Iraq, Vietnam, and the Class of 2008

Senator Hillary Clinton recently offered a clumsy reminder that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin 40 years ago this month, in June 1968. I remember it well; I was a student finishing my first year of graduate work at Harvard and it had already been a tumultuous semester. In January, the Viet Cong had struck hard against U.S. forces in Vietnam with their bloody Tet Offensive. Earlier that month my Selective Service status had been changed to 1-A, a fateful switch that took me away from Harvard and into military service the following year, after all my appeals ran out. Angered by this fate, in February and March I skipped classes, traveling to New Hampshire to campaign for anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy, who did well enough to push President Johnson out of the race—and bring Bobby Kennedy in. Then in April came the shocking assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., followed by rioting in more than 100 American cities.

Earlier that spring Harvard’s senior class had invited King to speak at their Class Day exercises. His widow, Coretta Scott King, now had to come to Cambridge to speak in his place. On June 12, exactly one week after the Kennedy killing, Mrs. King admonished the Class of 1968 to “speak out with righteous indignation” against what she called “the forces which are seeking to destroy us.”

Young people took this message to heart all across the country. Angry protesters filled the streets at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months later, provoking helmeted police into a brutal assault. At Harvard the following spring, in 1969, students took over University Hall to protest the institution’s alleged complicity in the Vietnam War, once again provoking a police incursion, followed by a student “strike” that shut down the university.

Today, America is trapped again in a damaging military project abroad, yet few have taken to the streets. Harvard’s Class of 2008 enjoyed a tame final semester, without any takeovers of University Hall. This irritates some from my generation who would like to see today’s college students responding with a bit more “righteous indignation” to the war in Iraq. We denigrate today’s youth as too coddled and self-absorbed to care. Not fearing military service, thanks to an all-volunteer army, today’s students can afford focus their energies on resume building, graduation parties, and summer travel plans. During the four years that the Class of 2008 was at Harvard, our nation’s leaders have persisted in an Iraq policy that brings rising economic, political, and moral costs, yet where is the outrage?

My impressions of the Class of 2008, gained during my admittedly brief visit this spring, are a bit different. What I have noticed is considerable seriousness of purpose, both in and out of class, and remarkably little self-absorption. Nobody tried to take over University Hall this spring, but quite a few of my students did give up long weekends without sleep or pay to campaign for their favorite candidates in New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Instead of seeking change through self-indulgent and often self-defeating street tactics, these students sought a path to change in Iraq—and in other areas—through disciplined election work. And they got results, mobilizing enough caucus goers and primary voters to upset the Democratic Party establishment and give the insurgent Obama campaign a grip on the nomination. If these efforts are sustained, Barack Obama will win the election in November and bring a younger look and a new approach to national politics. Contrast this strategy to the less disciplined street tactics used back in 1968, tactics that triggered a conservative backlash and helped elect Richard Nixon.

The Harvard students who became active in electoral politics this spring were part of a much larger national political phenomenon. The 2008 primary season was filled with many twists and turns, yet one dominating constant was the increased turnout of voters under age 30, and not all in support of Obama. In Massachusetts the turnout of young voters doubled compared to 2000, with Clinton actually doing better than Obama among those under 30. In Missouri, the youth vote tripled, carrying both Obama and Huckabee to a win. In Georgia, the youth vote also tripled compared to 2000, and in Tennessee, the youth vote quadrupled.

Patterns of civic engagement among young Americans do remain to some extent divided between this new cohort willing to bet on traditional politics to bring change, and those who prefer non-political engagement through volunteering, community service, and education work. Yet both are proven options, and both are far more effective than street theatre, or simple indignation. Today’s young people appear to have learned, from someone, that results matter. So, graduates from the past: take a lesson from the Class of 2008.


Robert A. Paarlberg is Betty Freyhof Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, and a Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard.