdoor ceremony, the University community dedicated a new memorial to Boston College alumni who died in the line of duty during major U.S. military conflicts from World War I to the present.

President William P. Leahy, SJ, in his homily during the Mass, noted that Boston College’s war dead had “made the greatest sacrifice: their very selves.” They set “powerful examples,” he said, as “people who touched our lives, people who helped shape our nation.” Army cadet Rafael Leonardo ’11, one of several representatives of Boston College’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) who assisted at the Mass, was perhaps thinking of the challenges facing today’s military forces when he read from the Book of Wisdom: “The mighty shall be mightily put to the test.”

Following the service, some 850 people, including relatives of the fallen, gathered for the dedication ceremony on the Burns Library lawn, site of the new memorial, a low, winding wall of granite blocks topped by polished granite pieces inscribed with the names of the 209 fallen alumni. Featured speaker General John J. Sheehan ’62, USMC retired, said the 70-foot-long, two-foot-high wall would serve as a reminder of the “terrible price,” exacted by wars, “not only from soldiers but from the families they leave behind.”

These formal Veterans Day commemorations followed, by a few days, several on-campus panel discussions about the relationship between the U.S. military and society. On Saturday, November 7, the sixth annual symposium of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities was held at Robsham Theater before an audience of some 350 from the University and general public. Titled “Soldiers & Citizens: Military and Civic Culture in America,” the event focused on three issues: diversity in uniform, the all-volunteer force, and relations between the military and politics and society in 21st-century America.

A day earlier, on November 6, a largely student audience of about 40 attended a panel discussion in Devlin 101 entitled “Culture Clash: Students and Soldiers.” The discussion, which was sponsored by the University’s Institute for Liberal Arts and held in conjunction with the Humanities symposium, ranged widely, touching on bonds and dissonances between the military and civilian worlds.

Andrew Bacevich, a Boston University historian, retired U.S. Army colonel, and author most recently of The Limits of Power, a critique of U.S. foreign policy, led off the conversation, observing that by the late 1960s, as the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War dragged on, the notion that military service was “a component of citizenship . . . had been pretty much demolished.”

The gap between civilian and military attitudes continued to widen, he said, and in the 1980s and 1990s, “it appeared that prevailing views in the officer corps were not simply different but had a specific ideological content. To oversimplify greatly, they had reached the conclusion that liberal Democrats were their enemy and conservative Republicans were their friends.” As a result, said Bacevich, civilian control of the military during the Clinton years “appeared to be pretty dubious.”

A second panelist, Charles D. Allen, a professor of cultural science at the Army War College and, like Bacevich, a retired Army colonel, characterized the relationship somewhat differently. Allen noted that Clinton’s plan to allow gays to serve openly in the ranks had been thwarted in part by officers who considered the matter an internal affair for the military (and foiled also by significant opposition among civilians). Nonetheless, he said, the military served obediently in Bosnia, despite a dislike of peacekeeping duties. And although military officers might be more sympathetic to Republicans, he said, that didn’t prevent “conflict between military advice and presidential directives” during George W. Bush’s administration.

Asked if reinstating the draft would help restore the bond between the armed services and civilians, panelist Maura Leo ’08, an Army second lieutenant, said probably not. She pointed out that the draft was abandoned in 1973 under President Richard Nixon because a large standing army was no longer needed; and she maintained that, given today’s high-tech fighting methods, it still isn’t. In addition, said Leo, “You don’t want your battle buddy to be someone who was forced” into the service.

What is needed, Bacevich said, is a citizenry “that understands the importance of civilian control” of the military, and “that understands the risks inherent” in a decision such as invading Iraq. Universities can help people “become literate in military affairs,” he added, and he urged students to study military history “so that we don’t get bamboozled by people in Washington who tell us that war is some kind of easy solution.”

Allen agreed, suggesting that academic institutions “bring speakers in who are not traditional professors—bring former officers in to interact with students.”

“This panel and the [Massachusetts Humanities symposium] are perfect examples of what should be done,” said the fourth panelist, Paul Delaney ’66, who served as an officer in Vietnam and was cochair of the University’s veterans memorial committee. “Students need to be educated on the risks, the commitment, and what the alternatives are.”

One member of the audience, a young man, asked the panelists how universities might help American soldiers and marines acquire the cultural and diplomatic skills needed to combat insurgencies in the developing world.

Allen responded that some service members are already receiving “cultural awareness training from anthropologists,” noting that a political anthropologist, David Kilcullen, serves as a senior advisor to Army General Stanley McChrystal, who commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

A woman attendee commented that the recruitment of social scientists into military efforts is encountering stiff resistance across academia. If you “even talk about joining” the military’s Human Terrain System, a program that embeds social scientists in combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq, “your chances of getting an academic job are kaput. Are people working on overcoming this, on either side?” she asked.

Most young Ph.D. candidates, Bacevich replied, “don’t want [their discipline] subordinated to the purposes of the state—even if the purposes of the state are noncontroversial, as they were in World War II.”

Bacevich went on to criticize General McChrystal’s outreach to handpicked “academics and quasi-academics” such as Max Boot, a historian and editorialist who recently traveled to Afghanistan to view the war firsthand. Boot was chosen because “he will write op-eds” endorsing McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy, said Bacevich, who called the interchange between the general and the academics “a fundamentally dishonest process.”

A final question from the audience raised the concern recently expressed by Thomas Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer on military affairs, that the service academies cost too much to run and offer too narrow an education. Should we shut them down as Ricks proposes, the questioner asked, and send all officer candidates to civilian universities, where they would enroll in ROTC?

“We would be very well advised to have every one of our young officers get a four-year education at a liberal arts college with their fellow citizens,” answered Bacevich, who added that the officer candidates would still need a stint at one of the service academies for “socialization, professionalization,” and postgraduate education in “officership.”

While not endorsing the shutdown of Annapolis or West Point, Charles Allen ended the afternoon’s discussion by warning against shaping a military that is isolated from the rest of society. “The perception that the officer corps has higher standards than the people it serves—that’s dangerous,” he said.

David Reich is a writer in the Boston area.

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