“From the USA to the Middle East; we demand Justice, we demand Peace.”
“Bush and Cheney, don’t you lie; because of you, children die.”
These anti-war chants are just a couple of the slogans created in 2002 to protest the current war in Iraq. “There was a lot of activity in the spring of 2003 at the initiation of the war, and then last year it dropped off pretty substantially,” said Peter Feaver, professor of political science. “I’ve seen very little activity now that’s war-related. The reason is the election is sort of sucking the air out of the war protests.”
Duke has existed through both World Wars, Vietnam, the Korean War and the first Gulf War, to name a few. And now, once again the country is at war. Not only have the past two years been shrouded by the attacks of Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq, but in the past 100 years, wars have changed the Duke University experience drastically.
D.W. Newsom, an 1899 graduate of Trinity College, wrote a poem entitled “To the Men of the Golden Star” June 3, 1918. The poem was read at the Memorial service in honor of alumni who fell in World War I. “Proud stands your old mother College today, though sorrow hath touched her soul, that these nevermore shall enter her door nor along her old pathways shall stroll,” reads one stanza of the poem.
Duke contributed most of its resources to the World War II effort in the 1940s. “The Second World War is the fifth armed conflict in which the nation has been engaged during the life of Duke University and its antecedents,” reads a Duke University and the War pamphlet from 1943.
Duke programs and celebrations formed to support the war effort with pamphlets informing students on how to accelerate their course loads and continue their education after the war. The University also set up a number of units on campus, all geared toward helping the war effort. The Navy College Training Program provided a continual supply of officer candidates in the various fields required by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Duke had one of the largest units in the country with over 1,500 men.
Bill Holley, professor emeritus of history, came to Duke University in 1947, soon after the end of World War II. Holley has seen the University change over the years. “When I first started teaching, virtually half of my class were veterans. The war experience was a very maturing one and they grew up in a hurry,” Holley said.
Holley describes one of his “boys” as returning to college after being shot in the stomach four times during battle. “Here was a man who was deadly earnest in getting an education and right next to him in class was a youngster, a callow kid, who had just emerged from high school,” he said. “There were great contrasts.”
The fear of being drafted played a large role during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. School of Law graduate Charles Henderson highlighted the constant fear of the draft in a letter to The Chronicle Nov. 24, 1980: “On Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941, I was a 21-year-old law student... as [I] walked out into the chill of the late afternoon [I] learned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Everywhere students stood in clusters whispering their shock. Since the draft had already claimed many and the rest of use were very much ‘military age,’ we knew that many in our midst would not survive (and many didn’t).”
Holley recalled his own fear of being drafted during the Korean War. “Members of the Reserve always lived with the fear of being called up. I put in five years of my life and wanted to get on with my career,” he said. “The good thing is that everyone in the Reserve and the National Guard today are volunteers; they know what they are getting into when they sign up. But back in the older days we had a draft and people who weren’t willing to volunteer felt that they were being coerced against their will.”
Duncan Heron, professor emeritus in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, taught at Duke during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and remembered students who were afraid of being drafted. “I remember one student who failed a course and was very much concerned because he was drafted,” he said. “Beats me what happened to him. That was a big concern when the draft was operated—to stay in school and not be drafted.”
Professor Emeritus of political science Ole Holsti said the late 1960s and early 1970s was a time of considerable turmoil. “During World War II, the country was really quite united, which was not true in the later stages of Vietnam,” he said. “Today, it doesn’t seem like we are in a war. The President tells us to contribute by shopping til we drop, or pay the war by cutting taxes. It just doesn’t have a kind of war-time feel to it.”
Kenneth Surin, professor of literature, said he thought the absence of a draft since Vietnam has contributed to less activism on Duke’s campuses. “Because of the draft back then, there was much more activism on Duke’s campus at that time and I don’t think that we will ever reach that level of activism again,” Surin said. “Let’s face it, it’s self-interest that gets people riled up and until there is a draft, people in the middle class and upper-middle class are not going to feel the impact of this war.”
Surin quoted statistics to point out the disparity between how people feel about the war and what they will contribute. “When college students are surveyed and they do support the invasion of Iraq, the number is something like 65 to 78 percent,” he said. “When students are asked whether they are prepared to fight in this war, the number is something like 25 to 30 percent. Clearly there is a disconnect there and that’s a problem.”
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