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Keith Hart on the Informal Economy, the Great Transformation, and the Humanity of Corporations
International Relations has long focused on the formal relations between states; in the same way, economists have long focused exclusively on formal economic activities. If by now that sounds outdated, it is only because of the work of Keith Hart. Famous for coining the distinction between the formal and the informal economy in the 1970s, Hart is a critical scholar who engages head-on with some of the world's central political-economic challenges. In this Talk, he, amongst others, discusses the value of the distinction 40 years after; how we need to rethink The Great Transformation nearly a century later; and how we need to undo the legal equivalence of corporations to humans, instituted nearly 150 years back.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is, according to you, the central challenge or principal debate in International Relations? And what is your position regarding this challenge/in this debate?
I think it is the lack of fit between politics, which is principally national, and the world economy, which is global. In particular, the system of money has escaped from its national controls, but politics, public rhetoric aside, has not evolved to the point where adequate responses to our common economic problems can be posed. At this point, the greatest challenge is to extend our grasp of the problems we face beyond the existing national discussions and debates. Most of the problems we see today in the world—and the economic crisis is only one example—are not confined to a single country.
For me, the question is how we can extend our research from the local to the global. Let the conservatives restrict themselves to their national borders. This is not to say I believe that political solutions to the economic problems the world faces are readily available. Indeed, it is possible that we are entering another period of war and revolution, similar to 1776-1815 or 1914-1945. Only after prolonged conflict and much loss might the world reach something like the settlement that followed 1945. This was not only a settlement of wartime politics, but also a framework for the economic politics of the peace, responding to problems that arose most acutely between the wars. It sounds tragic, but my point in raising the possibility now is to remind people that there may be even more catastrophic consequences at stake that they realize already. We need to confront these and mobilize against them. When I go back in history, I am pessimistic about resolving the world's economic problems soon, since the people who got us into this situation are still in power and are still pursuing broadly the same policies without any sign of them being changed. I believe that they will bring us all into a much more drastic situation than we are currently facing. Yet in some way we will be accountable if we ignore the obvious signs all around us.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about IR?
My original work in West Africa arose out of a view that the post-colonial regimes offered political recipes that could have more general relevance for the world. I actually believed that the new states were in a position to provide solutions, if you like, to the corrupt and decadent political structures that we had in the West. That's why, when we were demonstrating outside the American embassies in the '60s, we chanted the names of the great Third World emancipation leaders—Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, and so on.
So for me, the question has always been whether Africans, in seeking emancipation from a long history of slavery, colonialism, apartheid and postcolonial failure, might be able to change the world. I still think it could be and I'm quite a bit more optimistic about the outcome now than I have been for most of the last fifty years. We live in a racialized world order where Africa acts as the most striking symbol of inequality. The drive for a more equal world society will necessarily entail a shift in the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world. I have been pursuing this question for the last thirty years or more. What interests me at the moment is the politics of African development in the coming decades.
Africa began the twentieth century as the least populated and urbanized continent. It's gone through a demographic and urban explosion since then, doubling its share of world population in a century. In 2050, the UN predicts that 24% of the world population will be in Africa, and in 2100, 35% (read the report here, pdf)! This is because Africa is growing at 2.5% a year while the rest of the world is ageing fast. Additionally, 7 out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world are now African—Asian manufacturers already know that Africa holds the key to the future of the world economy.
But, besides Africa as a place, if you will, a number of anti-colonial intellectuals have played a big role in influencing me. The most important event in the twentieth century was the anti-colonial revolution. Peoples forced into world society by Western Imperialism fought to establish their own independent relationship to it. The leading figures of that struggle are, to my mind, still the most generative thinkers when we come to consider our own plight and direction. My mentor was the Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James, with whom I spent a number of years toward the end of his life. I am by temperament a classicist; I like to read the individuals who made a big difference to the way we think now. The anti-colonial intellectuals were the most important thinkers of the 20th century, by which I mean Gandhi, Fanon and James.
But I've also pursued a very classical, Western trajectory in seeking to form my own thinking. When I was an undergraduate, I liked Durkheim and as a graduate student Weber. When I was a young lecturer, I became a Marxist; later, when I went to the Carribbean, I discovered Hegel, Kant and Rousseau; and by the time I wrote my book on money, The Memory Bank, the person I cited more than anyone else was John Locke. By then I realized I had been moving backwards through the greats of Western philosophy and social theory, starting with the Durkheim school of sociology. Now I see them as a set of possible references that I can draw on eclectically. Marx is still probably the most important influence, although Keynes, Simmel and Polanyi have also shaped my recent work. I suppose my absolute favorite of all those people is Jean-Jacques Rousseau for his Discourse on Inequality and his inventive approach to writing about how to get from actual to possible worlds.
What would a student need (dispositions, skills) to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?
In your 20s and 30s, your greatest commitment should be to experience the world in the broadest way possible, which means learning languages, traveling, and being open to new experiences. I think the kind of vision that I had developed over the years was not one that I had originally and the greatest influence on it was the time I spent in Ghana doing my doctoral fieldwork; indeed, I have not had an experience that so genuinely transformed me since!
Even so, I found it very difficult to write a book based on that fieldwork. I moved from my ethnographic investigations into a literature review of the political economy of West African agriculture, and it turns out that I am actually not an ethnographer, and am more interested in surveying literature concerning the questions that interest me. I am still an acute observer of everyday life; but I don't base my 'research' on it. Young people should both extend their comparative reach in a practical way and dig very deeply into circumstances that they encounter, wherever that may be. Above all, they should retain a sense of the uniqueness of their own life trajectory as the only basis for doing something new. This matters more than any professional training.
Now we see spectacular growth rates in African countries, as you mentioned, one of which is the DRC. How can we make sense of these formal growth rates: are they representative of the whole economies of these countries, or do they only refer to certain economic tendencies?
The whole question of measuring economic growth is a technical one, and it's flawed, and I only use it in the vaguest sense as a general indicator. For example, I think it's more important that Kenya, for example, is the world leader in mobile phone banking, and also a leader in recycling old computers for sale cheaply to poor people.
The political dispensation in Africa—the combination of fragmented states and powerful foreign interests and the predatory actions of the leaders of these states on their people -- especially the restrictions they impose on the movements of people and goods and money and so on – is still a tremendous problem. I think that the political fragmentation of Africa is the main obstacle to achieving economic growth.
But at the same time, as someone who has lived in Africa for many years, it's very clear that in some countries, certainly not all, the economies are very significantly on the move. It's not--in principle—that this will lead to durable economic growth, but it is the case that the cities are expanding fast, Africans are increasing their disposable income and it's the only part of the world where the people are growing so significantly. Africa is about to enter what's called the demographic dividend that comes when the active labor force exceeds the number of dependents. India has just gone through a similar phase.
The Chinese and others are heavily committed to taking part in this, obviously hoping to direct Africa's economic growth in their own interest. This is partly because the global economy is over the period of growth generated by the Chinese manufacturing exports and the entailed infrastructure and construction boom, which was itself an effect of the greatest shift from the countryside to the city in history. Now, the Chinese realize, the next such boom will be—can only take place—in Africa.
I'm actually not really interested in technical questions of how to measure economic growth. In my own writing about African development, I prefer anecdotes. Like for example, Nollywood—the Nigerian film industry—which has just past Bollywood as the second largest in the world! You mention the Congo which I believe holds the key to Africa's future. The region was full of economic dynamism before King Leopold took it over and its people have shown great resilience since Mobutu was overthrown and Rwandan and Ugandan generals took over the minerals-rich Eastern Congo. Understanding this history is much more important than measuring GDP, but statistics of this kind have their uses if approached with care.
Is it possible to understand the contemporary economic predicament that we are seeing, which in the Western world is referred to as the "crisis", without attributing it to vague agencies or mechanisms such as neoliberalism?
I have written at great length about the world economic crisis paying special attention to the problems of the Eurozone. My belief is that it is not simply a financial crisis or a debt crisis. We are actually witnessing the collapse of the dominant economic form of the last century and a half, which I call national capitalism—the attempt to control markets, money and accumulation through central bureaucracies in the interests of a presumed cultural community of national citizens.
The term neoliberalism is not particularly useful, but I try to lay out the history of modern money and why and how national currencies are in fact being replaced. That, to my mind, is a more precise way of describing the crisis than calling it neoliberal. On the other hand, neoliberalism does refer to the systematic privatization of public interests which has become normal over the last three or four hundred years. The bourgeois revolution claimed to have separated public and private interests, but I don't think it ever did so. For example, the Bank of England, the Banque de France, and the Federal Reserve are all private institutions that function behind a smokescreen of being public agencies.
It's always been the case that private interests corrupted public institutions and worked to deprive citizens of the ability to act purposefully under an ideological veil of liberty. But in the past, they tried to hide it. The public wasn't supposed to know what actually went on behind the scenes and indeed modern social science was invented to ensure that they never knew. What makes neoliberalism new is that they now boast about it and even claim that it's in everyone's interest to diminish public goods and use whatever is left for private ends—that's what neoliberalism is.
It's a naked grab for public resources and it's also a shift in the fundamental dynamic of capitalism from production for profit through sales tow varieties of rent-seeking. In fact, Western capitalism is now a system for extracting rents, rather than producing profits. Rents are income secured by political privilege such as the dividends of patents granted to Big Pharma or the right to control distribution of recycled movies. This has got nothing to do with competitive or free markets and much opposition to where we are now is confused as a result. Sometimes I think western capitalism has reverted to the Old Regime that it once replaced—from King George and the East India Company to George W and Halliburton. If so, we need another liberal revolution, but it won't take place in the North Atlantic societies.
In your recent work, you refer to The Great Transformation, which invokes Karl Polanyi's famous analysis of the growth of 19th century capitalism and industrialization. How can Polanyi help us to make sense of contemporary global economy, and where does this inspiring work need to be complemented? In other words, what is today's Great Transformation in light of Polanyi?
First of all, the Great Transformation is a brilliant book. I have never known anyone who didn't love it from the first reading. The great message of Polanyi's work is the spirit in which he wrote that book, regardless of the components of his theory. He had a passionate desire to explain the mess that world society had reached by the middle of the 20th century, and he provided an explanation. It's always been a source of inspiration for me.
A central idea of Polanyi's is that the economy was always embedded in society and Victorian capitalism disembedded it. One problem is that it is not clear whether the economy ever was actually disembedded (for example capitalism is embedded in state institutions and the private social networks mentioned just now) or whether the separation occurs at the level of ideology, as in free market economics. Polanyi was not against markets as such, but rather against market fundamentalism of the kind that swept Victorian England and has us in its grip today. The political question is whether politics can serve to protect society from the excesses produced by this disembedding; or whether it lends itself to further separation of the economy from society.
And I would say that Polanyi's biggest failure was to claim that what happened in the 19th century was the rise of "market society". This concept misses entirely the bureaucratic revolution that was introduced from the 1860s onwards based on a new alliance between capitalists and landlords which led to a new synthesis of states and corporations aiming to develop mass production and consumption. Polanyi could not anticipate what actually happened after he wrote his book in 1944. An American empire of free trade was built on a tremendous bureaucratic revolution. This drew on techniques and theories of control developed while fighting a war on all fronts. The same war was the source of the technologies that culminated late in the digital revolution. Karl Polanyi's interpretation of capitalism as a market economy doesn't help us much to understand that. In fact, he seems to have thought that bureaucracy and planning were an antidote to capitalist market economy.
If you ask me what is today's great transformation, I would prefer to treat the last 200 years as a single event, that is, a period in which the world population increased from one billion to seven billion, when the proportion of people living in cities grew from under 3% to around half, and where energy production increased on average 3% a year. The Great Transformation is this leap of mankind from reliance on the land into living in cities. It has been organized by a variety of institutions, including cities, capitalist markets, nation-states, empires, regional federations, machine industry, telecommunications networks, financial structures, and so on. I'm prepared to say that in the twentieth century national capitalism was the dominant economic form, but by no means all you need to know about if you want to make a better world.
I prefer to look at the economy as being organized by a plural set of institutions, including various political forms. The Great Transformation in Polanyi's sense was not really the same Great Transformation that Marx and Engels observed in Victorian England—the idea that a new economic system was growing up there that would transform the world. And it did! Polanyi and Marx had different views (as well as some common ideas), but both missed what actually happened, which is the kind of capitalism whose collapse is constitutes the Great Transformation for us today. The last thirty years of financial imperialism are similar to the three decades before the First World War. After that phase collapsed, thirty years of world war and economic depression were the result. I believe the same will happen to us! Maybe we can do something about it, but only if our awareness is historically informed in a contemporarily relevant way.
The distinction between states and markets really underpins much of what we understand about the workings of world economy and politics. Even when we just say "oh, that's not economic" or "that's not rational", we invoke a separation. How can we deal with this separation?
This state-market division comes back to the bourgeois revolution, which was an attempt to win freedom from political interference for private economic actors. I've been arguing that states and markets were always in bed together right from the beginning thousands of years ago, and they still are! The revolution of the mid 19th century involved a shift from capitalists representing workers against the landed aristocracy to a new alliance between them and the traditional enforcers to control the industrial and criminal classes flocking into the cities. A series of linked revolutions in all the main industrial countries during the 1860s and early 70s—from the American civil war to the French Third Republic via the Meiji Restoration and German unification—brought this alliance to power.
Modernity was thus a compromise between traditional enforcers and industrial capitalists and this dualism is reflected in the principal social form, the nation-state. This uneasy partnership has marked the relationship between governments and corporations ever since. I think that we are now witnessing a bid of the corporations for independence, for home rule, if you like. Perhaps, having won control of the political process, they feel than can go ahead to the next stage without relying on governments. The whole discourse of 'corporate social responsibility' implies that they could take on legal and administrative functions that had been previously 'insourced' to states. It is part of a trend whereby the corporations seek to make a world society in which they are the only citizens and they no longer depend on national governments except for local police functions. I think that it is a big deal—and this is happening under our noses!
Both politicians and economic theorists (OliverWilliamson got a Nobel prize for developing Coase's theory of the form along these lines) are proposing that we need to think again about what functions should be internal to the firm and what should be outside. Perhaps it was a mistake to outsource political control to states and war could be carried out by private security firms. The ground for all of this was laid in the late 19th century when the distinction in law between real and artificial persons was collapsed for business enterprises so that the US Supreme Court can protect corporate political spending in the name of preserving their human rights! Corporations have greater wealth, power and longevity than individual citizens. Until we can restore their legal separateness from the rest of humanity and find the political means of restricting their inexorable rise, resistance will be futile. There is a lot of intellectual and political work still to be done and, as I have said, a lot of pain to come before more people confront the reality of their situation.
What role do technological innovations play in your understanding and promoting of shifts in the way that we organize societies? Is it a passive thing or a driver of change?
I wrote a book, the Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (read it here, with the introduction here), which centered on a very basic question: what would future generations consider is interesting about us? In the late '90s, the dot com boom was the main game in town. It seemed obvious that the rise of the internet was the most important thing and that our responses to it would have significant consequences for future generations.
When I started writing it, I was interested in the democratic potential of the new media; but most of my friends saw them as a new source of inequality – digital exclusion, dominance of the big players and so on. I was accused of being optimistic, but I had absorbed from CLR James a response to such claims. It is not a question of being optimistic or pessimistic, but of identifying what the sides are in the struggle to define society's trajectory. In this case the sides are bureaucracy and the people. Of course the former wish to confine our lives within narrow limits that they control in a process that culminates as totalitarianism. But the rest of us want to increase the scope for self-expression in our daily lives; we want democracy and the force of the peoples of world is growing, not least in Africa which for so long has been excluded from the benefits of modern civilization. Of course there are those who wish to control the potential of the internet from the top; but everywhere people are making space for themselves in this revolution. When I see how Africans have moved in the mobile phone phase of this revolution, I am convinced that there is much to play for in this struggle. What matters is to do your best for your side, not to predict which side will win. Speaking personally, Web 2.0 has been an unmitigated boon for me in networking and dissemination, although I am aware that some think that corporate capital is killing off the internet. A lot depends on your perspective. I grew up learning Latin and Greek grammar. The developments of the last 2-3 decades seem like a miracle to me. I guess that gives me some buoyancy if not optimism as such.
It's obvious enough to me that any democratic response to the dilemmas we face must harness the potential of the new universal media. That's the biggest challenge. But equally, it's not clear which side is going to win. I'm not saying that our side, the democratic side, is going to beat the bureaucratic side. I just know which side I'm on! And I'm going to do my best for our side. Our side is the side that would harness the democratic potential of the new media. In the decade or more since I wrote my book on money and the internet, I have become more focused on the threat posed by the corporations and more accepting of the role of governments. But that could change too. And I am mindful of the role the positive role that some capitalists played in the classical liberal revolutions of the United States, France and Italy.
Final Question. I would like to ask you about the distinction between formal and informal economy which you are famous for having coined. How did you arrive at the distinction? Does the term, the dichotomy, still with have the same analytical value for you today?
Around 1970, there was a universal consensus that only states could organize economies for development. You were either a Marxist or a Keynesian, but there were no liberal economists with any influence at that time. In my first publication on the topic (Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana, read it here, pdf)—which got picked up by academics and the International Labor Organization—I was reacting against that; the idea promoted by a highly formal economics and bureaucratic practice that the state as an idea as the only actor. In fact, people in Third World cities engaged in all kinds of economic activities, which just weren't recognized as such. So my impulse was really empiricist—to use my ethnographic observations to show that people were doing a lot more than they were supposed to be doing, as recorded in official statistics or discussed by politicians and economists.
Essentially, I made a distinction between those things which were defined by formal regulation and those that lay outside it. I posed the question how does it affect our understanding in the development process to know more what people are doing outside the formal framework of the economy. And remember, this came up in West Africa, which did not have as strong a colonial tradition as in many other parts of Africa. African cities there were built and provisioned by Africans. There were not enough white people there to build these cities or to provide food and transport, housing, clothing and the rest of it.
In my book on African agriculture, I went further and argued that the cities were not the kind of engines of change that many people imagined that they were, but were in fact an extension of rural civilizations that had effectively not been displaced by colonialism, at least in that region. Now if you ask me how useful I think it is today, what happened since then of course is neoliberal globalization, for want of a better term, which of course hinges on deregulation. So, as a result of neoliberal deregulation, vast areas of the economy are no longer shaped by law, and these include many of the activities of finance, including offshore banking, hedge funds, shadow banking, tax havens, and so on. It also includes the criminal activities of the corporations themselves. I've written a paper on my blog called "How the informal economy took over the world" which argues that we are witnessing the collapse of the post-war Keynesian consensus that sought to manage the economy in the public interest through law and in other ways that have been dismantled; so, it's a free-for-all. In some sense, the whole world is now an informal economy, which means, of course, that the term is not as valuable analytically as it once was. If it's everything, then we need some new words.
The mistake I made with other people who followed me was to identify the informal economy with poor slum dwellers. I argued that even for them, they were not only in the informal economy, which was not a separate place, but that all of them combined the formal and informal in some way. But what I didn't pay much attention to was the fact that the so-called formal economy was also the commanding heights of the informal economy—that the politicians and the civil servants were in fact the largest informal operators. I realize that any economy must be informal to some degree, but it is also impossible for an economy to be entirely informal. There always have to be rules, even if they take a form that we don't acknowledge as being bureaucratically normal like, for example, kinship or religion or criminal gangs. So that's another reason why it seems to me that the distinction has lost its power.
At the time, it was a valuable service to point to the fact that many people were doing things that were escaping notice. But once what they were doing had been noticed, then the usefulness of the distinction really came into question. I suppose in retrospect that the idea of an informal economy was a gesture towards realism, to respect what people really do in the spirit of ethnography. I have taken that idea to another level recently in mywork on the human economy at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Here, in addition to privileging the actors' point of view and their everyday lives, we wish to address the human predicament at more inclusive levels than the local or even the national. Accordingly, our interdisciplinary research program (involving a dozen postdocs from around the world, including Africa, and 8 African doctoral students) seeks ways of extending our conceptual and empirical reach to take in world society and humanity as a whole. This is easier said than done, of course.
Keith Hart is Extraordinary Visiting Professor in the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship and Co-Director of the Human Economy Program at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is also centennial professor of Economic Anthropology at the LSE.
Related links
Faculty Profile at U-London
Personal webpage
Read Hart's Notes towards an Anthropology of the Internet (2004, Horizontes Antropológicos) here (pdf)
Read Hart's Marcel Mauss: In Pursuit of a Whole (2007, Comparative Studies in Society and History) here (pdf)
Read Hart's Between Democracy and the People: A Political History of Informality (2008 DIIS working paper) here (pdf)
Read Hart's Why the Eurocrisis Matters to Us All (Scapegoat Journal) here (pdf)
When looking at the literature surrounding the Iran Hostage Crisis, many scholars focus solely on the events that occurred in Iran leading up to the embassy being taken. This focus tends to paint Iranians as the "bad guys" in all situations. However, there was a large population of Iranian students in the US at the time, and these students had a completely different experience than those often remembered from the nightly news. Few scholars have set out to demonstrate the lives of those Iranian students, but those who have often describe the controversy that surrounded them. Scholars recognize how Iranian students in the US faced discrimination and how the US government was looking to deport them. These scholars tend to look at the lives of students who had it the worst, assuming all Iranian students' lives were atrocious in the US. They do not take into account those who were still welcomed at their universities throughout the crisis, as students disregarded diplomatic tensions and looked at the humans they spent their days with instead. By looking at more universities and more student experiences, a broader picture can be understood about the lives of Iranian students in the US during the crisis. ; Winner of the 2020 Friends of the Kreitzberg Library Award for Outstanding Research in the University Archives category. ; A Diplomatic Fiasco: How Iranian Students in the US were Affected Throughout the Iran Hostage Crisis Faith Privett Professor Boonshoft HI 249 Historical Methods 0800 5 December 2019 3979 Words 2 Not long after Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President of the United States on January 20th, 1981, former President Jimmy Carter was meeting the hostages he tried so desperately to release for 444 days. One of the bleakest moments of United States foreign policy history is the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which lasted from November 4th, 1979 to Reagan's inauguration day. In total, 66 people were taken hostage initially, but 52 were held for the full 444 days. America and the rest of the world watched as the days in captivity kept getting longer and longer, and their hopes conversely dropped. However, those accounts rarely showed the perspectives of the thousands of Iranian students in the US who suffered discrimination, harassment, and questioning throughout the crisis. They were seen as the enemy in a country that is supposed to be the "Land of the Free" and the "Great American Melting Pot." Nevertheless, this was not the case for all students; some were accepted with open arms throughout the crisis, as all so desperately sought world peace. Some students who did not necessarily feel the general American abhorrence were those who attended Norwich University, a private military college in central Vermont. Even though the rest of the country had conflicting views towards Iranian students in the US during the late 1970s, the Iranian Imperial Navy students at Norwich University were welcomed and well respected because of the well-developed program, the shared military experience and respect for authority, and the outward-looking ideals taught by the university, despite the tensions between the US and Iranian governments at the time. When looking at the literature surrounding the Iran Hostage Crisis, many scholars focus solely on the events that occurred in Iran leading up to the embassy being taken. This focus tends to paint Iranians as the "bad guys" in all situations.1 However, there was a large population of Iranian students in the US at the time, and these students had a completely different experience 1 Scott, "Bound for Glory." 3 than those often remembered from the nightly news. Few scholars have set out to demonstrate the lives of those Iranian students, but those who have often describe the controversy that surrounded them.2 Scholars recognize how Iranian students in the US faced discrimination and how the US government was looking to deport them. These scholars tend to look at the lives of students who had it the worst, assuming all Iranian students' lives were atrocious in the US.3 They do not take into account those who were still welcomed at their universities throughout the crisis, as students disregarded diplomatic tensions and looked at the humans they spent their days with instead. By looking at more universities and more student experiences, a broader picture can be understood about the lives of Iranian students in the US during the crisis. The US and Iran have a tumultuous diplomatic relationship that continues to this day, or better put does not continue to this day. The US had an interest in Iran during World War II and later into the start of the Cold War due to the fear of communism spreading and the fact that Iran had copious amounts of oil. In 1953, this came to a head when the leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, showed some "communist" tendencies that did not support US and British interests. The two countries staged a coup that removed Mossadegh and placed the previous ruler, Muhammed Reza Shah, back into power. This jumpstarted US involvement in Iran through diplomatic means that continued until the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. According to research by Dr. David Patrick Houghton, this involvement consequently may have led to the interest of the revolutionaries to take the hostages in 1979, as they saw the US as a threat to their sovereignty once again.4 2 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances." 3 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis." 4 Houghton, US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis, 58-59. 4 Iranians may also have related the actions of the Shah to US involvement because the US supported him despite his authoritarian tendencies. Dr. Matthew Shannon notes the injustices that took place under the Shah in numerous works. When the Shah came into power, he instilled policies that led to "rapid socioeconomic modernization," but the process in which he did it brings about questions of civil rights and democracy.5 The modernization process that took place in Iran, known as the White Revolution, made the country incredibly western by allowing capitalist practices in land and factory holdings and giving women the right to vote, among other things.6 However, the vote that supposedly put these acts into power was not necessarily ratified by the legislative body of Iran at the time, although the Shah made it look as such.7 By taking away democratic practices such as these, the Shah furthered his cause of becoming an authoritarian ruler without opposition. Along with taking away democratic practices, the Shah also limited expression in Iran, especially for those that may have come out against his reign. Much of this was enforced by SAVAK, or the National Intelligence and Security Organization, who was known for repressing any anti-government sentiments, especially anti-Shah sentiments. Starting in the 1950s, SAVAK was trained in the US by government officials, and their only oversight and command came from the Shah, meaning they did whatever they were told to do by him directly.8 News came out in the 1970s that SAVAK was using torture to suppress anti-government acts within Iran. Military tribunals, which were open to the public for a time, were moved behind closed doors for over a year by the Shah after a defendant showed scars during a tribunal they had obtained from torture by SAVAK.9 These human rights abuses and the fact that 5 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 662. 6 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 675. 7 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 63. 8 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 25-27. 9 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 681. 5 SAVAK could be anywhere instilled fear in the hearts of Iranians both at home and abroad, which helped the Shah uphold his authoritarian regime. Besides support for the Shah by the US, Shannon also focuses on how US involvement in Iran from 1953 to 1979 focused highly on education, as many of those who worked in the Iranian government in the early days of the Shah were educated at American universities. The exchange rate of students from Iran to the US to study in college was greater than any other country at the time, with over 50,000 Iranian students enrolled in US universities in the 1979-1980 school year, and in the years following, post-secondary education in Iran was oftentimes structured after American universities.10 The cooperation between the US and Iran regarding education before the Shah's removal helped to modernize the country, which was seen differently by each party involved. Luckily for historians, many of the documents from the era are still preserved in university archives, including those at Norwich University, where upwards of 134 Iranian students were attending in the spring of 1979.11 Numerous student newspaper articles, administrative files, and oral histories tell the stories of Iranian students at Norwich from 1976 to 1980. The President Loring Hart files describe the administrative set up of the program, which was modeled after the program at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where Iranian students had been attending for a few years before the program starting at Norwich. Deputy Commander LTC Paul Lafond went down to VMI to review their program in early May 1976, and he detailed a report that helped to eventually flesh out Norwich's Iranian student program. Some of the recommendations Lafond had were that Iranian students should room with American students, not with other Iranian students, because this would help them adapt to American life and learn 10 Hamidreza, "A Follow-Up Study on U.S.-Trained Iranian Faculty Members," 1038-1039. 11 Hart, "The President's Corner," Norwich University Record. 6 English quicker.12 Because of the Corps of Cadets' lifestyle at both VMI and Norwich, other recommendations were made regarding how cadre, or student military leaders, should train the Iranian cadets, as their learning styles were not the same. Lafond recommended that Iranian students respond well to clear orders, but they do not always respond well to negativity or derogatory or vulgar language. They should also be told when something is wrong, as they are oftentimes eager to fix it, but they will not understand if it is not brought to their attention. Lastly, Lafond notes that English proficiency is the biggest issue on campus, and even though the students attended a summer program that focused on English, it was not enough.13 This information was taken into account when designing the Norwich program. The administration designed an eighteen-week summer program that prepared the first fifty Iranian students with classes mainly focused on English, Math, Physical Education, and Naval ROTC, before the start of the school year in August 1976.14 With each year that Iranian students were on campus, more and more were able to attend as they worked out some of the issues with the program, and it became better established. Early on, Iranian students on campus ran across a few issues in their daily lives that highlight some of the changes that Norwich went through from 1976 to 1980 to improve the program. In a Norwich Guidon article published in October 1976, American author Gerard Grimes interviewed "Recruit Mohammad Zerehi from Iran" about what life was like at Norwich and how students could better understand their international counterparts.15 Zerehi noted some of the issues he and his fellow Iranian students were having on campus included English proficiency, adapting to the climate, and the diet. Zerehi asks readers that they do not 12 Lafond to Hart, 7 May 1976. 13 Lafond to Hart, 7 May 1976. 14 "Iranian Students Come to Norwich" Norwich Guidon. 15 Grimes, "Iranian Students at Norwich" Norwich Guidon. 7 discriminate against the Iranian students on the issue of pork, which many chose not to eat, because it is a religious practice.16 Other accounts by Iranian students recognize the issue with pork as well, but that over time, both the students and the school were able to resolve these problems and continue growing.17 Because this was written so early on in the program, it is noticeable that eventually, American and Iranian students got used to each other's practices, which led to their friendship and respect for one another throughout the years. Vital to the descriptions of life at Norwich from 1976-1980 are the oral histories of Iranian cadets Arsalan Namdar and Benjamin Heydary. Both men described what training was like, how they got along with their classmates, struggles they had, and how they eventually had to leave. Namdar described Rook Week as a "Piece of cake" because they had already been through years of more intense training in the Iranian Imperial Navy (IIN).18 Namdar also noted the Iranians "goofed off" at the beginning of training, much to the chagrin of their American classmates. This behavior transitioned once tasks started getting more intense. Another issue they ran into was the fact that their cadre were often younger and more inexperienced than they were, which created difficulties when they would get yelled at and disciplined.19 Heydary described similar feelings towards younger authority figures, but that he often kept his head down and dealt with it due to his humble upbringing.20 Another issue that arose earlier in the Iranian student's time at Norwich was that they often had more money than their American classmates because they were still getting paid their full salaries while attending school. This created a bit of strife between students, as the Iranians were not afraid to spend their money on cars and stereos.21 16 Grimes, "Iranian Students at Norwich" Norwich Guidon. 17 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 18 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 19 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 20 Heydary, interview by Yahm, March 10, 2015, transcript. 21 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 8 Dr. Matthew Shannon also describes the Norwich Iranian Cadets in his book Losing Hearts and Minds. Without saying much, he recognizes that Norwich had one of the largest programs in the US training Iranian Naval officers and that it trained women as well, which was new in the era and especially in the Middle East. He also describes some of the programs at Maine Maritime Academy, The Citadel, the Virginia Military Institute, and the United States Naval Academy. In general, these programs were similar because they were building off of each other's programs; Iranian students studied engineering and business most often while receiving Naval ROTC training and improving their English.22 He finds that Iran sent their naval officers to US military schools because they wanted a standard education, which was difficult when they sent their cadets to numerous other countries to train as Iran did not have an officer training facility at the time. Also, Shannon notes that the US had an interest in training Iranian cadets because of the protection of oil assets in the Middle East.23 The Nixon Doctrine, which was President Nixon's plan to support conflicts in the Pacific through management and materials but not manpower, was also being upheld through the act of training and providing military aid.24 Iranian students throughout the rest of the country were not as lucky as those at Norwich, as protests against them often occurred on college campuses. Will Teague described some of the protests held on college campuses in the South throughout the entire hostage crisis, but mainly in 1979 as the news was fresh in the minds of Americans. Teague documents protests at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, the University of Tulsa, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. These protests included gatherings of hundreds of students marching against Iranians, 22 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 105. 23 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 103. 24 Gannon. "25 July 1969: The Nixon Doctrine." https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2008/07/25-july-1969-the-nixon-doctrine/ [accessed 20 Nov 2019]. 9 burnings of flags and images of Ayatollah Khomeini, and derogatory and threatening signs all directed towards the Iranian students that were on these campuses.25 Newspapers were also an outlet for protest, as correspondence and letters to the editor called Iranian students, "savages, barbarians, bandits, and terrorists."26 However, Teague also notes that Iranian students were writing to newspapers as well, trying to show their side of the issue. Overall, they described their confusion about the event, just as much as American students were confused, but they wanted their fellow students to know the Shah was not whom they thought he was, and because they were not the ones who experienced his reign, they should not be quick to let him into the US.27 Besides the protests against Iranians on college campuses, Iranian students in the US themselves were protesting, for other reasons. The Iranian Student Association in the United States (ISAUS) was a student led-group with chapters around the country that organized protests and lobbied against the Shah's actions. Because they were in the US, they were able to use their freedom of speech rights to express their beliefs, where if they were in Iran, they most likely would not have been able to express their opinions for fear of getting imprisoned. Early on in the history of the ISAUS, their goals were to advocate for more democratic practices in Iran, including freedom of expression. They lobbied the Kennedy administration, specifically Robert Kennedy, to try and influence US foreign policy towards Iran and the Shah's regime.28 After news of SAVAK's torture started coming to the US from new students arriving, the ISAUS switched their tactics and started advocating for bringing to light the crimes against humanity that the Shah and SAVAK were committing. The ISAUS issued "On the Violation of Human Rights in Iran," which outlined the abuses under the Shah and called for the US to stop 25 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 115-116. 26 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 120. 27 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 116-118. 28 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 672-674. 10 supporting him. They were able to get attention in newspapers around the world, but the US continued to support the Shah due to their prior commitments.29 Protests against the Shah continued throughout the US the entire time he was in power. However, both Namdar and Heydary describe what set Norwich Iranian cadets apart from the rest of the Iranian students in the US at the time. Namdar states, "In later years…Americans and Iranians really became friends based on the values…."30 He goes on to say, "I think Norwich taught me a lot in terms of quality and integrity…experiencing life, and trying hard, and just trying to work with others and be friendly."31 At first, things were difficult for the students because of the language barrier and the fact that the Iranian and American cultures were so different. As Namdar recognizes, through time, both the American and the Iranian cadets learned more about one another and grew to respect the fact that they were different, which improved how they worked together. One can hypothesize that this might have something to do with the military training that all students received at Norwich. The military encourages the fact that soldiers need to work together to produce the best outcome in the field, despite their differences at home, which allowed the Iranian and American cadets to look past their many differences and unite on common ground. President Loring Hart described the impact that the Iranian students had on the American students at Norwich as, "They have brought to all of us broader horizons, and a new awareness…. They have provided a current which has flowed through our campus and our town…, reminding us that our college and our community is indeed a part of the greater scene beyond us."32 This statement describes the worldly perspective that Iranian students brought to the school and how it made Norwich students more aware of others who were not like 29 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 682-684. 30 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 31 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 32 "The Rest of the Story," Norwich University Record. 11 themselves. Like Heydary states, there were instances of discrimination or derogatory slang terms used against the Iranian students at the beginning of their time at Norwich, but once students got to know each other and the barriers were broken down, they were able to become friends despite their differences.33 After all of the unrest occurring in Iran at the time, 1979 was the icing on top of the cake. The Shah left Iran in early 1979, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a popular religious leader who was incredibly anti-Shah and anti-American and who became an icon for revolutionary voices within Iran while in exile, took power shortly after.34 The entire country was calling for the Shah's return so he could face charges in front of the people he oppressed for so many years. Instead, the Shah sought cancer treatment in the US, which is what most people think caused the hostage situation to occur. A substantial diplomatic issue arose as President Carter considered allowing the Shah into the US, which many Iranians thought was the US harboring their criminal and preventing them from exerting their sovereignty. When the Shah was admitted into the US, the unrest came to a peak, and protesters outside the US embassy in Tehran, Iran, many of which were US-educated students, stormed the embassy and took 66 Americans inside hostage, 52 of which they held for the entirety of the crisis. With so many people protesting the Shah both in the US and Iran, there is much to say about how the media spun the story to make all Iranian's the bad guys in the situation when they faced discrimination in the US themselves. Professor Catherine Scott explained the "captivity narrative" that was portraited throughout the crisis by the media and the government, which convinced the American citizens to hate Iran more than they ever had before. A captivity narrative is best described when a story is portraited in such a way that the victims' actions 33 Heydary, interview by Yahm, March 10, 2015, transcript. 34 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 70. 12 against the captors are justified because of the actions that were committed against them.35 What she is saying is that the Americans knew they were the victims during the hostage crisis, and they played into it, but they were not willing to take into account the atrocities that they themselves committed beforehand. Retaliation, by any means, was not only justified but also necessary to protect the American people. This only increased the abhorrent treatment by Americans against Iranians because it was for the public good, even if the public included over one hundred thousand Iranians. The fact that the media portraited the US as victims, and the federal government was retaliating against Iranians just made it more acceptable for the everyday Americans to lash out against their Iranian counterparts. Because of the backlash against Iranians by the US public, there was also government backlash as well. President Carter issued Section 214.5, which called for the investigation into Iranian students in the US to ensure that they were abiding by their visas. If they were not, they were to be deported. This turned into somewhat of a witch hunt as Iranian students could be investigated and deported at any point. According to Tinsley Yarbrough, the deportations were supposed to reduce the number of protests in the US against Iranians so they would not get in the way of hostage negotiations.36 However, many people outside of the government sector questioned the constitutionality of the act, including members of the ISAUS, who brought a case forward against Section 214.5 in late 1979. The original ruling on the case by DC District Court Judge Joyce Green was that the students were correct, and the order was unconstitutional due to discrimination.37 The Appeals Court overruled Judge Green's decision because Section 214.5 had to due with foreign affairs, and under the Constitution, the judiciary could not shoot down 35 Scott, "Bound for Glory," 180. 36 Yarbrough, "Federal Alienage Doctrine," 248. 37 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 124-125. 13 any law regarding the handling of foreign affairs by the executive.38 This allowed the deportations to continue without question, and arguably set a precedent that is followed today. While the rest of the country was dealing with Section 214.5, Iranian students at Norwich encountered a different dilemma. Because they were members of the Iranian military, they had different travel visas than Iranian students at other universities around the US. On April 9th, 1980, President Carter issued a deportation order that all, "non-diplomatic and consular officials and employees of Iran in the US leave no later than Friday April 11th."39 This made it clear that the Iranian cadets at Norwich had to leave for good because their visas made them fall under this category. A newspaper article from the Iranian students' departure day describes the fact that President Loring Hart and the administration contacted as many agencies as possible, trying to allow the cadets to remain at school to finish the year, but there were no loopholes they could use as students at the Citadel and VMI also had to leave. The article then goes on to describe the last few days of the Iranian students on campus, their rush to pack and sell their belongings, and the "emotional farewell" that awaited them on April 11th.40 Cadet Kazem Yahyapour stated in an interview on the day he was forced to leave that he wished he could kiss everyone goodbye, and that, "friendships…made at Norwich will never be forgotten."41 The article also says that Cadet Yahyapour hugged Cadet Colonel William Elliott in a "symbolic gesture."42 This symbolic gesture represents the experiences Iranian cadets had at Norwich, and how their time was much different from that of their counterparts at other American universities, as Norwich welcomed 38 Yarbrough, "Federal Alienage Doctrine," 252-253. 39 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 40 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 41 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 42 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 14 these students with open arms despite the hard times in their country, when they could have turned against them as so many others in the US did at the time. Overall, the Norwich program tried incredibly hard to welcome the Iranians into the US by basing their training and education off of other programs in the US and using their misgivings to make their program the best they could be. The values of respect, tolerance, friendship, integrity, and hard work made people from different backgrounds, and even different countries, able to work together instead of hate one another when diplomatic ties between the two countries fell apart. This was not the case in the rest of the United States at the time, when tensions ran high among neighbors, and Iranian students were constantly on edge, wondering when the government was going to send them back to their revolution-torn homeland. Today, diplomatic ties still have not been reestablished, and the situation with Iran created a deeply divided society in which blame was able to be placed on anyone at any time based on where they came from, a sight not unseen throughout history before and since then. However, the precedent set by Norwich students during the crisis could be an example to the rest of the world of how people from different backgrounds can learn to work together when their two countries could not seem to get along. 15 Bibliography Primary Sources Arsalan M. Namdar, interview by Sarah Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript, Norwich Voices Oral History Project, Norwich University Archives, Kreitzberg Library, Northfield, VT. • Arsalan Namdar was an IIN student at Norwich and faced the issue of deportation in April 1980. His oral history was recorded in 2015, and he looks back on his time at Norwich, as well as his experiences in the US in general and back home in Iran. Benjamin Heydary, interview by Sarah Yahm, Northbridge, MA, March 10, 2015, transcript, Norwich Voices Oral History Project, Norwich University Archives, Kreitzberg Library, Northfield, VT. • Heydary's oral history works alongside Namdar's oral history to describe what was going on at Norwich from 1976 to 1980 when they were both IIN cadets at Norwich. Heydary also explains how he got to Norwich and how he actually went back to do his military service under the Ayatollah before coming to the US. "Degree Status of Deported Iranian Students" Norwich University Record, May 1980. • The article describes a meeting with the Board of Trustees to determine the degree status of those Iranian seniors who were deported but who were supposed to graduate in May or in the summer. It states that they can get their degrees eventually once relations with Iran are restored, which to this day have yet to be formally restored. "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon, May 10, 1980. • In an article written in the Guidon following the deportation of the Iranian students, the author describes the scene in the last few days the students were on campus. They note specifically that the Iranians had to leave because of the Executive Order issued by 16 President Carter on April 9th that all, "non-diplomatic and non-consular officials and employees of Iran in the U.S. leave no later than Friday April 11th." They state the overall good relations that everyone had on campus, even though the rest of the country was deeply divided along the lines of their country of origin. Grimes, Gerard. "Iranian Students at Norwich" Norwich Guidon, October 31, 1976. • A Guidon writer, Gerard Grimes, interviewed an Iranian recruit, Mohammad Zerehi, about his experiences and those of his fellow Iranians during their first year at Norwich. It describes the overall good treatment the students received, although this was before tensions rose too much between Iran and the US. Hart, Loring. "The President's Corner" Norwich University Record, March 1979. • The article describes President Loring Hart's views about the IIN students at Norwich at the time. He mentions how there is currently turmoil in the country, and that he wishes for peace. He also notes how many students are at Norwich and that Iranian women are now enrolled. "Iranian Students Come to Norwich" Norwich Guidon, May 6, 1976. • The article describes the beginning of the program at Norwich after the students arrived and some of their expectations overall, including some of the characteristics of the new students. Report from Deputy Commandant LTC Paul Lafond to President Loring Hart, 7 May 1976. Loring Edward Hart Records, Box 12, Norwich University Archives, Kreitzberg Library, Northfield, VT. • The report states the observations that LTC Lafond made when he went to VMI to go over their Iranian exchange program to see what would work best for Norwich. This 17 bases their program off of the VMI program, based on their mistakes and successes, including how the language barrier made a difference. "The Rest of the Story" Norwich University Record, Winter 2012. http://thenorwichrecord.com/the-rest-of-the-story/ [accessed 20 November 2019]. • This is a story from the alumni newspaper was written long after the Iranian students left campus. However, it takes into account the memories of IIN students of their time at Norwich, departure day, and what it was like going back to Iran. It paints a picture of the Iranian students on campus and when they left. Secondary Sources Chaichian, Mohammed A. "The New Phase of Globalization and Brain Drain: Migration of Educated and Skilled Iranians to the United States." International Journal of Social Economics 39, No. 2 (2012): 18-38. • Dr. Chaichian is a professor of sociology at Mount Mercy University. His article recognizes the "brain drain," which is the emigration of educated individuals that is currently occurring from Iran to other western nations, like the US. He states that this is caused not only by a shift in the internal structure of Iran and its acceptance of western-based education but also the international economic opportunities that are available outside of the country. Gannon, Frank. "25 July 1969: The Nixon Doctrine." https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2008/07/25-july-1969-the-nixon-doctrine/ [accessed 20 Nov 2019]. • This article makes note of President Nixon's words regarding the announcements he made about his plans for Asia, which explains what came to be known as the Nixon 18 Doctrine. He wanted to get away from using manpower and focus more on management and support for countries attempting to fight oppressive or communist regimes than by providing troops. Hamidreza, Arasteh. "A Follow-Up Study on U.S.-Trained Iranian Faculty Members: Satisfactions and Dissatisfactions." College Student Journal 43, No. 4 (Dec 2009): 1037- 1045. • Dr. Hamidreza is a professor of education and psychology at a university in Tehran, Iran, and his study is based on US-educated college faculty in Tehran, giving him access to the information. He notes some of the problems that US-educated faculty have because of the openness of American education and the structured, hierarchal nature of Iranian that do not always agree with each other. However, Iranian higher education is still based on the American system of higher education. Houghton, David Patrick. US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. • Dr. Houghton is a professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College and is an expert on US foreign policy. This book goes into depth about the actions taken both in Iran and the US to solve the Iranian Hostage Crisis, while also going into depth about the causes of the crisis from both perspectives. He analyzes how each group, Americans and Iranians, looked at the historical background of the situation and drew upon different events to support their reasoning for their actions during the crisis. The argument is that it was their own experiences that validated their analogies and their actions. The issue of foreign policy is brought up as there was no precedent for this, so 19 they analyze the information that was used as the basis of American and Iranian decisions. Kessel, John H. "The Structures of the Carter White House." American Journal of Political Science 27, No. 3 (Aug 1983): 431-463. • This article is from 1983 and was written shortly after President Carter left office. Professor Kessel was a distinguished scholar at Ohio State, and he interviewed the members of the Carter administration upon their phasing out, getting information straight from the source. He sets up what the Carter administration did, how it changed over time, and how the goals and interests of the President are carried out through his staff. It never uses the words "Iran Hostage Crisis" at all. Mobasher, Mohsen. "Cultural Trauma and Ethnic Identity Formation Among Iranian Immigrants in the United States." American Behavioral Scientist 50, No. 1 (Sept 2006): 100-117. • Dr. Mobasher is a professor of anthropology at the University of Houston. This article recognizes the shift in pride within Iranian immigrants to the United States during and after the crisis, and how it has affected them to this day. Because of their status as both Iranians and as Muslims, American society automatically looks down on them and makes assumptions, which puts them in a position to suppress their heritage and culture. Scott, Catherine V. "Bound for Glory: The Hostage Crisis as Captivity Narrative in Iran." International Studies Quarterly 44, No. 1 (Mar 2000): 177-188. • Scott is a professor of political science at Agnes Scott College. In her article she describes the use of the media to influence the stories coming out of crises, such as the Iran Hostage Crisis, that made America rally behind the hostages and the President as the 20 victims who were fighting brutal and vicious Islamic captors, changing the narrative for years to come. Shannon, Matthew K. "American-Iranian Alliances: International Education, Modernization, and Human Rights During the Pahlavi Era." Diplomatic History 39, No. 4 (Sept 2015): 661- 688. • Professor Shannon is educated at UNC and Temple and teaches history at Emory and Henry College. He also authored Losing Hearts and Minds about Iranian relations. Shannon tells the story of American-Iranian relations that began and ended with the shah. Iranian students in the US tried multiple times to get the US to dump the shah because of his authoritarian tendencies and campaign against human rights, although the US's international policy regarding them eventually failed. Shannon, Matthew K. Losing Hearts and Minds: American Iranian Relations and International Education During the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017. • By describing the events of the Iran Hostage Crisis and those that lead up to it, Shannon focuses on the importance of education throughout. He recognizes how the Iranian students that came to the US and went back helped to support the White Revolution and how all Iranian students, in turn, became voices for their country outside of its borders because they could not within. The main argument is that it was the students who inevitably brought about the Iranian Revolution and the actions that came with it due to their activeness in government, including how they used their American educations to further their causes and cause the destruction of US-Iranian relations. 21 • The book actually mentions the military programs at the SMCs that were in place and how they inevitably influenced the educational training aspect of both country's diplomacy towards one another. Teague, Will. "Hostages of the Crisis: Iranian Students in Arkansas, 1979-1981." The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 77, No. 2 (Summer 2018): 113-130. • When writing this journal article, Teague was a doctoral student of history at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville, so he had the access and resources to make a clear argument for examples within the state of Arkansas and its experience with Iranian students. He also uses sources from other universities, mostly throughout the South, which painted a picture of what protests were like and how often they occurred on college campuses with Iranian students. This can be used to compare Norwich to the rest of the country. He also adds some of the challenges that came up with deportation, and how America was trying to decide whether or not it was legal, which can be related to past events like Executive Order 9066 and even today with President Trump's Muslim ban. Yarbrough, Tinsley E. "Federal Alienage Doctrine and the Iranian Student Litigation." Human Rights Quarterly 4, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 243-260. • Tinsley Yarbrough is an expert on the mid-20th century US Supreme Court and has published numerous books and articles on the topic. By relating the Iranian student litigation in 1979 to numerous cases and rulings throughout the 20th century regarding immigration issues, he establishes a precedent for the decisions made that can be brought into question in the modern-day by explaining the arguments of the case against Section 214.5.
The Modern Language Association (MLA) report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) recommended that the language disciplines decenter off literature and design programs that are more directly related to "real world" contexts. This recommendation has awoken renewed discussion about how best to promote and develop multilingualism and intercultural competence in the United States. In order to change undergraduate offerings, it would be necessary to change the focus of graduate programs. Changing the focus of graduate programs is a delicate and high stakes task, which can influence both the nature of intellectual production in the United States as well as impact the employability of thousands of new PhDs. Will the MLA 2007 report stimulate any lasting change? Will the number of jobs which deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields merit redesign of graduate programs to train future professors to meet this demand? The MLA Foreign Language Job Information List contains a plethora of data that can provide answers for some of these questions. This article seeks to create insights into a significant subcategory of the Foreign Language profession by presenting an analysis of job announcements for Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). ; To cite the digital version, add its Reference URL (found by following the link in the header above the digital file). ; LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 15 Language for Specific Purposes Job Announcements from the Modern Language Association Job Lists: A Multiyear Analysis Mary K. Long University of Colorado at Boulder Abstract: The Modern Language Association (MLA) report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) recommended that the language disciplines decenter off literature and design programs that are more directly related to "real world" contexts. This recommendation has awoken renewed discussion about how best to promote and develop multilingualism and intercultural competence in the United States. In order to change undergraduate offerings, it would be necessary to change the focus of graduate programs. Changing the focus of graduate programs is a delicate and high stakes task, which can influence both the nature of intellectual production in the United States as well as impact the employability of thousands of new PhDs. Will the MLA 2007 report stimulate any lasting change? Will the number of jobs which deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields merit redesign of graduate programs to train future professors to meet this demand? The MLA Foreign Language Job Information List contains a plethora of data that can provide answers for some of these questions. This article seeks to create insights into a significant subcategory of the Foreign Language profession by presenting an analysis of job announcements for Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). Keywords: jobs, job announcements, Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), Modern Language Association (MLA), non-tenure track (NTT), tenured/tenure track (TTT) Introduction Since its release five years ago, the Modern Language Association (MLA) report "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) has awoken renewed discussion in the profession about how best to promote and develop multilingualism and intercultural competence in the United States. The suggestion that the language disciplines should decenter off literature and design programs that are more directly related to "real world" contexts has caused both consternation and excitement as well as much discussion about what steps would be necessary to redesign both undergraduate and graduate programs in order to train future faculty to teach within the proposed new scenarios (e.g., Porter, 2009; Rifkin, 2012). Changing the focus of graduate programs is a delicate and high stakes task that can influence both the nature of intellectual production and international understanding in the United States as well as impact the employability of thousands of new PhDs. Thus, those in the profession are wise to move deliberately and to consider the multiple angles. From the point of view of preparing future professors, some very pragmatic issues of job market demand must be considered. For example, will the MLA 2007 report stimulate any lasting change? Are departments truly moving to transform their undergraduate offerings away from literature? If so, in what ways are they redefining their programs and who will teach these courses? What is the balance between tenured/tenure track (TTT) and non-tenure track (NTT) jobs LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 16 in these areas? Will there be steady demand for future faculty trained to meet the new scenarios? Are new research fields emerging? If so, what do they look like? Will the number of jobs that deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields merit redesign of graduate programs to train future professors to meet this demand? Or, is it more a question of helping future professors to enhance the traditional fields of specialization with new pedagogical approaches and secondary content expertise? The MLA Foreign Language Job Information List contains a plethora of data that can provide answers for some of these questions and be used to gauge the direction of the Foreign Language professions. In fact, the MLA itself releases yearly summaries of many of the overarching themes, such as number of jobs overall, changes in demand between languages, and so forth, but the potential exists to provide much more detailed analysis, which will be useful—and even crucial—to shaping the future of Foreign Language education in the United States. Along those lines, this article seeks to create insights into a significant subcategory of the Foreign Language profession by presenting an analysis of MLA Job List announcements with a focus on Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP). Since the late 1940s, the LSP field has been meeting the 2007 MLA report's stated goals of increasing the number of "educated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural compentence" as well as the ability to carry that competence beyond the classroom into the world (MLA, 2007, p. 3). The LSP field continues to represent a significant area of Foreign Language Education in the United States. The national survey "Evolution of Language for Specific Purposes programs in the United States: 1990–2011" conducted by Long and Uscinski (2012), shows that, since the early 1990s, overall offerings of LSP have remained stable at 62% while at the same time the sophistication and variety of offerings have become deeper and more focused in response to the nuanced needs within different multilingual settings. The LSP faculty profile created as part of this survey indicates a more or less even split between TTT faculty and NTT faculty. In addition, while 20% of faculty listed LSP as their primary field of academic preparation, a dramatic 80% indicated another field as their primary field of academic preparation. Of these, the majority listed Literature as their primary focus, with Linguistics and Cultural Studies running a distant second and third (Long & Uscinski, 2012, p. 183). In part, this mix of primary fields has a very pragmatic explanation since as new fields develop, there will necessarily be a large number of "ground breakers" who are willing and able to expand their research and pedagogical skills beyond their original areas of content expertise. But, in addition, and more importantly, this mix of expertise is by definition one of the advantages and challenges for any interdisciplinary field. Recent volumes focused on LSP (e.g., Gueldry, 2010a, Gueldry 2010b; Lafford, 2012; Pérez-Llantada & Watson, 2011) showcase the rich research potential of the LSP focus for a variety of fields and point to the advantages of interdisciplinary research for addressing many of the complex intercultural issues faced in today's "global setting." These publications also provide significant insights into the history, current state and future potential for the LSP field. One of the difficulties highlighted in this body of work is that interdisciplinary work often blocks the professional progress of faculty since tenure and promotion structures are more suited to single focus research fields. Against this backdrop of past practices, the following analysis of LSP job announcements will shed light on how the profession envisions the future of the LSP field as well as offer insight LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 17 into what provisions (if any) are being made in the design of new positions to support and promote the professional success of faculty who possess highly needed interdisciplinary expertise. Methodology The job announcements have been analyzed for two "snap shot" moments: the online MLA Foreign Language Job Information list September 2008–January 2009 and the online MLA Foreign Language Job Information list from September 2011–June 2012 (and, one chart shares additional data on Spanish for Business from September 2007–January 2008). It should be noted that in 2008–2009 there was an historic decline in job announcements that continued into 2009–2010. Since 2010–2011, there has been a "tentative climb upwards" (Lusin, 2012, p. 95). Because of the unique moment represented by the job market during these years, and because only two years of data are presented, there has been no analysis performed to determine if changes in raw numbers or percentages represent statistically significant changes overtime. Rather than attempting to track statistical changes, the goal of this current project has been to have a more clear understanding of the quantity and specific profiles of jobs in the LSP field both in relation to the overall job market, and within the LSP profession itself. The data was collected as follows: the search function included in the electronic posting of the job list was used to first search each language for the total number of jobs for all ranks and regions in each language (both expired and current listings). The categories offered on the MLA job list that were searched are: Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Scandinavian, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Slavic, Spanish, Other languages, Linguistics and ESL, Generalist, and Other. After establishing the total number of jobs for each language, several new searches were conducted per language using the keyword function to limit results. For the 2008–2009 list, the search was repeated for each language using the keyword 'business,' and this keyword brought up announcements that also contained other LSP terms such as 'professions,' 'translation,' 'medical,' etc. For the search of the 2011–2012 MLA list, a more expanded set of keywords was used. Each language was searched separately for the following keywords: business, translation, medicine, medical, professions, professional and specific/special purposes. To avoid double counting of announcements that included several of the search words and to eliminate "false positives" when the keywords were used in non-LSP contexts, once they were identified, the LSP announcements were read individually and hand-sorted. After extracting the number of LSP jobs in relation to the overall number of jobs for each language, further analysis was conducted on the specific nature of the LSP jobs, whether the LSP field was listed as primary or secondary, the split between TTT and NTT positions within these categories, and in the case of jobs that list LSP as a secondary field, what primary fields are most often combined with LSP. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 18 Results Search terms. For the 2008–2009 search, even though additional search terms emerged through the key word 'business,' the majority of jobs were for 'language for business' with 'translation' coming in second. In 2011–2012, the highest results were for business, translation, professions, medical and specific/special purposes in descending order. 'Medicine' and 'professional' did not achieve any results in any language. This process revealed that when the keywords 'specific/special purposes' and 'professions' are used they are frequently followed by a parenthetical list of examples that duplicated other keywords (most often 'business' and 'translation') along with words not used in the search function. For example, for Spanish, other parenthetical examples included 'legal,' while for German, 'engineering' is a significant 'specific purpose.' 'Medical' only appeared in Spanish LSP job announcements, occasionally as a stand-alone term, but most often as one possible professional use. 'Translation,' on the other hand, was a stand-alone term that rivaled 'business' in Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. (In these cases, only non-literary translation positions were counted since there is a clear distinction in announcements between literary translation theory and applied professional translation.) Categories with LSP announcements. Categories that included jobs with an LSP focus in both 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 are Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Scandinavian, Japanese and Spanish. Categories that had no LSP jobs linked to the keywords in either sample are Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Slavic, Other languages, and Generalist. The Linguistics and ESL heading had no LSP jobs in the 2008–2009 list, but in the 2011–2012 had 10 LSP jobs out of 120 total (8.3%), 2 in ESL and 8 in Spanish. However, since the focus of this article is not on ESL and the Spanish linguistics/LSP jobs have also been counted in Spanish and will be analyzed there, the Linguistics and ESL category will not be analyzed further in this article. In each of the years, the category 'other' has a few interdisciplinary opportunities with a professional focus that breaks away from categorization by language. Overall numbers. Table 1 shows the total number of jobs compared to total LSP jobs and percentages for all languages from the 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 samples. Overall, the LSP job offerings fluctuate between 2 and 9% of all jobs, depending on specific language and year. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 19 Table 1 Total jobs vs. total LSP jobs and percentages by language 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 Language 2008–2009 Total of all jobs in sample of MLA job list 2008–2009 Number of jobs with LSP element in sample 2008–2009 % of jobs with LSP element out of all jobs in sample 2011–2012 Total of all jobs in sample of MLA job list 2011–2012 Number of jobs with LSP element in sample 2011–2012 % of jobs with LSP element out of all jobs in sample Arabic 46 2 4.3% 46 1 2.1% Chinese 64 6 9.3% 79 4 5% French 150 6 4% 177 9 5% German and Scandinavian 90 4 4% 120 9 7.5% Italian - - - 59 0 0 Japanese ? 2 38 2 5% Portuguese - - - 39 0 0 Russian and Slavic - - - 34 0 0 Spanish 377 13 3% 365 29 7.9% Other languages - - - 64 0 0 Linguistics and ESL - - - 120 2 ESL and counted in Spanish 8 linguistics (5 required and 3 possible field) 8.3% Generalist - - - 34 0 0 Other ? 3 137 1 NA LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 20 Table 2 breaks down the total number of LSP jobs for both sample years into categories of LSP as a primary or secondary field of interest and also indicates whether the jobs are TTT or NTT. Table 2 Total number of LSP jobs compared to primary or secondary field and Tenured/Tenure Track (TTT) or Non-Tenure Track (NTT) by language for 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 Language 2008–2009 Total number LSP in sample 2008–2009 LSP as Primary field and TTT or NTT 2008–2009 LSP as secondary field and TTT or NTT 2011–2012 Total number LSP in sample 2011–2012 LSP as Primary field and TTT or NTT 2011–2012 LSP as secondary field and TTT or NTT Arabic 2 1 (NTT) 1 (TT) 1 0 1 (NTT) Chinese 6 2 (NTT) 4 (TTT) 4 1 (TT) 3 (2 TT/1 NTT) French 6 3 (2 TTT/1NTT) 3 (TTT) 9 2 (1 TT/1 NTT) 7 (3 TT/ 4 NTT) German and Scandinavian 4 4 (2TTT/2NTT) 0 9 1 (TT) 8 (4TT/3 NTT) Japanese 2 1 (NTT) 1 (TTT) 2 2 (1 TT/1 NTT) Spanish 13 6 (NTT) 7 (TTT) 29 13 (9 TT/ 4 NTT) 16 (11 TT/ 5 NTT) Other 3 1 (TT) Primarily business, PhD in applied linguistics or other fields of linguistics and MA in one of the World Languages) 2 post docs language open PhD field open; work on creating connection between the arts and the sciences and business 1 1 (TT) Director of a center for International Understanding Total 36 18 (5 TTT/13 NTT) 18 (16 TTT/2 post docs) 53 20 (14TTT/6NTT) 34 (21 TTT/ 13 NTT) LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 21 Table 3 transforms the raw numbers from Table 2 into percentages from the 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 samples of TTT LSP positions overall, and the split for jobs with LSP as the primary field or secondary field. In order to provide context, the percentages of TTT jobs by language for the overall profession from the 2011–2012 job list is also provided in this table. Table 3 2011–2012 percent of tenured/tenure track (TTT) for all jobs vs. 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 percent of TTT in LSP total and percentages of TTT with LSP as primary or secondary field Language 2011–2012 % TTT of total jobs in MLA sample 2008–2009 % TTT of total LSP in sample 2008–2009 % TTT LSP as primary within total LSP sample 2008–2009 % TTT LSP as secondary within total LSP sample 2011–2012 % TTT of total LSP sample 2011–2012 % TTT LSP as primary within total LSP sample 2011–2012 % TTT LSP as Secondary within total LSP sample Arabic 43% 50% 0% 50% 0% 0% 0% Chinese 47.5% 66% 0% 66% 75 % 25% 50% French 47.9 % 83% 33% 50% 44% 11% 33% German and Scandinavian 38% 50% 50% 0% 55 % 11% 44% Japanese 48% 50% 0% 50% 50 % 50% 0% Spanish 53% 53% 0% 53% 68% 31% 37% Overall 49% 58% 50% 8% 64% 25% 39% The percentages of TTT positions for the overall profession by language range from 38% (in German) to 53% (in Spanish). For 2008–2009 the percentages of TTT positions out of the body of LSP jobs ranged between 50% and 83% while in 2011–2012 the percentages ranges from 0% to 75%. When the LSP jobs are analyzed for TTT positions with LSP as a primary field or as a secondary field, the TTT positions with LSP as a secondary field are slightly more than LSP as a primary field for both samples. From 2008–2009 to 2011–2012 there would seem to be a decrease in the overall number of TTT primary LSP positions, but these numbers are misleading, since in 2008–2009 only two languages (French and German) had TTT primary LSP positions, while in 2011–2012 all languages except for Arabic have at least one TTT primary LSP position. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 22 Discussion of overall numbers. At first the overall percentages of LSP positions to total jobs may seem low, but it helps to contextualize them by briefly comparing with the percentages of other more traditional specializations within the language professions. So for example, from the 2011–2012 list, a search in late July for Spanish with keyword 'Mexico' reveals 18 out of 359 or 5% of jobs focused on this specialization, while the keywords 'Golden Age' yield 12 out of 359 or 3% of jobs, 'Modern Peninsular' appears in 16 out of 359 or 4.4%, 'Applied Linguistics' in 41 out of 359 or 11% of announcements, and 'Cultural Studies' tallies a dramatic 82 out of 359 or 22% of all jobs in Spanish. For French, the keywords '18th century' exist in only 5 out 175 or 2% of jobs, while '20th century' yields 12 out of 175 for 6%, 'Francophone' 54 out of 175 for 30%, 'Applied Linguistics' 11 out of 175 for 6%, and 'Cultural Studies' 57 out of 175 for 32%. In contrast, the 'Generalist' category defines 34 out of 359 or 9% of jobs for Spanish but for French only 6 out of 175 or 3%. One could continue to generate multiple different combinations of keywords. For the purposes of this article the point meant to be illustrated by this quick comparison of some literary and linguistic categories is to show that the percentages for job offerings requiring some LSP content, while not in the double digits, are as significant as many other smaller fields of specialization within the profession, and thus, LSP is a viable career enhancing area of expertise for those who have an interest or previous experience in an LSP area or who have access to LSP content and/or teaching experience through their graduate institution. In regards to the percentage of TTT positions, it appears that the ratio of TTT to NTT within the LSP profession is slightly better than in the overall job market. But, as stated earlier, no analysis has been done to determine statistical significance. What is clear, however, is that the ration of TTT to NTT for LSP is at least the same as for the overall market. However, the most important element in the analysis of TTT vs. NTT positions is the split between primary and secondary fields. In this case, the numbers do not seem to justify advising graduate students to focus exclusively on an LSP field. Rather, they should pursue LSP as a strong secondary field and be prepared in the case of primary LSP positions to expand on their LSP expertise further. This leads to the question of which primary fields are most often combined with a secondary interest in LSP in the job announcements. It is not possible to make overall generalizations about this, since the primary/secondary field combinations are quite specific to each language. So, in what follows, the results for each language will be presented and discussed individually. Arabic In 2008–2009, there were 2 LSP jobs out of a total of 46 announcements or 4.3% of jobs had an LSP element. One of these jobs was a tenure track position with a primary field listed as expertise in language, culture and civilization with business and comparative literature as desirable secondary fields. The other was a non-tenure track position with primarily a focus on Arabic for business and additional duties as administrator of the Arabic minor. In 2011–2012, the sample also revealed 46 jobs but just one (or 2.1%) had an LSP focus. This non-tenure track position offered a 3 year renewable contract but had a hefty list of requirements: LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 23 Required: Experience with the proficiency communicative approach; ability to teach at least one colloquial dialect in addition to Modern Standard and Classical Arabic at all levels, and content courses such as Newspaper/Media Arabic and Business Arabic; experience in curriculum development and supervision, along with full competency to teach language and content courses at all levels; completed doctoral degree by time of appointment. Chinese In the 2008–2009 sample, there were 6 LSP jobs out of a total of 64 for Chinese, which represented 9.3% of all jobs in this language. For the 2011–2012 sample, the percentage is lower at 5%, while the total number of jobs is higher at 79 only 4 positions mention LSP. In 2008–2009, there was one tenure track assistant level position and 3 tenured at the level of Associate or Full. All of these positions were at the City University of Hong Kong and listed cultural management communication as the primary field with business as a secondary area. The jobs that listed business as a primary field were both non-tenure track: one visiting professorship focused on policy and business and one non-tenure track full-time position, which also included administration of the minor. In 2011–2012, there were 3 TTT positions: two had a primary focus on LSP, one focused especially on "courses related to Chinese Business Language and Culture" the other specified that "research should focus on the knowledge and behavioral demands confronting nonnative speakers seeking professional level competencies in contemporary China, issues of cross-cultural communication between Americans and Chinese, and the development of pedagogical instruments for training in these areas." The other TTT position and the NTT position listed the interest in and ability to teach Chinese for business as a plus, while leaving the actual specialty open. French In the 2008–2009 sample, there were 6 LSP jobs out of a total of 150 for 4% and in 2011–2012, 9 out of 177 for 5%. The 2008–2009 positions were split equally between primary and secondary with a majority of the jobs (5) as TTT, and the only NTT was in the primary LSP category. The field combinations during this year were quite interesting with the primary fields being defined as "Business French and also Italian with a PhD in French from any field" and "open area able to teach Business French and Francophone cultural studies" for the TTT positions, and "French and Spanish able to interact with regional business" for the NTT position. When LSP was listed as a secondary field the primary fields were: 1) French literature and/or Francophone studies, in a program that had an Undergraduate major in Global studies, 2) 19th-and 20th-century literature or Francophone studies or linguistics, and 3) Post-1600 French studies and an "active participation in Language and Cultures for Professions and ability to create internships/study abroad." In 2011–2012 the French LSP positions were split 2/7 with a distribution of 1 TTT and 1 NTT in primary LSP and 3 TTT to 4 NTT in the category of secondary field. For the TTT primary LSP position, the description specified a Generalist, with preference being LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 24 given to specialists in Cultural Studies and Business French. The NTT position required a PhD or equivalent in French or related field but stated that the successful candidate: must be familiar with current business and economic issues in Francophone countries and the EU and be able to develop and maintain links to the Francophone business and cultural community in the Greater Atlanta area and also serve as academic advisor for students in the Language and Business concentrations and interest/experience with Study Abroad programs is a plus. For the jobs that specified interest in LSP as a secondary field, the specified primary fields were: 1) pre-20th-century French literature and culture and the LSP field was translation, 2) Linguistics and pedagogy, and 3) PhD in Spanish, French or Romance Languages, with preference for those who can teach both French and Spanish though candidates who can "teach only French will be considered." The NTT positions in the secondary LSP category listed language teaching, pedagogy and phonetics as primary interests and the LSP fields were translation and business. It is important to note that in the French announcements, when LSP capabilities are listed as secondary interest they are most often included in a list of possible secondary fields like phonetics, phonology and stylistics. Keywords 'business' and 'translation' predominate. It is also important to note the frequent combination of Francophone studies with LSP fields. German and Scandinavian In this category, all the LSP jobs were for German with 4 out of 90 or 4% from the 2008–2009 sample and 8 out of 120 or 6% for the 2011–2012 sample. In 2008–2009, all the jobs were for primary LSP field with 2 TTT and 2 NTT. The TTT positions listed the PhD field as open and emphasized the "ability to develop Professions Focus" for the first and phonetics and business for the second. For the NTT positions one had an open PhD field, and also asked for English in addition to German for Business, and the other NTT position, which was renewable, included the administrative task of directing the Business German PhD and required a PhD in Applied Linguistics with a focus on language and identity. In 2011–2012, the sample yielded one primary LSP job seeking a colleague with PhD in any area to contribute to a "new beginning in the German studies program." The primary interest was in "practical experiences" for the student such as "cultural studies (politics, society, business, media, film) literature and second language acquisition." The TTT LSP secondary jobs had primary fields of: 1) 19th- through 21st-century German Studies, the LSP fields of interest were film, professions (engineering and business) and language-across-the-curriculum, 2) German literature with an LSP field in translation, 3) German or German studies, and 4) German and German Cultural Studies. The NTT positions did not specify the PhD field and were primarily focused on general language teaching and some advising and administrative tasks. Of particular note in these announcements is the predominance of German studies or German Cultural studies over literature. LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 25 Japanese In the 2008–2009 list sample, there were two LSP jobs (the overall number of Japanese positions is unclear). They are: one NTT primary LSP position to administer the Japanese for business minor and one TTT secondary LSP position which called for the ability to teach all levels of language, civilization, history, business, contemporary culture and literature. In 2011–2012, there were 2 jobs out of 38 or 5%. Both were primary LSP positions. The TTT position was for the University of Hong Kong and stated, "Those specializing in literature, film, translation, linguistics, business culture, anthropology, and/or religion are especially encouraged to apply." The NTT position clarified that the candidate is expected to work with faculty to design and develop content-based/thematic-based courses and/or Japanese language for special purposes. Spanish The data for Spanish LSP is more extensive since the majority of LSP jobs are in this language. Also, the data is drawn from three sample moments since in addition to the 2008–2009 and 2011–2012 sample used for the other languages, data was also collected for Spanish from the September 2007–January 2008 portion of the MLA list, which can be seen in Table 4. Table 4 Breakout of data for Spanish job listings for 2007–2008, 2008–2009, and 2011–2012 Spanish Total jobs 2007–2008 LSP jobs 2007–2008 Total jobs 2008–2009 (Sep–Jan 23) LSP jobs 2008–2009 Total jobs 2011–2012 LSP Totals 514 40 377 13 365 29 (5 specifically call for linguist) Primary LSP Focus 0 6 (NTT) 13 ( 9 TTT/ 4 NTT) Secondary LSP focus 40 7 (TTT) 16 (11 TTT/ 5 NTT) In the 2007–2008 sample (which was the year before the dramatic drop in job offerings), there were 40 LSP jobs out of a total of 514 Spanish positions, which equaled 9% of jobs. In the 2008–2009 sample, there were 13 LSP jobs out of 377 for 3% and in 2011–2012, 29 LSP jobs out of 365 for 7.9%. In 2007–2008, data was not collected for TTT vs. NTT positions, but all the LSP designations were listed as a preferred secondary field, 26 in the area of business, 15 for professional (non-literary) translation/interpretation, and 9 for medical. Typical announce-ments were "Assistant Professor of Spanish (Golden Age). . . . [S]trong preparation in LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 26 Golden Age literature. . . . [W]illingness to teach Business Spanish. . ." and "Tenure-track position. . . . [F]ield of specialization open, but generalist with Latin American studies preferred. Must be prepared to teach all levels of language (including business Spanish) as well as Hispanic Americana and Peninsular literatures and cultures." In the 2008–2009 list, though the overall numbers had dropped, the number of primary LSP positions had increased dramatically to 6, although all were NTT positions some requiring only a MA. The 7 secondary LSP positions were all TTT. The designated primary fields followed the standard areas of specializations of the Spanish profession with a predominance of literature positions and the announcements were characterized by the "laundry list" nature shown in the examples above. In the 2011–2012 sample, of the 29 positions 13 were for primary LSP positions and 9 of these were TTT. Of the 16 secondary LSP positions, 11 were TTT. There are some dramatic changes in the nature of the job announcements in this sample. For example, where as in previous job list samples 'business' was the primary word, and most often was a stand-alone term, this time none of the job announcements called only for 'business,' rather 'business' was always included in a list of options (e.g., medical, legal, interpretation, etc.) most often under the heading 'Spanish for the Professions.' 'Spanish for Health Professions' or 'Medical Spanish' seemed to gain ground, with 3 TTT positions (two primary LSP and 1 secondary LSP). Translation and interpreting studies showed a marked increase with 8 TTT positions of which 5 were primary LSP and 3 secondary LSP positions. Translation also appeared in 4 NTT secondary LSP positions. In addition, whereas earlier lists had predominantly shown literary fields combined with LSP, in this sample, applied linguistics showed significant gains with 4 jobs specifically designating a combination of applied linguistics and an LSP field (translation, interpretation, or medical) and 3 listing linguistics in general as one of the possible primary fields. Some of the announcements still combined seemingly disparate primary and secondary fields. For example "Contemporary Peninsular Literature with emphasis on theatres and /or poetry. . . . [E]xperience teaching Spanish for the Professions a plus" or "Preferred specialization Peninsular and Cultural studies; ability to contribute to Spanish for health professions (interest in interdisciplinary research/program development)." The mention of interdisciplinary research marks an opening up that is observable in many of the Spanish announcements. Yet, in spite of the mention of interdisciplinary research being a valued interest, in this sort of advertisement, there is really no clear vision of what that interdisciplinary research might look like. While it is true that this kind of open-endedness can be exhilarating and freeing for a creative professional, it can also be somewhat problematic at the time of tenure and promotion review. In contrast to this sort of announcement that has previously characterized LSP job descriptions, there were a number that had very specific and extensive LSP designations. Consider for example this announcement for an Assistant Professor in Spanish Applied Linguistics: The Department of Modern Languages and Literature at the University of [X] is seeking an innovator in Spanish applied linguistics or Latin American or Latina/o cultural studies research and pedagogy with interdisciplinary skills to engage the complex socio-cultural dimensions of health-related issues in South Texas. This position requires a willingness to develop a research plan and engage in cross-LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 27 disciplinary research in healthcare issues of particular importance to the region of South Texas, such as health literacy, diabetes, obesity, or health issues surrounding poverty, race, gender, class, immigration, or legality. The successful candidate will participate in teaching and mentoring in the Department's unique program in Medical Spanish for Heritage Learners, will collaborate with faculty from other departments in advancing research in healthcare, and will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of specialization. A PhD in Spanish is required prior to start date in Fall, 2012. The successful candidate will have native or near native fluency in Spanish. The candidate must demonstrate potential for teaching excellence, research and publication, and grantsmanship. Or another from a criminal justice program "[X University] seeks an Assistant Professor of Spanish/Specialist in Translation and Interpreting (Foreign Languages), PhD in Spanish Translation, interpreting or related field." The specificity and focus of these job announcements mark a significant change in the envisioning of Spanish LSP fields and seem to create clear direction for the expected research agenda, which would allow the faculty member to develop a unified body of research and facilitate the path to tenure/promotion. One question that comes to mind when reading these more detailed job descriptions is how many candidates there might be for such jobs given the very specific qualifications (especially in the Applied linguistics ad for the medical field). Also, one is lead to ponder what the doctoral programs that are producing such specialists might look like. There are a few doctoral programs around the nation that are already preparing candidates for such positions and a description and analysis of these programs is material for another article. For our purposes here, these job announcements lead us to return to the questions posed at the beginning of the article. Conclusions Are departments truly moving to transform their undergraduate offerings away from literature? Are new research fields emerging? If so, what do they look like? What is the balance between TTT and non-tenure track NTT jobs in these areas? Will there be steady demand for future faculty trained to meet the new scenarios? Based on the information presented here, there does not seem to be a dramatic increase in the quantity of LSP positions, but rather a steady demand at a level that is similar to other less common research fields. However, there are indications that the LSP positions are becoming better defined as announcements move away from the "laundry-list" format to specific visions for new programs. Also, there is a slight increase in TTT primary LSP positions and these positions are also slowly becoming more focused on specific regional and/or discipline needs (i.e. health issues in South Texas, Francophone outreach in the Atlanta metropolitan area, translation and interpretation programs). The emergence of the phrase 'cultural studies' or 'specific area studies' (i.e., German, Francophone) in many of these LSP announcement and the large number of jobs in Spanish and French that come up with a keyword search for 'cultural studies' does suggest a shift away from literature. It seems that perhaps the cultural studies field might ultimately provide an umbrella for LSP programs that could afford LSP faculty a more LSP JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM MLA JOB LISTS Scholarship and Teaching on Languages for Specific Purposes (2013) 28 central institutional position. This data seems to echo Doyle's (2012) extensive and convincing argument in favor of a nomenclature change in the Language for Business field to Business Language studies. But, ultimately, will the number of jobs, which deviate from the traditional literature, linguistics and second language acquisition fields, merit redesign of graduate programs across the board to train future professors to meet this demand? Or, is it more a question of helping future professors enhance the traditional fields of specialization with new pedagogical approaches and secondary content expertise? In spite of the examples of very specific jobs given here, the number of these is still so low, that it would not seem feasible to suggest that all doctoral programs be transformed away from literature at this time, though certainly the PhD and Master's programs that have already developed these sorts of focus will become an ever more vital part of the foreign language education mission. What seems to be a more feasible approach for doctoral programs with a strong literature tradition is to begin a more gradual expansion into complementary areas. This can be accomplished by providing opportunities to doctoral candidates to develop secondary expertise in LSP content areas and to develop frameworks of practice that allow them to move between the theories of scholarly analysis to the practicalities of application to real world scenarios. The forum for such training can be graduate seminars and/or certificate programs through language resource centers. References Doyle, M. (2012). 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Transcript of an oral history interview with William F. "Bill" Lyons, conducted by Sarah Yahm at his office in Boston, Massachusetts, on 10 March 2015, as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project of the Sullivan Museum and History Center. Bill Lyons is a member of the Norwich University Class of 1990; his interview includes a discussion of his experiences as an electrical engineering student at Norwich as well as his later educational endeavors and his career as a planner, engineer, and attorney. His military service in Bosnia and Iraq is also a focus of the interview. ; 1 COL William "Bill" Lyons, NU 1990, Oral History Interview March 10, 2015 At his Boston, MA office Interviewed by Sarah Yahm Transcribed by C.T. Haywood, NU '12 March 19, 2015 SY: I am at Bill Lyons' office in Boston. It is March 10? Is that correct? WL: I think so. It's in that range. SY: It's in that range. It's March 10, 2015 and we're going to be doing an oral history interview. So, yeah you were just, you just started telling me before I turned the tape on about how you ended up at Norwich. So how did you end up at Norwich? WL: So when I was about thirteen I decided that I wanted to be in the military, and I wrote a letter to the Marine Corps asking them when I could enlist. And they informed me that I'd have to wait until I was eighteen but they encouraged me to apply for service academies and for scholarships. So I did. I actually started the process to attend the Naval Academy. I was Barney Frank's nominee in 1986 to attend the Naval Academy. But I did not pass the physical, because I have a lazy left eye and color blindness. So that was traumatic in that that particular dream was not gonna come to fruition. And so it just so happened that two doors down from us on my home street was guy named Wally Burke, who's Class of '86 [siren in background] and Skull and Swords and Honor Committee and all that stuff. And Wally's dad and my dad were friends. Wally's dad was a cop and my father was a firefighter and so my father told me about Norwich, but he simultaneously discouraged me because he really didn't want me to be in the military. SY: Hold on one sec— WL: Sure thing. SY: Because I just realized, oops, that I have my questions right over here. WL: Okay. SY: Um so why didn't you dad want you to be in the military? WL: My father was in the Army from 1958 to 1960. He left the Army early. He got a compassionate discharge because his father was in a TB hospital here in Boston. And my father was in Germany at the time and his older brother was in the Army in Germany, and so one of the boys needed to come home to look after the family. And my father quickly responded to that call. Being a city boy he thought all the outdoorsmanship was really not up his alley. And he was a very disciplined, disciplined man but didn't like the constriction of military life so he took the opportunity to come home early so he only served about eighteen months. And it's not so much that he didn't want me to be in the military, he just thought that he didn't like it so I wouldn't like it and um— SY: Did he just like not being told what to do? 2 WL: Yeah I think that's part of it. He ended up raising his most of his siblings, he was a very independent minded person. So he, he was not accustomed to being directed. He was the director. So he was a private and I think he got busted twice in rank from PFC down to private, PFC to private so that should be some indicator of the fact the life wasn't for him. So, ah in the summer of, between my junior and senior year I only applied to one school. I applied to Norwich because having not having the opportunity to go to the Naval Academy I thought Norwich was a great, um, a great opportunity for me to do what I needed to do. And as I was mentioning I was a, awful awful teenager. SY: Oh come on give me some details. How were you awful? WL: I got into a lot of trouble. I was actually, I was a decent student, studying came too easy for me so I never really learned how to study and I got great grades without doing any work. I worked full time after school and on weekends I was the director of custodial services for a florist bran--chain here in Massachusetts. And because I was working full time I had a lot of money and I was actually making more money than my mother who was working full time at the phone company at the time [car beeps]. And that lead to trouble. I was drinking too much, spending too much time not focused on my studies. I totaled three cars my senior year, one of them was an outright explosion, blew my father's brand new station wagon up. So at the end of my senior year my dad had pretty much had it. But the good news is early, I had applied early admission to Norwich and I got in early. So in November of my senior year I already knew I was all set. And had a good side - I knew I was in. And had a bad side because I knew I didn't have to try anymore so it cut both ways. But I knew that Norwich was the right place for me and um… SY: Had you gone up and visited? WL: I had, I went up with my dad for a brief visit. SY: And what was your impression? WL: You know it's kind of hard to remember, but I remember saying to myself, "This is what I'm meant to do." My father on the other hand was like, "Oooh I don't know" [laughs]. SY: So I wonder about that. So what was your dream, your vision of what being in the military was gonna be like? WL: So another little nitnoid fact- I had applied for a Marine Corps NROTC scholarship and I was notified that I was a recipient, and then about two weeks before school started in August of '85, no I'm sorry August of '86, I was notified that I, they had made a mistake and that the scholarship was no longer available because of my eyesight. So I was like, "You already knew that because you screened me out of the Naval Academy." But nevertheless my father, God bless him, he came up with the cash to pay for tuition. And so it, it just all came together. It really came together quickly and the rest is kinda history. I mean I settled in, I wanted at the time to be a Navy officer and after I took two years of Navy ROTC, and then after realizing there was no way in heck I was ever gonna get a Navy commission I switched to Army ROTC. And they said, "You want to commission? Sure you can have a commission." 3 SY: They were like, "We don't care about that lazy eye." WL: Yeah, so they gave me a contract in February of my junior year and gave me credit for my Navy ROTC. And at that time I was turned off the active duty thing. I had kind of seen it and done it at Norwich and didn't feel the need to do more. So I signed a Guaranteed Reserve Forces Duty commission, and took a commission in the Army Reserve. There was also a way for me to guarantee myself military intelligence as a branch because if you're in a military intelligence reserve unit you automatically get a military intelligence commission which is what I wanted. So that part came together quite nicely. The summer between junior and senior year I actually got, of course I went to the Advanced Camp for ROTC, but actually get to go Airborne School for three weeks and that was a, it was a life altering time just learning, learning to redefine what I thought my limits were. Obviously I learned a lot more about what I was capable of doing and that was a, that was a really good experience for me. And I came back to school ready, you know, I was like, "You know what, I gotta finish this school thing up and get my commission and drive on with life," so. [sound of something falling] [laughs]. SY: Sorry. Dropping things. Yeah. So let's rewind a little bit and ask you about being a Rook. Do you remember your first, do you remember your first day? Do you remember the first? WL: I do, yeah, it's funny I showed up for my first day, I had long, blonde hair because I worked in the outdoors all summer and my hair gets kinda blondish in the summer. And I hadn't had my haircut since the beginning of my senior year in high school so it was just about a year since my hair had been cut. Intentionally, you know, I was like rebelling. And my arm was in a sling. I had actually just had been in an accident. I was body surfing off of Singing Beach in the North Shore of Massachusetts, and there was a hurricane at sea. It was beautiful on the beach but there was a hurricane at sea, the waves were just huge. So I was body surfing and a wave picked me up and threw me on the beach and dislocated my shoulder. So that was maybe two weeks before school started. So I showed up with my arm in a sling and my bleach blonde hair and long hair, so I was instantly labeled "surfer boy," which really wasn't apt for me but that's all they knew was a snap shot in time. And I remember the, they challenged me to do pushups with my arm in the sling. And I was in much, much better shape than I am today and I actually did one-armed pushups and that was like the instant challenge I needed to be able to push back. And so I kinda got their instant respect because I dropped and started doing one-armed pushups. And so that was an interesting time, you know, I did everything I could to fit in but you know running was a real challenge with a arm in a sling, so. But I adapted and it was fun. SY: Did they make any exceptions for you because your arm was in a sling? WL: Yeah, you know they were all like, "Oh you don't have to do this now," and I was like, "I just want to fit in. I want to, I don't want to be the kid that's off to the side, you know, getting special treatment." So I worked really hard to fit in. There were obvious, I couldn't do sit ups so that was kind of out of the question. So, but did everything I could to fit in. SY: Do you remember being scared? 4 WL: You know I--scared is kind of the wrong word in the sense that it was more bewildering like trying to take it all in and understand because people are barking at me from every direction and I'm sure they do that now. All the barking is intended to have that bewildering effect, and it was very effective on me and I was struggling just to focus on what was important and who seemed to be the person that was in charge so I could follow their instructions. And I don't ever remember being fearful in the sense of, you know for life and limb, more just alarmed that I had to keep up with this dizzying pace of things so that I didn't fall behind. Because I had seen kids fall behind and then they get targeted, and then when they get targeted they kind of get drummed out and I didn't want to be that person, so. It was all I could do to just make sure that I wasn't the person getting picked on. SY: So something I've been thinking about, you know not somebody who has a military background, I've been reading a little bit about comparative military training like in, you know in Scandinavia and various different places. So to what degree do you think the Rook training and that sort of boot camp model really does help you when you are in the field later? How much is a residue from sort of previous understandings and how much is it really what's needed? WL: Yeah, I'm a very strong believer in a rigorous Rookdom, and as near as I can tell it's gotten more rigorous. I know they have much more stringent physical fitness standards than we had, and its substantially longer - Rookdom is substantially longer, or at least unrecognized Rookdom is substantially longer. For me I thought it was critical because it really--the basic training model is really about tearing you down so that everybody is more or less equal in terms of their ego and their psyche and and all of the individuality, you know it's all designed to strip all that off and then build you back up in the model that they want you to be in. I thought Norwich was incredibly effective at that, very, very effective. And I think reflecting on that it was really important to me, like I had some really good core values that my father and mother inculcated into me - honesty, integrity, and all those. Hard work, I had a very hard work ethic. And that was all there but it wasn't completely formed. And so my, my ex—my Rook year experience at Norwich was they tore me down to that base level and figured out how to build on it and make it all fit together with my individual personality, but in a fairly structured way. And I think that that, personally I think that made all the difference in my success in life because it preserved my work ethic, it preserved my core values, and then showed me how to take those characteristics and use those to my advantage in business and in the military and in all facets of life, really. So I give Norwich a lot of credit for making me the man that I am. SY: Yeah, interesting. Do you remember sort of a high and a low of your time at Norwich? WL: Yes. So I'll give you the low. I discovered my entire Navy ROTC class cheating on a test. They were in the barracks. I walked into a room, they had the quiz that I had just taken and they were kibitzing about the answers on the quiz. And I said, "Guys, I'm not gonna say anything, but go back, give them the test and tell them you need a different test So that everything's good." And they didn't do it and I, I remember the gut wrenching decision to tell the instructor. And the instructor, I remember him vividly, a guy named Lieutenant Fricke, he said, "Well I didn't see it and I don't, there's no, nothing to suggest that it actually happened other than you." And I said, "Well, I'm telling you it happened." And he said, "Well in the absence of something else to 5 corroborate that there's nothing I intend to do about it." And so I complained to the school. I actually didn't, someday I can dig up all the letters I wrote to President Todd and to Tim Donovan, who I've since become quite friendly with, and I complained pretty vocally. I wrote a letter to the Guidon, complaining that the school wouldn't take action on this and how contradictory to the school's value it was. And that was a very troubling time, that was my junior year I believe. It was a very troubling time for me, I just felt that Norwich didn't rise to the occasion to seize an opportunity to, to live its values and… SY: And what about your peers? Did, they knew you had reported them? WL: Ah you know, obviously a lot of heartache with some of my peers. To this day some of them probably wouldn't say hello to me. I'm okay with that. It's, you know, it is what it is and they are who they are, and I'd rather pick friends that are, share my values. SY: And you acted with integrity so if they can't handle that they can't handle that, yeah. WL: Yeah. The friends that I had are still my friends and so, you know, they got it, they were like, "You did the right thing, so hold your head high and be proud of what you did," so. SY: You know I see that today with students, that they seem torn between two things that Norwich teaches - one is the loyalty to the Corps, right? WL: Yeah. SY: And the other is this idea of sticking up for what's right even if pushes against the group and I'm wondering, that's a really great illustration of that conflict. WL: Absolutely. SY: Did you notice any other conflicts like that? Any other people struggling with that? Did you have other incidents like that? WL: I can't point to any. You now there were rumored to be all kinds of activities on campus that were, were in one sense these incredible examples of loyalty - we'll use the Knight Riders as an example, right, this mythical organization that supposedly existed. And then, so they're loyal to each other, and supposedly to the University, and allegedly worked to the betterment of the University, at least in their own minds. And then of course there's the things that they were accused of doing that some would say that they did do in terms of beating people up that didn't fulfill the you know the model cadet role. And so you know I think that's another example of it. I didn't personally witness any of that, but I heard plenty of the, we call it the rumint, you know rumor intelligence about that sort of thing. I didn't, I have to say in my four years at Norwich I didn't really indulge in that much, so it wasn't an important part of my experience. But I think that in any organization, the Army is an excellent example, there are constant, there's constant tension between loyalty to your brothers and to your service and the integrity of doing the right thing all the time. And, you know, the history of the Army is rife with people that make wrong decisions for the right reasons, if you want to say it that way. And so, you know, it's very, very hard to straddle very important values that span or are in that dynamic tension. And that's a really good example of it. 6 SY Yeah and I think, I'm gonna sort of ask you about that as we go through and talk about your military career when you leave Norwich that theme, because the citizen soldier seems to me be about that, that conflict, right? Especially because you have the Corps and then you a liberal arts education, right? And I talk to professors all the time who are like, "And I'm teaching them critical thinking and they're also learning how to follow orders. And sometimes they don't know in my class that they're allowed to disagree." You know it's like a different mentality, yeah. Okay, so your senior year you get commissioned by the Army? WL: Yes. So that was probably the highlight and I, obviously you would hope that would be a highlight is graduation, commissioning, I think just prior to that I found out that I got an A on my senior project, and that was a huge milestone for me. My, my early years at Norwich were marked by severe underperformance academically. I finished my freshman year at a 1.8. SY: Why do you think? WL: I failed Calc I. That is really bad for Electrical Engineering students [laughs]. So I had to retake Calc I over the summer, but not taking Calc II in my second half of my freshman year prevented me from taking Physics I, and it had a huge snowball effect. So I ended up graduating from Norwich with a 2.32 grade point average which was, I think, the third worst in my class, or it's in that range. [clears throat] My roommate happened to be lower than me so there was at least one lower than me. SY: That's always nice [laughs]. WL He's still still one of my best friends. But the fact that I managed - first of all had to catch up. So I ended up, there was one semester I took 22 credits just to get back on track because I came home from my freshman year and I told my dad that, "I think I need to change majors. This electrical engineering thing, I'm, it's not working out for me." And he said, "I'm paying for the next three years. You can finish up in the next three years. Your best chance of doing that is to stay in electrical engineering. So go back to school and get it done." So I did. I really wanted to change to diplomacy, and it didn't work that way. So I really had to catch up, I really did take a huge course load which of course, you know all my grades suffered when I was spreading myself so thin and trying to do Corps activities, et cetera. SY: Do you think it was also you didn't have to learn study skills in high school? WL: Yeah oh yeah, definitely. I mean Calc I, I was totally unprepared for the academic rigor of Calc I. Just totally not prepared for that, and it showed. So I did, I did the whole catch up thing and so by senior year I actually had a relatively normal course load again. And the fact that I, I think I got a 3.1 my senior year, to imagine that 3.1 still only got me to a 2.32 overall [laughs] should tell you something. But the fact that I got an A on my senior project was just a moral victory for me. And then so you know the crowning achievement of course was commissioning and graduation and everything that went with that. I was only the third person in my father's extended huge Irish family to ever get a college degree at that point. SY: So was your family ecstatic? 7 WL: Yeah, so the whole clan descended on Northfield. My father had eleven sisters and brothers of which one had passed by then, so everybody else descended on Northfield. They rented like a whole slew of condos over at Suagrbush and it turned out to be like a weeklong celebration. It was really quite something um… SY: That's awesome. And these are all like working class Boston cops and firefighters? WL: Yeah so my dad grew up in Roxbury and he was a firefighter. He ended up in Natick. He was an outlier, he actually moved all the way out to Natick at the time. One of my uncles was a Boston firefighter; another one was teamster, he drove an oil truck; another one owned a cleaning business. So they were working class people. Proud people. And my father was a very, very bright man but he decided he wasn't gonna go to college so that others could. That was really his decision. And so it was, it was you know it was a celebration of kind of that, "Well finally somebody's gonna move up the middle class," type of thing. So it was great, it was a lot of fun. SY: Yeah, and then what'd you do right afterwards? WL: So my, my orders to my military intelligence officer basic course weren't, didn't even exist yet. I got commissioned and went back into my Army Reserve unit but I had to do my officer basic course, and the next available slot was the following February. So I worked the summer at the tent company where I had been working summers, and then that job ended because the summer ended, and then I went back to work for the florist that I had worked at all through high school. And I worked there until February and then I, so that was kind of interesting working as a electrical engineer as a custodian at a florist company. And then I went to my officer basic course in Fort Huachuca, Arizona for six months. And that just so happened to coincide with the kick off for the Gulf War. So I was, you know, sitting in classes in Arizona trying desperately to try and get released so I could go to the war which is, you know, that's, it was the big show, who knows if there's ever gonna be another one, you know that sort of thing. SY: Oh back in the days when we thought there were no more wars. WL: Yes, right, Cold War was over and the Gulf War was the big show and— SY: Right that was gonna be it, the end. WL: So yeah, so of course they weren't gonna release me because I needed my officer basic course before they released me and then by the time the course was over it was all over but the crying, so. It was such a fast war. SY: And did you know anything about, I mean, did you know about Iraq at that time? Did you know anything about Kuwait? Did you know anything about Saddam? Had that been something you'd gotten at Norwich? Like that geopolitical understanding? WL: Yeah I had no geopolitical understanding from my time at Norwich. I did get a lot of that in the reserves and at the officer basic course. So I had a very, very solid footing on the geopolitical issues kind of as it was happening, I suppose you'd say, but definitely not while I was at Norwich. I was very, I had you know my, my ROTC unit, I was the first sergeant of the 8 freshman company when I was there. And I had no Corps responsibilities, and I had my electrical engineering curriculum. I was the president of IEEE, the Institute of Electrical Electronics Engineers, the student chapter, so nothing like picking the kid with the lowest cume in your class to be president of the social club. So that really took up my time and ah, there really wasn't a lot of time for much else. SY: Yeah that makes sense. Okay so you're all ready to go and the wars over. WL: Yup. SY: So what do you do instead? WL: So I came home and that was probably a lifetime low point. The economy in late '91 was absolutely atrocious. It was awful. No jobs anywhere. I went on so many attempted job interviews, you know just showing up at companies and filling out an application. And all the tech companies all over New England, and there was just nothing. And I ended up, let's see I sold pots and pans for a little while. I worked in a call center for a little while, and I was pumping gas for five dollars an hour in April of '92, so this was just about two years after graduation, when a good friend of my dad's drove into the gas station where I was pumping gas. It just so happened that the guy that owned the gas station was a selectman and I had run his campaign because my father was very active in town politics, and the guy that pulled in was a very good friend of the gas station owner and my dad. And at the time he was the Deputy Commissioner of Massachusetts Highway Department. And so he looked at me and he said, "Bill, why are you pumping gas? Don't you have an electrical engineering degree?" I said, "Yup. But there's just no jobs." And he said, "Well show up on Monday, you'll have a job." And I was like, "Show up where?" [laughs] He said, "Show up at 10 Park Plaza, that's where the Highway Department is. I'm sure we could use an electrical engineer." So that was my big break. I ended going to work for the Highway Department for two and a half years, and found a home and a career in an industry that I'm, I've been very fortunate to grow up in. And, you know its proof positive that family and your connections are as important as what you know. And that certainly worked to my advantage. SY: Yeah absolutely, and then you gone on, you've got like a gazillion degrees. WL: [both laugh] Well I'm, despite my undergraduate experience I've really come to appreciate learning and growing intellectually. So I've pretty much been in school ever since I graduated in one capacity or another with short breaks. There was my officer basic course, then my advanced course, and then after that you go to the Combined Arms and Services Staff School. And sprinkled throughout there I took some graduate classes at Northeastern, at UMASS Lowell, and then I completed the Command and General Staff College. And I really got bit by the bug, I decided in 1999 that I wanted to go to law school. And I'd always dreamed of going to law school when I was at Norwich but I, with a cume of 2.32 it was highly unlikely that I was gonna get in. SY: Well you also didn't have time to take classes that weren't electrical engineering classes.9 WL: That's true that's true. So, and and I set out to be a patent lawyer to utilize my technical background in the field of law. And in the '90s I worked for a consulting firm called HTSD and they did a lot of Wal Mart related work - site planning and transportation planning, traffic engineering. And I really found a niche presenting to local planning boards. And it just so happened I was elected to my hometown's planning board from '94 to '97, I think. And so I found, kind of found a home, I found a comfort zone with the planning board process. And I was attending a lot of planning board hearings and there would be a big high falutin' downtown Boston lawyer, and there would be a local planning lawyer, and then they'd put me out because I was articulate and could present technical information in a way that lay people could understand it. And I was at that time billing out at about 120 dollars an hour and the [clears throat] two downtown, the two lawyers were well above that, and they just sat there and listened. And so it kind of occurred to me, I'm like, you know, "I can sit there and listen for a lot more money and be happy" [laughs]. So I really decided in my mind that I wanted to go to law school. And so in '99 I left the consulting firm and I went to work for the City of Somerville as the traffic and parking director and worked in that capacity directly for the mayor. And I was in her office one day, at that time I was, I don't know, thirty-one, and she said, "Bill, it's pretty clear to me you don't want to be traffic engineer the rest of your life. You've good political skills, and you've good communication skills, what do you really want to do?" and I said, "Well I really want to go to law school but I don't think I can get in. I have an application pending at Suffolk, you know I just don't have the grades. I did okay on the LSAT." And so she said, "Sit right there." So she went into her private office and then she came out and she said, "You're gonna get a letter of acceptance in three days. Don't embarrass me." So she pulled a string, again it's who you know not necessarily what you know, and I went to law school. It actually took me seven years to graduate because I deployed twice. I deployed in 2001 to Bosnia, and then 2003 to Iraq, and so uh I had to take military leaves of absence for those two. The school was great about it, but. So in 2007, believe it or not, I finally completed the law school program at night. And like I said, you know I've been very, very oriented towards continuing my academic interests ever since then. I did the Joint Forces Staff College, and I did the Army War College, and I did - of course the War College is a master's degree producing program. And then the, I did the master's in transportation and urban systems at North Dakota State University. So it's fun. SY: You have a lot of degrees. WL: Its fun. I enjoy it so you know it's something that I feel incomplete if I'm not constantly studying, learning something. SY: I mean you're preaching to the choir, I have two master's degrees and am gonna go for a third at some point. WL: There you go. SY: I hear you. So let's go back, let's rewind actually, and let's go back to your deployments. WL: Okay. SY: So it's 2001. 10 WL: Yup. SY: So can you tell me that story? WL: Sure, in December of 1999 I was alerted that I was gonna get mobilized. Is that right? No, December of 2000 I was alerted that I was gonna get mobilized for Bosnia rotation. And at this time it was strictly a peacekeeping mission and there were actually several opportunities for me to jump off that bandwagon. But once I was starting to go down the path I was like, you know, "I've spent my entire time in the Reserve wanting to someday get mobilized. And here I am, you know, I have an opportunity to get off the train and I just really wanted to fulfill that particular aspect of my life and go on a mobilization." SY: Yeah, what's the desire to mobilize? What was the…? WL: Well I think on several levels. One is you know you get so invested in all that training. I mean if there's one thing the Army is particularly good at is training, constantly training and it's a huge investment. And I felt like I just wanted to realize the return on that investment, on some level. I also felt like the citizen soldier mantra of Alden Partridge was kind of a river running through that whole thing, because at the time the active Army was trying to turn that mission over to the Reserve and National Guard, and it just seemed to me a very logical extension of everything that had been my life to that point. You know it was a peacekeeping mission, it wasn't a combat mission. I had, you know, I don't know how much time you've been in Somerville, it's a tough town so one could say some of what I did there is peacekeeping. And it was, you know, it was it was nation building it was community building and to me that felt very satisfying, it felt like a good match for everything that I had to offer at that time. And I just really wanted to see that through. SY: Yeah. WL: So we mobilized in August of 2001. So there was a nine month buildup of this constantly training and repetitive drills and paperwork. SY: And what was peacekeeping, I mean obviously the mission became different, but what was peacekeeping gonna look like? WL: Peacekeeping was supposed to be having a continuous presence in the communities that had been torn apart by the civil war. In part to provide a buffer between the warring factions, but perhaps more importantly to set the example of how to do things right, to provide that beacon of democracy and hope and and and what, you know, the model of western democracy should look like. So a lot of it was anticipated to be monitoring elections, and providing a presence in the towns so that there was no opportunity for the warring factions to engage in what could be provocative. SY: Weapons or no weapons? WL: Um weapons. SY: Weapons. 11 WL: Yup and there wasn't, it wasn't expected you'd need the weapons and not to split hairs but the Army calls that form of peacekeeping peace enforcement, whereas true peacekeeping is without weapons. And so you can argue one way or the other, you know, what the intended mission was. NATO calls it peacekeeping, we were calling it peace enforcement, but it's because we had weapons. So we mobilize in August. We went to Fort Bragg for a couple weeks to train up with our active duty counterparts, got on a plane on September 10, flew from Fort Bragg to Fort Drum, picked up a whole bunch of soldiers at Fort Drum, and then flew from Fort Drum to Ireland, and then landed in Ireland. And then when we took off from Ireland and flew to Tuzla Main, which is the airfield at the Eagle Base, in that time the attacks in 9/11 occurred. So we landed at Eagle Base, and the whole plane cheered [laughs] because it was the culmination of literally ten months of training. We're like, "Yes, we finally made it. " There was on our plane a whole bunch of reservists from New York, New York City in particular. So when we coasted to the end of the runway we all expected to get off fairly quickly and nothing was happening. So we were all kind of bewildered, you know. And then the post command sergeant major, we didn't know he was the command sergeant major at the time, but the post command sergeant major came on the plane and he said, "I regret to inform of what's taken place in the United States. And gentlemen, ladies, the United States is at war and stand by for further instructions." So me and a bunch of my friends on the plane we were, you know, we kind of concluded in our minds that this was a drill. The Army's prone to coming up with these ridiculous scenarios and saying, "Okay you have one hour to brief the commander on what you would do under these circumstances." So, you know, we're all huddling, "What do we do, you know, what do you think we should do?" And we really had resolved in our minds that it was an exercise. And then not too long after that junior enlisted guy came on the plane and he said, "Okay, we really don't know what's going on in the world but we're in a predominately Muslim country. Everybody is gonna get their ammunition basic load as they get off the plane, and stand by for further instructions. Most of you guys are standing post until all this gets sorted out." So right then we knew it was no kidding. So the kids that were from New York City on the plane were obviously were very concerned about their families, and there were lines set up to use the very few phone lines on base. SY: Hey and we're going. WL: Excellent. SY: Look at that. Okay I feel good about that. Here we go. Okay so you're in the intel business, the mission is changing. WL: The mission changed. My job was to be the requirements manager, which is to determine what things get collected on. And then there are different means of collection. There's foot patrols, which was the vast majority of our intelligence collection. We had aerial intelligence platforms, and signals intelligence platforms, and various other means of intelligence collection. But my job was to figure out which asset would collect against which requirement, and then my boss who was the collections manager, would task out all those tasks to the various subordinate elements. And, you know, I was anticipating that my job would be mostly collecting about economic intelligence, political intelligence, issues related to governance. And it turned out that 12 there was still some aspect of that, but I really had two tasks: one was to help catch persons indicted for war crimes, which was our exit strategy to catch the we call them PIFWCs (Persons Indicted for War Crimes), PFWCs. So one job was to try and track those folks down so they could be captured by Special Forces, and the other job was to do directed patrols in neighborhoods and areas that were the more conservative and known extremist-view Muslim groups. So when Bosnia had its civil war a lot of freedom fighters actually came from the Middle East and from Northern Africa to Bosnia and settled there, married into the community, and so those communities were obviously of great concern to us at the time because we really didn't know what exactly was gonna occur. So that was, that took up a lot of time. SY: And what [coughs] what did you end up concluding about those communities? WL: Um so some, there was some activity there that was responded to appropriately. I was tangentially involved in the, the detention of the Sarajevo group that was trying to break into to U.S. Embassy. And that group actually ended up in GTMO so I was partially involved in the intelligence lead up to that particular operation. And I think that's probably the biggest operation that we were involved in. We were involved in other couple other operations and then on the other side I was very involved in the PIFWC hunting, which I thought was probably one of more rewarding parts of my time there. SY: Yeah I would imagine. Yeah and so what ended up, did you capture some people? WL: Ah yes, whose names they are anymore I can't remember. SY: Right, unless it's Milosevic, I won't remember either. WL: No, we were—the guy that we were really hunting was Radovan Karadžić and we didn't catch him. The French dimed us out and he escaped because the French gave him a heads up. SY: Huh, why they do that? WL: Um, that's a really good question. The French were very sympathetic to the Serbs, and I don't really know why that was but they had a very sympathetic posture towards the Serbs in the conflict. So they caught the guy on his cell phone telling Karadžić to escape and so he made a very speedy exit out of Bosnia. But from that point forward there was some very deep soul searching about who we shared intelligence with and that was a pretty tough thing to lose out on, you know. SY: Hm. You don't think of the French being people U.S. intelligence has to watch out for. WL: Yeah well I mean they're, they're, you know on a geopolitical level they are actually one of our biggest adversaries from a spying point of view. SY: Really? WL: Yeah. SY: Fascinating. WL: Yeah there's all kinds of open source documents on that you can read about [laughs]. 13 SY: Okay I'll go educate myself about that later. Um okay, so that's Bosnia and then there's Iraq. That's 2003. WL: Yeah so I was home for 10 months and the Iraq War was spinning up, and one of my closest friends who was my boss in Bosnia called me up and said, "Bill, we're putting together the band. We're going back, we're going back on active duty. Do you want to come?" And I said, "Well, let me think about it, talk to my wife, see what I wanted to do." And after a lot of soul searching you it just seemed to be the right thing to do to go with people I knew rather than wait a couple of years and be an individual mobilization placement and go with people I didn't know. So, you know, a couple of days' worth of serious soul searching and you know thinking about all that it would mean to my family, I decided to go. So I got mobilized in February of 2003, went to Fort Dix for our pre-mobilization training and activities. Spent about a month there, then got sent to a forward operating base called Camp Virginia in Kuwait, spent another month there getting all of our final shots and getting our vehicles in country and getting ready to go. And then during the ground war we got the go-ahead to go over the berm and head into Iraq. So we had a seventy-five vehicle convoy that took off out of Camp Virginia and convoyed just about twenty-four hours straight all the way to Camp Balad, which had numerous different names over the years, but it was Balad Army Base. And we ended up there for abou--I was there for about a month and a half. When we got there everybody they just said, "Freeze wherever you at, the ground war is over. And now were gonna consolidate on the objectives." And so we stayed there and made camp for about a month and a half. And then there was a call for augmentees to go to Baghdad to help staff up the new headquarters for the theater - the entity was called Combined Joint Task Force 7. So I was deemed not essential to my battalion headquarters. I had been the assistant S3 battle captain for operations and plans, and so they just said, "Listen you get a whole bunch of extra captains down there at the 325th MI Battalion, cough up two and send them to Baghdad and please send ones with human intelligence experience." So I didn't actually have human intelligence experience, but they sent me anyways. And me and one of my best friends got sent to Baghdad. He ended up being the battle captain of the CJ2X which is Combined Joint, 2X is human intelligence section. And I ended up being the human intelligence operations officer for the theater. And that, phew boy, that was probably one of the most traumatic, interesting, dynamic, fulfilling, every possible emotion you can think of. SY: So let talk about 'em, let's tease it apart. So what's, what's traumatic, what's fulfilling, what's? WL: Well it was a fairly easy job from June, I think I got there June 6, until mid-to late summer, and then the insurgency started. So it was initially really exciting to be in to be involved in the setting up of this new headquarters and the staffing of it and the policies and procedures that went with it and standard operating procedures and writing. We were still doing detainment operations and one of my responsibilities was again was to think about the requirements, what we needed to collect intelligence on from a detainee point of view. And I had a hundred tactical human teams out in the field that were collecting intelligence, and my job was to figure what they should collect on. So I had this huge enterprise that I was working on. I was only an Army captain and it was a huge scope for somebody with very little experience in that realm. And I,14 you know I sip from a fire hose for about two months, and learned a lot, and filled my brain up with a lot of cool experiences that I only learned about in books. And so that's kind of the fulfilling part. And then when the insurgency started we had a commanding general named Ricardo Sanchez, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and he turned out to be perhaps the most toxic leader I've ever met in my life. He would, he would question everybody's performance of their specific jobs without any inkling of what their job actually was. He was heard to say things like, in front of thousands of people in the battle update brief, he'd say things like, "Why are we catching so many people and detaining them, why don't we just kill them?" So that environment bread a lot of, just a toxic environment. And if you're, if you're a malevolent person looking for an excuse to be and have an outlet for that malevolency, that's a license. And, and what that ultimately, in my experience, devolved into was the Abu Ghraib problem. So for me in August, August-September of 2003 we had an interrogation and detention facility over at Camp Cropper which is on Baghdad International Airport, and the international community for the Red Cross came and said, "These are inhumane living conditions. You gotta get these detainees out of here." So working with the MPs we had to find someplace new to put them and it just so happened that the prison, the maximum security prison out of Abu Ghraib - they're actually four prisons on the Abu Ghraib complex - had just begun renovations and it was intended to be used by civi-by the Iraqis for civilian detainees. And, and so we went out to take a look at it at the provost marshal's suggestion, and determined that it would be an absolutely magnificent facility for this. And kind of reflecting on the citizen soldier model, on my team of intelligence guys my driver and NCO in his civilian life was a corrections officer at Rikers Island; and my company commander was the president of state correctional workers in Massachusetts, the Correctional Worker's Union and he was, he was a, correction he was a corrections officer here in Massachusetts. So I brought them with me and I said, "You know we have to find some place to put the worst of the worst, the people we want to interrogate, what do you think of this facility?" And they were like, "This is perfect. This is the right place." SY: What made it perfect? WL: It was, ah, it was well organized, it was clean, it was neat, it wasn't in the bombed out parts, it wasn't in a mud puddle. It was just in immaculate shape because it had been renovated and it was perfectly suited for an interrogation facility. SY: So the thinking in some ways was that it would be humane? WL: Yes. Absolutely that was the absolute intention was to—when you have high level detainees you don't want them to think about anything else other than what you want them to think about. You don't want them thinking about how to escape the mortar attacks at night, you don't want them to—you want them to be thinking about whatever, whatever you're working on with them in terms of intelligence collection. So it was really an optimal facility. And so that was, you know that was a high point in my deployment. It was. I actually have pictures of me behind bars at Abu Ghraib. SY: I saw those pictures. WL: That's the day I picked Abu Ghraib. It was my staff action that made Abu Ghraib happen.15 SY: And they're really chilling in retrospect but at the time, right? And then and then it looks like you're seeing all the remains of Saddam Hussein's prison too. It looks like a lethal injection bottle and signs for death row and so I'm-I was trying to imagine what you guys were talking about when you were walking—there's graffiti, super weird pornographic graffiti. What were you guys talking about when you were exploring that building? WL: You know we'd already been briefed that Saddam executed about 30,000 people at that jail in his reign of terror. And we also knew that some pretty despicable things had happened out there. And so, you know, it was all to us almost surreal to be walking around and seeing all that wild graffiti, and the, you know we don't really know what was in those bottles but you can [laughs], you can make all kind of informed guesses. And then to actually go in the death house which, which ultimately got walled in so that people wouldn't go into it so it could be preserved for war crimes. Um, I mean that that to me was the closest thing that I have ever felt to death because you could smell death. It was it was an awful, awful, awful place. So that, you know, was traumatic on some level but the breadth of the experience for me was just absolutely incredible in terms of the scope of what I was involved in. SY: So let's go back to the citizen soldier idea to the idea of the ethical soldier. So what do you think happened there? What turned it into what it became? WL: So there was this enormous pressure starting with Secretary of Defense - Undersecretary of Defense - all the way down to Ricardo Sanchez: "We need to get more intelligence, more actionable intelligence so we can stop this insurgency." And the pressure, I can't even begin to describe the pressure that these people, these senior leaders were under. And I, I have the luxury now at this point in my career to have a sense of what that strategic leadership's like and how, how difficult it is to manage political expectations and, you know, the realities of a war torn environment. And I guess I can see how a twisted mind can get twisted to the point of losing the ability to be a genuine leader. And that's what happened. At all ranks people that could twist their social values to suit ends that were inconsistent with those values, those people were everywhere. And it permeated all the way down to the lowest level, it really did. I wasn't, I didn't personally didn't meet any of the MPs that were involved in the atrocities that happened at Abu Ghraib. I did know two of the intelligence people that were involved, not on a friendly basis but they were they were junior enlisted and I knew who they were and they weren't bad people, they just caught up in a very ugly situation. And so I think it was that that just that tiered level of toxic leadership that permeated everything - results now, don't care what the cost is. And, and I learned a lot from that experience. I learned, I learned really how easy it is for well-intentioned, well-managed groups to get off track because there's this abject fear and and apprehension about failing. Because you're failing your brothers in arms when they're getting killed every night from mortar attacks and roadside bombs, and so this this constant drumbeat of "Your brothers are dying, your sisters are dying on the roads of Iraq. You have to do something, you have to get this intelligence." And so when people say that enough, and you live through enough depravity, it's not hard to imagine how people can lose it and I think that's what happened. I really do. SY: And now you're a colonel so now you are higher in the leadership. How, how as a leader do you think you can prevent this type of thing from happening again? 16 WL: That's a, that's a good question. I've taken the last five years of my career and really focused on mentorship. I sit down with every single officer that I rate or senior rate and I'm, unfortunately I'm one of the rare people that does this. One on one I devote an hour at a time to each and every one of them and really have a conversation about values and how values are the foundation of citizen soldiery, because all my soldiers are reservists, and how values are really the foundation of good ethical leadership. And it might sound weird to have an hour long conversation about values but that time goes quickly when you have people that are engaged in it, and I can tell which ones get it and which ones don't get it. And the ones that get it are the ones that I invest my time in and the ones that just sit there and go, "Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir." "Okay [laughs], you don't really get it, so you know, you're not really on track." And that's how my ratings fall out. So that's my way of giving back, I guess, is to try and identify the people that I think have the moral footing necessary to be a strategic leader. SY: And so [coughs] if you were gonna give Norwich advice about how to train ethical leaders, right, who can who can stand up when things are toxic right, who can have integrity. What advice would you give them? WL: Excellent question. When I was a cadet, not a Norwich cadet, but an Army ROTC cadet and to some extent the Norwich thing, making second lieutenants was kind of a cookbook operation. It was "Here's the recipe. Put him in the box, sprinkle all the dust around him, shake it up, enough will stick. Send him all to all these very regimented courses. Get him smart about how the Army works and stick him in the force." And I think that was, I know that was a very Cold War mentality - shake and baking officers. Today's world is so much more complex. SY: Okay hold on one sec [sirens outside of office, interview pauses]. [interview resumes] WL: So now we live in the age of the strategic corporal, where the lowest private through social media can literally influence the battle. Abu Ghraib is an example of that, those pictures got out. And ah, so you have to teach leaders—it's much less a recipe than it is a crafting. Every individual needs to be crafted. They have to understand the strategic implications, they need to be taught how to think critically and creatively. The very volatile world that we live in with globalization, urbanization, mass communications, climate change—all these things weren't even in our vocabulary when I was a second lieutenant, because we were focused on the Cold War. And now our threats are more likely than not, the future threats are less about kinetic threats, somebody shooting at you, and more like what happens when a city of 24 million people gets hit with a tidal wave. And then what do you do? And you're a second lieutenant and you get put in charge of a bunch of people in that environment. There's no way that you can possibly teach a second lieutenant how to handle every single one of those situations. Whereas when I was a second lieutenant you had a cookbook, you followed the cook book, "Don't deviate outside of this, you'll be good." Now we have to encourage them to look outside of the four corners of their little world and figure out how what's on the right and the left is gonna impact their operation. And, you know, the military talks now not about the unknown but the unknowable. So as an intelligence officer the unknown was pretty daunting. My job was to 17 figure out what wasn't known and how to go know it, how to collect that information. What we talk now about the unknowable, the implication being, you can't know [laughs]. You can come up with various constructs of what that unknowable thing might do, and how you cope with that, but it's literally unknowable, you'll never know. And so that framework has to be driven into the lowest levels because those kid—those are the kids that are gonna make it survive. They're gonna go into villages with people who are living primitively and try and infuse in them our democratic Western values, and help them with development and conflict at the most elementary level. And that is not something you can get out of textbooks at Norwich. You have to go out in the wide world and see that. I love the fact that Norwich has a very aggressive international program now, because that is absolutely - I am utterly convinced that the future of education has to involve an international component so that you see, touch and feel how other people live and have an appreciation for other, other value systems other than Western value systems. SY: Seems like anthropology classes should be required too. WL: Language class, anthropology class. I know it's awfully hard to do that when you have a technical discipline like electrical engineering, but I think that it's we are doing our nation a disservice if we don't educate our children and our young adults to live in an increasingly global world. Insularity is the enemy of America's success, it really is. So I'm utterly persuaded by that. And a little aside - when I grew up in the Army it was all about the Cold War, the Russians were our enemies, anything to do with Russia was like, "ooh." And so just as an example of how things change, in Bosnia in 2002 I had a Russian Spetsnaz colonel - full colonel, I was a captain - I had a Russian Spetsnaz full colonel working for me, doing collection plans for the intelligence that the Russians were doing in their sector. We had a Russian sector. And the guy's name was Colonel Volkov and I befriended the guy, professionally, not personally, I befriended the guy. And we ended up having a very good cordial relationship to the point where on Defenders of the Motherland Day in, I want to say it was February or March of 2002, he invited me to be his distinguished guest at the Defenders of the Motherland parade and ceremony. And I ended up getting placed in the front row right next to the CG, and the CG sat down and he goes, "You're in the wrong place, move back captain, you don't, you're not a distinguished visitor." And I said, "Actually, I am, Colonel Volkov invited me." And he looked at me like, "What? That doesn't make any sense." And Colonel Volkov showed me that cooperation, even in today's environment, is possible, you know when you get down to the human level. He invited us to that event and then held a private reception for us with vodka and smoked salmon and toast and cheese. And then we moved from to that private reception to his group's his little special forces bar on the Russian base and we drank there for like four hours. And then we were all trying to leave and one of the traditions is to cut the patch off your uniform and exchange patches. So I was in the middle of cutting my patch off my uniform and the colonel was looking very longingly at my Gerber knife, it was a very basic folding knife. And I said, "Sir, would you like my knife as a gift?" And he said, "I could never accept," through his translator, he was like, "I could never accept such a generous gift." And I said, "Come on it's a thirty dollar knife," and I put it in his hand. And he goes, "And I must repay you." So he takes me to his private quarters. Now you have to keep in mind I'm on a Russian Army base in the middle of Bosnia and me and this colonel walk off into the woods arm and arm, half in the bag. And I'm gone, and all my 18 colleagues are like, "Where did Lyons go?" So I disappeared for an hour. He took me back to his private quarters. We drank Slobovicz and chatted a little bit down there, and then he reached into uni-his closet and he took his uniform, and he took every badge off his uniform and he said, "Is this a good enough gift?" And I was dumbfounded like, I have now all these Spetsnaz badges from Russia. And I said, "Sure." I'd have taken two, but I'll take it, you know? So I put it in my pocket, we had another shot of Slobovicz and then it occurred to me, "Oh my God, like I've been gone like an hour with a Russian Spetsnaz colonel and if they're not totally freaking out, something's wrong." So we go back and you know frantic, "Oh my God, thank God you're okay." And I went back to Eagle Base that night and I just reflected that a mere three years earlier we were mortal enemies, and to have that experience at that juncture in my life was just remarkable, remarkable. And it just proof positive that whatever today's situation is three years now it is not what you think it's gonna be and and and if Norwich doesn't produce people that can anticipate those changes and be ready for those challenges. You can't know them all, but you have to have the intellectual capacity to cope with them all, to adapt to them all. SY: And not knee jerk prejudices against entire peoples and populations or religions, right? WL: Exactly. SY: Because lo and behold [laughs]. WL: Yup, exactly. So that really opened my mind up to how important it is be, and I used the word agile because you have to be intellectually agile. You have to understand and perceive on a very subtle level all the little changes that are going around the world, and if you're not capable of doing that, you know, we're gonna make colossal strategic mistakes. The strategic corporal is gonna make a big blunder and jeopardize an entire national security strategy. And who better than to do that than citizen soldiers that have one leg in the civilian world and understand things from the civilian populous point of view, and one leg in the military world who have a greater appreciation of military strategy and tactics and operations. I think the citizen soldier brings that dimension to, a very much needed dimension to the national security strategy. And incidentally many senior Army leaders after thirteen years of war get it, they have had reservists in their headquarters and have had one on one contact. I myself, my boss in Iraq was General Barbara Fast, active duty, one star promotable, and I was in her office one day and she was briefing me-not briefing me but, you know, bringing me up to speed on a particular initiative [coughs]. And she says, "What do you think of this?" and I said, "Ma'am I think that's really awful idea." And she was startled, she said, "Nobody talks to me that way. Why do you talk to me that way?" And I said, "Ma'am, I'm a Reservist. If I can't be honest with you than I'm doing something wrong. If you like my advice and change your plan because I was honest with you, then good, you changed the plan in a way that I think is constructive. If you don't like my advice and you say, 'piss off,' I just say, 'good,' because you know I was heard, different ideas were on the table, and I wasn't a yes man." So I said, "Ma'am, you're always gonna get a very honest answer opinion from me. You might not like it but it's gonna be a very honest and direct opinion." And she goes, "You know, I have like twenty majors that work for me" (at this point I was a major). She's like, "You know nobody, nobody gives me honest advice, you're the only one." And from that point forward I was her go-to guy for the "is this a stupid idea or a good idea or whatever." 19 SY: So what do you think gave you the chutzpah to be able to do that, to sort of to speak your mind in that context? WL: I think it was a lifetime of of—first of all confidence in your analytical abilities which I, I've always been fairly confident in my analytical abilities. But I think it was the, you know, the lifetime of values thing, the integrity that my parents inculcated in me, and the school inculcated in this this this, "Always stand up for what's right approach." And, you know, the truth of the matter is you know we live in a somewhat political world so you do have to when to pick your battles and not everything can be a fight because that person gets nothing done. But you really have to be perceptive and know when is the right time to speak your mind and make your thoughts heard. And if you're judicious and thoughtful about it you'll get a reputation for being the one that can be called upon to consult with in tough situations. And I, I've been fortunate that that's been the case for me. I've been counsel now to people that I started as company grade officers that are now generals, and it's satisfying and rewarding when somebody calls you up and says, "Hey I got this, you know, this really tough problem, just wanted to talk to you about it, you know. I don't need an answer. I just want to talk it out." And it's very satisfying, it really is. SY: I can imagine, you know it's interesting at this point I've done a bunch of these interviews and in my experience it's reservists and ah helicopter pilots— WL: [laughs]. SY: Who their identity as citizen soldiers is about, you know, standing up for what you think is right even if it is pushing back against authority. And then people who are more Regular Army, that is not their mentality. It's interesting. That's what I've observed so far, yeah. WL: One of my, one of the, my, the deputy intelligence officer for Iraq, he was our boss for a little while, and he was responsible for the day-to-day operations and General Fast was the big thinker policy person. So Colonel Boltz is the guy's name, he's a Norwich guy, Norwich, I want to say '78, '79, Steve Boltz. He's currently the Deputy G-2 for U.S. Army Europe, fantastic guy. So he would come into our—we were behind a purple curtain believe it or not in our little headquarters, and he would come in and he would flip the purple curtain open, and me and my buddy who was Ponce, this guy's name was Captain Ponce at the time, he's now Colonel Ponce. He'd go with his really strange accent, "Ponce, Lyons, tell me the truth, all my majors lie to me and you're the only ones that tell me the truth!" And we'd sit down and we'd have an hour long bull session with this colonel because he could trust us to just tell us the way it was. And when we were flat out wrong, he'd explain it, he'd mentor us and say, "Just because you have the chutzpah to be honest with me. I'm gonna invest in you and, and mentor you." And so Ponce and he actually ended up being very close friends, and Bill just visited him in Europe like just two months ago. And he's just a fantastic guy, fantastic leader. I mean he was the, he's the classic guy who got to colonel speaking his mind but couldn't get to general because he spoke his mind. That's Steve Boltz and I appreciated him for all of that he was a really straight shooting kind of guy. Really, really cool. SY: So it seems like you've seen examples of really toxic leadership and really good leadership? 20 WL: I have, yeah, yeah. SY: And I'm wondering if I have more questions to ask you about that. I mean and you've served, you've served at all your deployments as an officer. WL: I have, yeah. SY: And I guess how do you think the experience is different um for somebody - I mean this is such a huge question - but for somebody who's enlisted. I guess I've been doing interviews in part with some people who've dealt with PTSD and it seems pretty clear that PTSD is more prevalent among enlisted men than officers, and I don't know if that's true or not true but do you have thoughts about that? WL: Yeah, it's not my experience. I think that officers tend to manage and conceal their PTSD because they're expected to. You're expected to be the tough one, the guy that keeps it all together, but there's ample opportunities, ample examples of officers that didn't keep it together. I'll give an example, my, my brigade commander, a guy whose name is escaping me at the time, he had the single largest military intelligence brigade ever assembled, seven battalions. It was huge and he was responsible for Abu Ghraib, the intelligence side of Abu Ghraib. And I remember being summoned to his office and a guy named Jonathan Carpik came to me and he, Captain Carpik, and he said, "Hey Colonel." I can't re—he's the guy pinning the medal on in my picture, and I can't--I'm just drawing a complete blank as to his name. He said, "He wants you in his office." Now he had this little closet of an office, it was literally a closet with a desk in it. And so I went and the door was maybe three inches open and I could hear sobbing inside. So I was like, "Well that's weird." So I knocked on the door and he said, "Come in," and I kind of cracked the door a little bit and he said, "Come on in Lyons." He was visibly shaken, and he looked at me he goes, "You know I never thought I'd say this, but I hate my job and I hate my life." And that was a full colonel in the middle of a combat environment. And if that's not PTSD I don't know what it is. So, you know he clearly was struggling like the weight of the world around him. I myself struggled with survivor's guilt coming home. SY: Can you talk about that? WL: Well I spent about a year in therapy just coming to terms with the various losses. Two guys in my unit got killed, Travis Fredrich and um Gregory Bellanger two, one was a cook that was on a convoy, the other was an intelligence interrogator who was killed in a in a mortar attack. And that was a bit of a loss and I came home and my Norwich class president Rob Soltes was killed shortly thereafter. He was an optometrist on a Civil Affairs mission in northern Iraq and he got hit by a VB IED and he died [coughs]. So those were very traumatic experiences for me, and what it resulted for me was you know those were lives that were lost. And first of all it could have been me and maybe I would have felt better it was me so that their families didn't experience the loss. But it also made me reexamine all of my own priorities in life, like and this is gonna sound trivial and trite, but how can I live better to make their loss worth it? So that's really been sort of the driving force behind my life since then. And then my bo--my roommate in Bosnia, a guy named Harold Brown who's from Bolton, Mass., Army Reservist, he ended up getting recruited by the CIA when we left Bosnia. And he ended up being an intel operative for 21 them. and he is the one of the guys that gets killed in Khost in the movie Zero Dark Thirty. That was what? Four years ago now, Christmas-ish? That was a huge loss, I mean that was very very traumatic. He and I were very close in Bosnia. We stayed close. So I still work with his family and we try to remember him every year. It's a very big loss, so. SY: I also would imagine coming home and then the Abu Ghraib scandal breaking would also be a bit of an existential crisis in addition, right? WL: Yeah. Well I and Ponce ended up being interviewed extensively, ah what's an AR-15-6 investigation, which is an investigation into potentially criminal activity. It's like a precursor to like a grand jury type of investigation. A guy named Major General George Fay came and interviewed us because of Abu Ghraib. And I was interviewed extensively as was Ponce, and you know looking, they were looking deep and desperately to try and find the trigger that caused all that and I mentioned I don't think it was anything specific, I think it was just pervasive. But um, but reliving all of that was very, very traumatic. And I'll tell you probably one of the weirdest things that I experienced in Iraq was at six months under the Geneva Conventions if you are a detainee you are entitled to a review of your detention. And so in August, which was roughly two--six months after the war started, we had to start reviewing all these cases. And I was appointed the guy that was gonna be the intel person coordinating the review of all the files. So there was an MP officer that was reviewing for threats, and there was an intel officer reviewing to determine if there was intel value in that detainee and whether we should keep them for the intel value. And so we were reviewing all these files and we literally had something like 14,000 detainees at this point, and I'm reviewing the earliest ones first because they're entitled to their review. So one of the first manila folders I'm handed, handed has a detainee number on the, you know the little piece that sticks out, index, and a name. And you open it up and there was nothing in it and I go, "Hey anybody have the information on this file?" "Oh no, I didn't see anything." So I called down to the detention center I'm like, "Hey I got this manila folder with nothing in it" [laughs]. And they're like, "Yeah that's all we got." I'm like, "Well how am I supposed to make a decision on that?" you know, "Go debrief the guy and find out what the circumstances of, at least the circumstances of capture were." So somebody goes into the pen and now this guy's been tied up for six months and when they go, "So you know what's the circumstances?" And so he was walking back from the hospital after carrying his daughter several miles to the hospital, dropped his daughter off. On his way home, um, the 3rd Infantry Division captured him because he was out past curfew. Got rolled up, sent to Camp Cropper, then sent off to Abu Ghraib and had spent six months wondering what happened to his daughter, wondering if his family knew where he was, wondering anything. And so, I mean if we didn't make an enemy out of this guy I don't know what would, right? So I reflected a lot of that. That definitely troubled me, you know, as I, as I came home and unwound from the war that. That, you know, that haunted me a bit. So, you know, PTSD comes in a lot of forms. Those are my forms. And there are all different forms, you know. It's… SY: Yeah I talked to a guy last week who was in Vietnam and Korea. And in his words he was "cuckoo" after Korea, that's what he said. So he was, he had PTSD after Korea. And he said oddly he healed himself in Vietnam because in addition to you know developing a missile, he 22 personally created these two humanitarian missions. So like they took some rice from the Viet Cong and the Army was gonna burn it and he was like, "Yeah I'm taking that over to that village," right? There was another instance where he took the packing crates and brought it over to build a school. And he said really beautifully that he was able to maintain his sense of himself as an ethical person even though he was doing other things that he didn't feel good about. Because of that he was able to, to not feel so messed up when he got home. WL: Yeah, it's a good outlet. I think everybody, that's really what you need is an outlet. SY: Yeah, and maintaining a sense of yourself, right? WL: Yup. Yeah absolutely. I spent the last—the first—when I was deployed my mayor got voted out of office so I came home to no job. SY: Oh no! WL: So while I was trying to figure what to do a friend of mine said, "Hey, we're gonna start an engineering company. Do you know anybody that'd like to run it?" and I said, "Well, me." So I took that job and the weird thing was for the first two or three months I couldn't do anything. I would sit in front of the computer and stare at it, do internet searches about the war, because I needed the "vig," you know, the excitement of being engaged. And it just occurred to me one day I was like, "I'm a basket case [laughs]. I am totally lost." And that's when I decided to seek counseling because I knew that there was something wrong with me, and it was very standard behavior for somebody that was so amped up 24/7. I worked eighteen hours a day on military stuff and then [snap] gone. SY: Welcome home! WL: Yeah, welcome home, get normal, put a suit on, sit in front of the computer and and build a company. I was like uhh…. SY: Ahh! [laughs] what do I do? WL: So— SY: Did you have that hypervigilance stuff too that a lot of people describe? Like scanning and— WL: No, I, I honestly didn't. I did some pretty crazy stuff in terms of convoying in Iraq, but I never felt like the, and some people describe it to me as sort of the razor's edge experience, like you feel like you're right out on the edge of stuff. I did a lot of convoying in the Highway of Death and I don't know why but it never, and I was very very, I was very attuned to the threat and I did everything that I was supposed to do, but I never felt that particular high. The high I felt was more about working with Special Operators to identify targets, and to me that was the most exhilarating thing that I could do. So I, you know convoyed to Tikrit, and I convoyed to out to Abu Ghraib a bunch of times. I convoyed to Babylon. That was a wonderful experience, I got to explore all the ruins. Oh it was just fantastic experience, just very, very, um, very rewarding to do that. And yeah, I mean I spent a lot of time on my way out to visit other agencies that I 23 needed to coordinate with as part of my responsibilities. And it just never occurred to me, I knew how dangerous it was but it never felt as exhilarating as the other parts of my job. SY: Hm. That makes sense. WL: The other people that worked for me were like, "Why do you go out so much?" you know, "You shouldn't be so quick to go out on these convoys." I'm like, "But it's my job. I need to talk to these people." They're like, "Use a phone." I'm like, "I can't get the same information on the phone, I gotta go talk to these people," so. My driver who was uh, Freddy Klein, who probably would much have preferred that I did not go out. He tried on numerous occasions to talk me out of my road trips but he and I almost met our fate, we got shot at from behind by our own people who discharged a weapon when they shouldn't have, and it went right between us. I was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck and he was sitting in the driver's seat of the truck, went by his ear by about six inches. Yeah it was a pretty interesting day. So that's the closest I came to getting shwacked. SY: That's pretty close [laughs]. WL: It was a big, there was a night we got 57 millimeter rockets raining on us, and so that was another fairly close call. It was quite the experience to say the least. SY: How'd you get that teacup? WL: So, um, when I went to the, I think they call it the Al Faw Palace, it's the the palace that was in the middle of Camp Victory. Camp Victory was actually forming at that time, like they just barely had the perimeter secured when I showed up. And I had this guy who was a Marine Corps Major, a guy named Bob Sirks who was nominally my boss for three weeks or something. And he goes, "Have you been in the palace?" Now the palace was supposed to be off-limits, we weren't supposed to go there. I said, "I haven't." And he goes, "Let's go in." I said, "I don't know." He's like, "There's nobody over there, nobody will ever know." He's like, "I've been inside, it's cool." I said, "Okay." So we, we found a way into the building, I don't even remember what way we got in and it was opulent - gold toilet seats and gold leaf everything. And so he goes, "Hey, let's go in the kitchen." So we go in the kitchen and this huge china set, now this was a palace, one of the many palaces that Saddam used, but this huge china set with the tea cups and everything just left untouched. It's just sitting there. And he's like, "Oh let's get a souvenir." I'm like, "I don't know, you know." He's like, "Oh just a tea cup." So, "alright just a tea cup." So he gets a tea cup and I get a tea cup and he goes, "Now what?" I said, "That's enough for me." And so he took a whole bunch of other stuff and I was like, "Well I got my one war trophy, I'll take this." So that was the tea cup story, and that particular day, again because there was nobody in the palace. There are a whole bunch of pictures in my CDs of being inside the chandelier which is a totally cool experience. There's a chandelier in the pictures and you can actually go inside the chandelier. SY: I somehow must have missed that set of pictures because I—you know what? Maybe there were two Iraq discs and I only looked at one. I'll go back and look later. 24 WL: Yeah, that was cool. And then there's a picture of me on the roof, and there's a hole in the roof so it's kinda like straddling my, I'm straddling the hole. And that's where a JDAM1 went through the roof and then you can see the picture of Saddam's bedroom that's blown to smithereens. And so that one bomb went down three stories and basically blew up on his bed. Of course he wasn't there, but the intent was to target him. And that was really proof positive that I was on the right side [laughs] just to see to see the technological advantage that we had. It was really really amazing. And the rest of the building was intact. It was just that room that was blown up. Everything else, the tea cups were all where they were supposed to be, the, nothing was affected outside of that. I mean it was really— SY: The building wasn't even rattled enough that the tea cups fell? WL: Yeah it was it was totally illus—illustrative of how we were— SY: Illustrative? I never know how pronounce that word, yeah. WL: Yeah you get the message. It was the, technical, technological overmatch was on, you know, absolute display in that, in that particular moment to me. It was really amazing, really amazing. SY: What'd ya think when you were walking though Babylon? WL: You know that was almost surreal. The Marines had kind of secured Babylon to prevent looting, and they hired the chief archeologist of Iraq to give tours. So this guy who was Saddam's chief archeologist showed us around all of the ruins of Babylon. And one of the weird things is that Saddam had—he was very envious of Nebuchadnezzar, the king that ruled Babylon. And he built a huge castle above Babylon to show his supremacy, but he later thought better of it and he wanted his castle built on top of Nebuchadnezzar's castle. So he actually in the process he sank Nebuchadnezzar's castle because it was on filled marshlands. So you can see the sinking process going on because stacked all these bricks with his stamp on it over Nebuchadnezzar's bricks with Nebuchadnezzar's stamps on it. But we saw the procession street where he had all his military parades and civic parades, the Lion of Babylon was still there. We got—I got pictures in front of the Lion of Babylon. It was a very rewarding experience. I can't say that I had a very classical education and that sort of stuff so I was kind of learning it on the fly with the chief archeologist of Iraq, so I guess you couldn't ask for a better teacher than that. It was a very, it was a very interesting experience. Very fun. SY: That's pretty cool. I have to head to Northbridge soon and I want to beat some of the traffic. WL: I got to go pick up my kids. SY: Alright, any last thoughts? This has been a fantastic interview. WL: Oh it's my pleasure. Um no. I, you know I will say that I owe my success to Norwich and to a number of leaders that were Norwich, and weren't Norwich, along the ways. One of my best friends is now a commander of my command in the Reserves, the military intelligence readiness 1 This is an acronym for Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), a bomb guidance system. 25 command. The guy's name is Brigadier General Gabriel Troiano. He's not a Norwich guy but he exemplifies the citizen soldier in my mind. He was my boss in Bosnia, he was my boss in Iraq, and now he's a brigadier general and that to me is proof positive that the right values system and the right leadership really does make a difference. It really makes a difference and I applaud Norwich for staying on that path all these years, and I hope that they stay on it. SY: Yeah, hey thanks! WL: My pleasure.
FEBRUARY, J900 ■ Gettysbur Mercury CONTENTS. Puzzles and their Value in Men-tal Training, 261 How Obtain Equilibrium be-tween Production and Con-sumption, 265 Scene in the Forest, Orlando Soliloquizing, 271 Education more than a Means of Gaining a Livelihood, 272 A Comparative Study in Ruskin, 274 Editorials 278 Economic Results of Gambling, 279 Results of the Art of Healing,. 282 Public Control of Industries 285 The Power of Ignorance; 292 KAVOR THOSE WHO FAVOR US. For Fine. Printing go to p o ,,0 CARLISLE ST. GETTYSBURG, PA. C. B. Kitzmiller Dealer in Hats, Caps, Boots and . Douglas Shoes GETTYSBURG, PA. J. H. Myers Fashionable Tailor, Clothier and Gents' Furnisher. The best place in town to taaveyourCloth-ing made to order. All workmanship and Trimmings guaranteed. No charge for re-pairs and pressing for one year. Dyeing and Repairing a specialty. Ready-made Clothing the largest stock in town. Up-to-date styles. 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HINDS & HOBLE, Publishers 4-5-13-14 Cooper Institute H. Y. City Schoolbnohs of all publishers atone store. R. A. WONDERS, Corner Cigar Parlors. A full line of Cigars, Tobacco, Pipes, Etc. Scott's Corner, Opp. Eagle Hotel. GETTYSBURG, PA. JOHN M. MINNIGH, Confectionery, Ice, andIee Cpeankjj-* Oysters Stewed and Fried. No. 17 BALTIMORE ST. I .THE. GETTYSBURG MERCURY. Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter. VOL. VIII. GETTYSBURG, PA., FEBRUARY, 1900. No. 8 Editor-in-Chief. J. FRANK HEILMAN, '00. Assistant Editors. LUTHER A. WEIGLE, '00. S. A. VAN ORMER, '01. Alumni Editor. REV. F. D. GARLAND. Business Manager. JOHN K. HAMACHER. '00. Assistant Business Manager. CLARENCE MOORE, '02. Advisory Board. PROF. J. A. HIMES, LIT. D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M. D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D. D. Published monthly by the students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price One Dollar a year in advance, single copies Fifteen Cents. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Business Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. PUZZLES AND THEIR VALUE IN MENTAL TRAINING. [GIES PRIZE ESSAY, FIRST PRIZE.] OF all the powers of the human soul, the imagination is one of the most universal in its application and pleasing in its products, the earliest activity of the infant mind, and the last to cling to old age. Without the exercise of this faculty, the world would be a barren waste of material facts, in which would dwell the human race, passive recipients of objective im-pressions, without the power to revel in the beauties of imaged thought and conception of the Divine. Poetry, philosophy, art, science, invention, religion—all would be lost to mankind. L,ittle wonder, then, that the products of the imagination have ever been present and cultivated among men. The word "puzzle" has been variously defined, and the objects of thought and action to which it may be applied are widely different. But a common ground may be assumed—a puzzle is an invented contrivance, either intellectual or material, mtmllM - 262 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. whose solution requires time and ingenuity. It will be seen that the puzzle is pre-eminently the product ot the inventive imagina-tion and in turn its highest application is in the exercise of that power for its solution. Intellectual puzzles are in many senses the most important and also most ancient, being generally cast in the form of riddles. From the earliest times of history we can find evidence of the existence of puzzles, either as a form of intellectual amusement or didactic discipline. Among the Eastern nations obscure forms of expression were the inevitable associates of their symbolical modes of thought. It is certain that such methods of statement were in use among the Egyptians, while several books of riddles exist in old Arabic and Persian. One of the most well-known of puzzles is the riddle which Samson propounded to the Philistines, and many other examples are found in the Bible. The proverbs of Solomon are at times excellent types of the didactic form of the riddle. The parables of the Savior were skillful methods of teaching important truths veiled under an interesting narrative which drew the attention of the crowd, and would be very accept-able to an Eastern mind. In Greece the riddle was a favorite mode of intellectual enter-tainment at symposia. To the active mind of the Greek nothing was more pleasing than a well-directed turn of expression which would give room for play of the imagination. There is abundant evidence of this among their writers. Some of their poets even did not hesitate to write whole books of riddles, and Kleobulus, one of the seven wise men, was especially noted for his composi-tions along this line. The famous riddle of the Sphinx as told in the Oedipus Tyrannus, is probably the best known puzzle of Greek literature, though the most interesting form was a part of their very religious life and character—the oracles of the inspired priests, on which hung sometimes the fate of nations, even of the world. The raveling of such obscurities of expression was a source of the keenest pleasure to the Greek mind, and, while a product of the imagination, was an efficient agent in bringing it to that perfection shown in attic literature, thought and philosophy. The Roman mind, more earnest and grave, found small pleas-ure in these modes of intellectual activity, and very little is known of their use of puzzles until the later republic and empire, when they were introduced with the passion for everything Greek, and ■■■■HH THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 263 professional riddle-makers soon began to take a prominent part in their entertainments and banquets. During the middle ages puzzles were cultivated more as a pleasant means of entertainment than for any other purpose, and until recently the same idea has clung to them. Many manu-script and printed editions of collections of puzzles, riddles and conundrums are in existence. Much of their content consists of coarse jests, but there are some real gems of wit and valuable aids to a true estimate of mediaeval life. The Reformation put a stop to this merry jesting for a time, but it soon crept into favor again, and during the eighteenth century the most brilliant minds of Europe were engaged in the intellectual pastime. At the present day puzzles are still in great favor with both young and old, and their educational worth is becoming more and more realized. As a mental training the value of the puzzle lies chiefly in its power of cultivating quickness and strength of the constructive imagination. An obscurity of expression or mechanical con-struction may require time to solve its intricacies, but the mind is certainly the better for having mastered it. All the faculties of memory and imagination are brought into play, and side by side comes development of the reasoning power as we attempt to deduce from our problem its elements, or to arrive by induction at the result of certain assumed forces. These are the things which made the riddle so attractive to the Greek, with his quick imagination and active reasoning power. When we solve a dif-ficult puzzle, we in fact repeat the very processes by which as children we began to learn, for then everything was a puzzle; and in doing so we strengthen the faculties of the mind which are most essential, and besides strength impart to them a facility and quickness of action, which is in itself most valuable. The subject-matter of the puzzle may be another source of con-siderable benefit. The didactic riddles of the East have already been mentioned as examples of what may be taught in this way. A truth given an obscure expression which requires mental effort to unravel will be impressed upon the mind when it has been gained. A mechanical construction whose every portion has been carefully studied with a view to its possible part in the function of the whole, will not soon be forgotten. In this fact alone may be grounded a strong argument in favor of the puzzle's part in mental training. 264 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. Puzzles are beginning to play a more and more important part in the education of the child. Almost the first book placed in its hands, "Mother Goose," is full of simple riddles. Froebel's kindergarten method, so generally acknowledged now-a-days, em-bodies the puzzle idea to a great extent, developing as it does the powers of observation, invention and reasoning. As the child passes into school, puzzles of graded difficulty are used for several years, and his toys always include a number of puzzles and games, many of which contain subject-matter of educational value. Many firms now publish educational games, whose benefit to the child will be revealed by even a superficial examination. The use of puzzles may be carried too far, however; for they may be made an end in themselves. Men may become so infatu-ated with the delicacy of reasoning and exhilaration of discovery as to lose sight entirely of the practical use of the mind. So did the School-men of the middle ages, who waged long controversies on trivial and absurd questions merely for sake of the argument. Neither should puzzles take the place of more legitimate means of education, for it must be kept in mind that they are for the more developed merely an intellectual pastime which will benefit instead of harm ; and for the child a means of starting its mind upon the path which it must shortly travel with the more able guides of language, art and science. Puzzles seem to be trivial things, and are so in a certain sense. But they present wonderful capabilities to the student of Psy-chology and the teacher of the child's mind. Used within proper bounds, as a means and not an end, they may become, in devel-opment of strength and facility of the imagination and the reas-oning power, and in didactic force, a powerful factor in mental training. —L. A. W., '00. Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives. —U. S. Grant. A broken reputashun is like a broken vase—it may be mend-ed, but alwuss shows whare the brak waz.—Josh Billings. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 265 MOW OBTAIN EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION. AS a matter of course, the first thing to consider in searching for a remedy for any evil, whether in economics or else-where, is to seek to find the causes of that evil, and to discover a means of removing these causes. Whether the means proposed be beneficial in other respects or advisable upon other grounds we do not need to inquire in this paper. All that is necessary is to find some measure which gives fair promise of bettering matters in this one department of economic life which we have under consideration, namely, of establishing a more stable and more nearly correct relation between the producer and consumer. Briefly and roughly stated, it seems to us that the whole difficulty arises from the fact that the producer is not able to foretell how much of a demand there will be for his goods and incidental to this, how many of those who create the demand will be able to pay within a reasonable time, provided he is willing to sell on credit. As to the second point, demand un-doubtedly is defined to be how much certain persons are ready to take at a certain price. But we must remember that an enormous part of economic operations are conducted on a credit basis and we cannot overlook this as it exercises such a potent influence in increasing or lowering the demand or supply at any time. For if a man believes the credit of his purchasers is good, he will be willing to sell a greater quantity of goods on credit and at a lower price than if he is doubtful as to their credit, and so we might illustrate further. This second point then is incidental to the first, but it is so important in the view we take of the matter that we mention it at once in connection with what we regard the leading difficulty, namely, the producer's ignorance of the con-sumer's future demand for his goods. For he must anticipate the future. It is possible in so few industries to carry on production by filling orders already filed, that we may almost neglect them. And where there are such, the difficulties which we find elsewhere between producer and consumer do not exist, since they work on a solid basis with regard to the future, and are not compelled to base their output upon a supposed state of the market. In other words, they know 266 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. what the market will be and this is the element which is ordinar-ily lacking and which is the cause, as we believe, of the mis-understandings. Now it becomes important to try to answer the question "Why are these producers in ignorance of the future demand for their goods ?" Necessarily an important factor, in all economic life, is the large mass of natural products which are so dependent on the forces of nature, and as it is impossible to control the workings of these to any appreciable extent, the period between the planting for the future and the realization of it, between "seedtime and harvest," must always be one of doubt. It is apparently impossible to control the amount of production in this sphere, and, so far as this operates as an agent in causing misunderstandings between the producer and consumer, we do not attempt to suggest a remedy. As long as it is impossible for a man to know that he can meet a certain demand, even though he is sure that demand will exist, and that impossibility depends on the fact that the agents which cause the uncertainty are beyond human control, the cure seems also to be without the bounds of human power. From this class of cases where there is an impossibility for the producer to tell what supply he can put upon the market, we pass, by almost imperceptible gradations, to cases where the producer needs only know the demand and he can meet it with an ample supply. No doubt there are natural products which lie on the line between these extremes, as, for example, the output of mines which can be regulated to a fair extent, and there are products, not strictly natural, which are very uncertain as to the possible supply, but as a rule the further removed the product is from the soil, the more completely is the extent of its production within the control of man. It is to this class of products that we wish to direct particular attention. Assuming then that the demand could be met if it could be known, we come again to the question "Why cannot the demand be known ?" The producer can find from his table ofstatistics how many producers there are in the same business with him, how large an amount of their products has been sold during the year previous to that one, and the year previous and soon back, and then, by dividing his capital into the total capital invested in the business, he can find how much of that output should belong --. Sira :-:.'; . THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 267 to him. A simple problem, no doubt, but with no correctness in its application, and why not ? Simply because no one of his fellow producers, nor himself either, will be satisfied with the amount as he would thus work it out, but partly through natural aggressive-ness, partly though a desire to protect himself against aggressive-ness on the part of his competitors, he will seek to produce and to sell a little more than his share. He will devise new means by which he can bring his goods a little more in favor with the pub-lic than his rivals. He will reduce his prices, allowing himself a narrower margin of profits, hoping to make himself even by larger sales. No doubt in this way he will sell more goods than his slower going neighbor and will get some of the trade which would otherwise have gone to him. His neighbor's trade falls off and he finds that he provided for more trade than he is getting and is burdened with an unsalable stock. This is so much idle capi-tal and makes him so much less able to carry on a successful business. This single illustration, on a small scale, though it is, shows the inherent tendency of competition to make uncertain what share of a given demand will fall to a producer's lot. The same amount of goods may be sold, as he had anticipated, but he has not sold his share, for some one has succeeded in selling it ahead of him. We believe, therefore, that competition is the main reason. why the producer cannot foretell what the demand for his goods will be, and as it is this inability to foretell which leads to the mis-understandings between producer and consumer, the natural conclusion is that we should remove competition. We wish to make mention again that we do not argue that this is necessarily a beneficial or advisable means generally. ■ All we are concerned with is the question whether it will tend to remove the misunderstandings we have been speaking of. Of course it is not far to seek a means of accomplishing this. The means have been thrust upon us rather generously during the past few years. The tendency toward industrial combination, seeming to be the logical outgrowth of competition, appears, like Zeus, to threaten the reign of its progenitor. No doubt, it ap-pears startling to those economists who have been accustomed to regard competition with a kind of solemn awe, as containing a remedy for "all the heartaches and the thousand natural shocks 268 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. that flesh is heir to ;" but perhaps its partial disappearance may be attended by some results not altogether detrimental. The trust can estimate the demand which it will be called upon to meet. The total demand for a given article during any given period, does not vary through so large a range as to render this estimate one of great uncertainty. No doubt seasons of unusual depression or excitement may render calculations imperfect, but, all in all, the total output which the consumer stands ready to dispose of, is a matter of far higher certainty than the numerous possibilities existing when the producers are multiplied. By the immense amount of capital invested, the trust is better able to adapt itself to an unusual season of excitement or depres-sion. For example, the American Sugar Refining Company a few years ago built a new refinery furnished with the newest techni-cal improvements, to serve only as a safeguard in the case of a suddenly increased demand, or of stoppage in other factories. President Hadley in an article on Trusts, says, " A consoli-dated company has advantages in its power of adapting the amount of production to the needs of consumption. Where several con-cerns with large plants are competing and no one knows exactly what the others are doing, we are apt to have an alternation between years of over-production and years of scarcity, an alter-nation no less unfortunate for the public than for the parties im-mediatety concerned. A wisely managed combination can do much to avoid this. By making its production more even, it can give a constant supply of goods to the consumers and a constant opportunity of work to the laborers; and the resulting steadiness of prices is so great an advantage to all concerned that the public can well afford to pay a very considerable profit to those whose organizing power has rendered such useful service. Morever, the consolidation of all competing concerns avoids many unnecessary expenses of distribution. Under the old sys-tem, these expenses are very great. The multiplication of selling agencies involves much waste. Competitive advertisement is often an unnecessary and unprofitable use of money. Delivery of goods from independent producers, whether by wagon or by rail-road, often costs more than the better organized shipmeuts of a single large concern. All of these evils can be avoided by con-solidation." The same writer compares the trusts with an army, and the THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 269 comparison is apt for more purposes than one. The effectiveness with which a thoroughly organized and wealthy trust can meet an unexpected crisis, as compared with a large number of disorgan-ized and quarrelsome companies or individuals,is well paralleled by the difference between the manner in which a thoroughly equipped and organized army will overcome a sudden and severe attack, where a host of stragglers would have been cut to pieces. The very organization constitutes an element of tremendous strength. It must be concluded, we think, then, that trusts, would, or rather do furnish a means by which the future demand for the goods of the producer may be rendered more certain and hence they tend to remove the misunderstandings between the producer and the consumer. And now, how would such a remedy apply when we consider the matter of selling on credit. The man who sells, necessarily is not satisfied merely because he can tell how many goods his cus-tomer will buy. He wants to know how many he can and will pay for. Here in addition to the fact that their superior mastery of all the details of their business renders them more capable of judging of the credit of their purchasers, we seem to find another and very important fact. When competition exists, the producer is all the time seeking to hold out more inducement than his com-petitor. One of the common forms these inducements take is a sale on credit, and then competition arises as to extending the time of credit. Now, when the backbone of competition is broken, the trust no longer needs to use such means to secure purchasers. It stands in a position to dictate, to a great degree, its own terms, and can provide much more fully against dangerous credit than can be done where competition has full play. It is worth while, too, to mention the indirect effects flowing from those above mentioned. As the future is more closely anti-cipated, and as the sales made are more fully realized on than formerly, the financial embarrassments of various producers, under the old regime become a gradually disappearing quantity in the disturbing influences on trade. Of course the increased danger from the possibility of the trust must be omitted, but we believe it is overbalanced by the failures due to competition. When we entered upon the analysis of the causes which ren-dered demand uncertain, we supposed for the time being that the 'JO THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. demand, if known, could be met. We now return to that point to inquire briefly how the trust would effect that side of the ques-tion, though we have already incidentally touched upon it. Necessarily, one thing which renders uncertain the ability of the producer to meet a given demand is the possibility of dissatis-faction among his employees, leading to a strike. The same argument applies here as applies to selling on credit. The employee is, to a certain extent, able to make more at the kind of work he is engaged in than at any other, for the simple reason that he knows more about it. Now when there are a number of producers in the same business he knows, if he leaves one, he can probably find work with another, while, where there is but one employer, he loses this advantage. But writers on Trusts and Industrial Combinations in the United States agree that the information given by the working-men, themselves, seems to prove that generally a reduction of hours for labor, seldom a reduction of wages and occasionally, an increase, have taken place, especially where the workingmen were well organized themselves. "It is pretty clear that the laborers in centralized undertakings have not been worse off than in decentralized ones." So that it appears that there is less likeli-hood of a strike under such organization than under the decen-tralized form, so that less opposition to the free course of produc-tion would be met with here. And again the indirect results would be beneficial. For, as the demand becomes more certain, and there is less waste from imperfect attempts to meet it, more and more the production of the trust becomes near to a uniform standard and thus tends to give the workmen steady employment at regular wages, which is a strong barrier against a strike on their part. From the direct and indirect results, therefore, of the consoli-dated form of production, we are led to believe that it presents a means of establishing a far better understanding between the pro-ducer and consumer. That in some minor details the result might be otherwise we do not deny, but looking at it in its broad out-lines and confining our attention carefully to theparticularsubject we have under discussion, we conclude that trusts furnish a method for removing much of the friction between the producer and the consumer. 'oo. ItttfSM&B&iSaSB THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 271 SCENE IN THE FOREST, ORLANDO SOLILOQUIZING. IS it so that in this guise she sought me? My heart is sick within me. I'll take me back to a wilder region in the forest and there the remainder of my days I'll spend in mourn-ing for my lost love. Aye, virtue is modesty and modesty is a virtue and in that is she lacking. Seek her ? Speak with her ? But strike me dead if I may speak one word with her, I'll write it, fold it, give it to her and fly. 'Twill be a testimony of my love that was, that is no more. She merits now nothing but my scorn. If I had wit, I'd make her blush for very shame, if shame there be in her. But my last breath is drawn. Oh how I loved her to distraction ! I ought to go, but how to move? What is this feeling within me that holds me back ? Is it because the road is long and I am tired. No, 'tis an accursed lingering of that love that once so filled me that I knew naught else. Will it never be in my power to shake it off? 'Twassent from Heaven and not from earth; 'twas given by God and not by man. And yet I'll rid me of it. Can one so unworthy hold my affections thus ? I have a dim vague unrest, can it be removed ? I hear a rustle in the autumn leaves. Ay, here she comes, do I love her yet ? I know not how strong my passion is. I faint from fear. I see her so plain, yet must seem to see her not. She speaks— Enter Ros. and Alia. Ros. (Dressed as a woman.) I am much distressed and faint for succor, must I fall with my true love standing near me and aiding me not ? Alia. Perhaps he sees us not. Shall I go touch him on the arm ? Ros. Yes, ask him if he loves me still. Tell him if when I need it his love fails me it is not love. ' Alia. (Goes up and touches him.) Rosalind has come to seek her lover. Do you not. see her ? She is in need of your aid ? What ails you ? Your eyes look wild and you seem to know me not. Orl. If any of pity exists in your heart for me leave me alone. Alas, I know not what I say; I want you to leave me and yet I fain would have you stay. Ros. (Coming up.) Pray pardon me for calling you my lover, you received it with such melancholy dignity, methinks 272 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. you do not half appreciate the honor placed upon you. Can I relieve you of the burden of the title? But why do you look at me thus ? Have I done aught against you ? Orl. I show no bravery by standing before you thus. I would that I could die before your very eyes to let you know what havoc you have wrought. But I leave you now this very minute to go far into the forest, perchance to take of my abode with a shepherd and thus spend my remaining days. I leave yet I stay. I cannot stir an inch, (aside.) Sweet Rosalind, has turned my head, Howl love her! Despite her faults, despite her lack of modesty.' Why came you to me thus? Tell me wished you again with your wiles to torment my morbid feelings. Ah, Rosalind, I still shall call you mine. Ros. Orlando, why did you think so ill of me ? Could you not see in my glowing eyes the story of my love. I would rather have had you woo me but bashful man makes maidens bold and love will find a way. We were parted but I could not abide far from thee. Wherever fate led I followed swayed by love alone. And as the days grow brighter and our hearts grow lighter we shall sing for joy, yes, joy without alloy. EDUCATION MORE THAN A MEANS OP GAINING A LIVELIHOOD. THAT education is a means of gaining a livelihood is a fact that needs no proof. Almost every day we are brought into contact with those who are gaining a comfortable liveli-hood by means of their education. In our day there are many others who are striving to get possession of the same means for no other purpose than that of making a living. It is to be regretted, however, that too many look at education as if it were a mere instrument for easily securing the things which satisfy their physical wants. Through this motive men have lost sight of the real and lasting value of education. I would not say that it is wrong to consider education as a means of gaining a livelihood, but I think that it is a very grievous error to consider education as having no other use or value. Indeed, education without any other purpose than that of a means of gaining a livelihood would be of little value to beings created as we are. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. 273 Herbert Spencer in his work on Education says, "In education the question of questions is how to decide among the conflicting claims of subjects and determine the relative values of knowledge. Every one in contending for the worth of any particular order of information, does so by showing its bearing upon some part of life. All effort, either directly or by implication, must appeal to the ultimate test of what use is it?" In other words, the writer affirms that the essential question for us to ponder is "How to live." Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem which comprehends every special prob-lem is the right ruling of conduct in all directions, under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies—how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others—how to live completely! And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, it is, by conse-quence the great aim of education. The leading kinds of activities which constitutes human life are: (1) Those activities which directly minister to self preserva-tion; (2) Those activities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly administer to self preservation; (3) Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations; (4) Those miscellaneous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of tastes and feelings. Is it not education which prepares the individual for direct and indirect self-preservation, for parent-hood, for citizenship, and for the miscellaneous refinements of life? Of course ideal education is complete preparation in all these divisions. Some one has said that education is to the soul what sculpture is to the marble. As the sculpture brings out of the marble the god-like form, the symmetrical proportion, the life-like attitude of the finished and polished statue, so education brings out of man as an animal man, a rational being, making him a complete creature after his kind. To his frame it gives vigor, activity and beauty; to his senses correctness and acuteness; to his intellect, power and truthfulness; to his heart, virtue. r
