At 6:15 on a Monday night, Sarah Nelson sat in a classroom on the first floor of ICC, waiting for Professor Richard Russell’s Theory and Practice of Security lecture to begin. The chairs were arranged in the semi-circle typical of undergraduate discussion sections, but Russell would have none of it.
“I don’t know what kind of commune thing they’re doing here, but you don’t have to sit like that if you don’t want to,” he joked. Neither Nelson nor any of the class’s 15 other attendees, all graduate students in the Security Studies Program, moved a muscle. Pens were poised above fresh notebook pages and fingers hovered over laptop keys as the class waited for the lecture to begin. Russell went on to deliver an enthusiastic and expressive talk for the next two hours, with topics ranging from the difference between realism and liberalism to Condoleeeza Rice’s favorite reading material to the “war on terrorism.”
“Terrorism is a tool,” he declared. “We can have a war on Iran, a war on Iraq, a war on Afghanistan but you can’t have a war on terrorism. It’s a slogan, not a strategy.”
For Nelson and several of the other students in Russell’s class, war—on terrorism or otherwise—is more than just a strategy or a theory. It is a reality. Several active duty officers and military reservists are currently enrolled at Georgetown, in both the graduate and undergraduate schools. They come here because the university has strong programs in several academic areas that directly relate to the current foreign policy challenges facing the United States.
About a quarter of the students in Georgetown’s renowned Security Studies Program are active duty officers in the United States military, totaling around 30 this year, according to Daniel Byman, the program’s director. The Registar’s office does not ask incoming undergraduate students about military involvement, according to Associate University Registrar Felicidad Bunuan.
The university attracts these officers because, Byman explained, “the Security Studies Program is the best of its kind. … It has the best course offerings, and strong adjunct and full-time professors … and we’re local. People can get in a cab rather than on an airplane.”
From Arabic tests to lectures detailing war theories, military officers at Georgetown have the unique opportunity to engage in coursework that is directly relevant to their careers. At the same time, their educational paths are decisively directed by the current needs of the United States military.
Jon Ouellette (SFS ‘07) is a Regional and Comparative Studies major—focusing on the Middle East and South Asia—and an Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) in the Marine Corps. He cited the recently renamed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, the Security Studies Program and several of the Middle Eastern and Asian foreign language departments—especially Arabic and Chinese—as assets that make Georgetown particularly strong in terms of educating the military.
Although Ouellette does not yet have concrete plans for life after Georgetown, he is currently “in the process of scouting another way to either join up with the military or do something else.” When asked if he is taking Arabic because it will be helpful when and if he goes back into active duty, he replied, “I don’t like Arabic, let’s put it that way.”
Before college, Ouellette served in the Marines for six years of active duty in signals intelligence and for two years as a reservist, mostly dealing with communications intercepts. He transferred to Georgetown after two years at the University of Massachusetts, in part because of the university’s proximity to the Pentagon.
“Georgetown is extraordinarily relevant to what’s going on now. It’s one of, if not the, preeminent institution in what’s relevant to our foreign policy right now.”
While Ouellette has the traditional collegiate experience, many active duty officers studying for graduate degrees in Security Studies do not. These students attend classes at Georgetown at night; during the day, they perform a wide variety of military jobs throughout the District of Columbia area. Sarah Nelson, from Russell’s Theory and Practice of Security class, said that she works for a national intelligence agency, although she declined to discuss specific details of her job because of security considerations.
“I work within the Department of Defense, so I work with all of the agencies in the Department of Defense and what we call the IC, the intelligence community, which includes all sorts of civilian agencies that are not within the DoD,” she said.
Not all day jobs held by military officers are as clandestine as Nelson’s, though. Aron Tver, a captain in the Marine Corps and another Security Studies MA candidate, is currently stationed at the Marine Barracks here in D.C., performing ceremonial functions including presidential parades and funerals at Arlington National Cemetery.
With steady jobs and busy class schedules, military officers at Georgetown appear at first to have relatively stable lives here in Washington. However, Nelson highlighted the uncertain nature of attending graduate school while simultaneously being on active duty. She said she loves her work and considers her career choice to be a good decision.
“There are a lot of demands … your job is your number one priority, 24/7. … I might have to completely withdraw from school this semester. That’s one of the contingencies you have to just deal with and be flexible with,” Nelson said.
Although she is not currently working on intelligence analysis related to the situation in the Middle East, there is a chance that she will be deployed to Iraq in March. She hopes to be able to stay in Washington to finish her degree.
“I’m not definitely staying here in D.C.,” she said. “[Leaving] is definitely a consideration, and I have to convince the military to let me stay here.”
Uncertainty about future plans is a challenge shared by many of the soldiers studying at Georgetown, especially given the current political climate. Tver discussed the volatile nature of life on active duty in light of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The afternoon before President Bush’s State of the Union address, Tver said that unless there is a major change in foreign policy, most of the military officers studying here expect to be overseas in the near future. In the speech, as anticipated, the president renewed his commitment to “remaining on the offensive” in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I could very well be detailed to a combat unit this summer and be in Iraq in September or October,” Tver said. Unlike many younger soldiers, however, he has already had the experience of being stationed in the Middle East. Before coming to Georgetown, Tver’s most recent assignment involved spending a year in Saudi Arabia as a counter terrorism advisor to Saudi forces.
While Nelson and Tver spoke hesitantly about their potential departures and emphasized a desire to finish their degrees, many officers thrive on the hectic pace and constant novelty of life in the military.
“Some of my friends that I graduated college with have been in one job for the whole time since then. [The military] becomes part of your character, until you’re like, ‘I’ve gotten good at this, I want to try something new,’” Navy Lieutenant Michael Maloney, another Security Studies graduate student, said.
In accordance with this desire to keep moving, Maloney said that he and many of his fellow officers would never want to work at the Pentagon, even though many Americans regard it as the epitome of military work.
“I’m proud to say I’ve never been to the Pentagon,” he said. “Amongst people who go out and do operative things, the idea of sitting in the Pentagon for years and years and years is just alien to what they want to do. I don’t know if it’s a stigma, but people interested in operative things, they want to be in Iraq, Afghanistan.”
This operative lifestyle is completely alien to the vast majority of the university community, including the officers’ classmates in their Security Studies classes. Aside from military personnel, a quarter of the program’s students are working professionals from the D.C. area and half are traditional graduate students who have just graduated from college. In Tver’s opinion, the presence of students with military backgrounds adds an important element to the Security Studies Program because they are able to share their experiences on the ground.
“Obviously we have a more realistic view of what the capabilities of the military are,” he said. “Security implies having the option of the use of force, and we represent that option.”
The enrollment of military personnel at Georgetown benefits the officers by giving them the opportunity to learn about theories and policies that directly relate to their careers. Nevertheless, Tver said that he does not see very many of his fellow officers actually finishing graduate degrees because of the uncertainty of the military lifestyle.
“I can’t say that I’ve seen an upswing in people doing the academic thing,” he said, attributing this to the busy nature of their careers. “I just happen to have a rare opportunity to maybe finish the program,” he added.
Another factor that may prevent some military officers from enrolling in graduate programs at Georgetown or elsewhere is the high cost of such programs. Nelson said that the military does help out by providing tuition assistance, but their contribution is small in comparison to the cost of a graduate education. For example, the Air Force provides $4,500 per academic year in tuition assistance. According the Security Studies Program’s web site, tuition for the 2005-2006 academic year is $29,448 for full-time students or $3,681 per class for part-time students.
Still, the Georgetown program is valuable for the military. “They see it as increasing the worth of one of their assets,” Nelson said.
Back in the Theory and Practice of Security class, Richard Russell emphasized the importance of security studies in bridging the gap between government policy and the theory of war.
“It’s not that in security studies we’re advocating war,” he said. “We’re just recognizing that war has plagued humankind for 7,000 years.”
