WSJ Book Review

Wall Street Journal book review on 20 March 2007 "Between Classes, Getting Ready for Combat".

Kyle Smith reviews the book about ROTC "Army 101: Inside ROTC at a Time of War" by David Axe, and explains "why drill sergeants yell."

The 369th Harlem Hellfighters Project at Columbia

Milvets is looking for interested History, American studies, African-American studies majors, or anyone interested in military history to come be involved in an exciting project to catalog, preserve and help tell the story of the Harlem Hellfighters. The369th was the first all African-American infantry unit in WWI.Columbia has, in cooperation with the Columbia Military community, begun to help preserve traces of the history of this amazing unit. Milvets needs interested students to help be involved in thisproject. This is an exciting opportunity to be involved in theprocess of original historical research on an important subject. For those of us who might be considering a history major, orgraduate studies this is an opportunity to be involved in serious historical research. If you are interested, or know someone who might be, please contact us at columbia.mil@gmail.com. There are no specific qualifications other than a willingness to put in the time and effort to make this project a success.

Strategic Options for Managing Diversity in the U.S. Army

By LTC Anthony Reyes

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT

Executive Summary
The United States Army is a vast organization with a global presence. One of its central sources of strength is the diversity of its workforce, which encompasses 1.5 million personnel across the active, reserve, civilian, and contractor components. While the Army was at the forefront of racial integration in the 1950s and today is one of the most diverse organizations in the U.S., further progress needs to be made on the diversity front.

While the term “diversity” can be defined along many dimensions, this paper focuses on racial diversity because of the unique and historically significant role that race plays in issues of diversity in the Army. As recognized by former Chief of Staff of the Army General (ret.) Eric K. Shinseki in April 2003 internal communications about representative leadership across the force, the Army draws strength from its cultural and ethnic diversity. Specifically, this paper aims to create a foundation for both understanding the problem of black underrepresentation in the field grade and senior officer ranks and identifying solutions to help the Army achieve greater workforce diversity at this critical level and beyond.

It should be noted that this paper intentionally focuses on black male officers rather than other
minority groups. If we develop solutions to improve the situation for the largest minority group
within the Army (blacks), those solutions will also benefit other minorities, including the secondlargest minority group, Hispanics. Also, an emphasis is placed on the combat arms branches because they serve as the predominant pipeline to the senior ranks of the Army.

However, it is important to recognize that Congress restricts service in the combat arms to men; all women—including black women—are not permitted to serve in these branches. Therefore, women currently cannot access this pipeline. Given that the restriction is in place at this point, this paper’s recommendations regarding increasing black officer representation in the senior ranks through accessions are limited to black male officers. If Congress lifted the gender restriction on combat arms service, the Army would be able to progress even further toward workforce diversity by boosting both the number of women officers and the number of black officers (both men and women), particularly in the senior ranks.

Diversity is critical to the organizational effectiveness of the Army. While the Army has taken good first steps in addressing areas of minority underrepresentation, additional steps are needed in order to achieve a fully diverse workforce and capitalize on the strength of this diversity. This paper highlights some of the current ongoing issues pertaining to diversity and strategies for addressing these issues that the Army needs to consider in order to ensure its success as an organization.

Click here to read more>>

The Wall Street Journal's Statistics: Urban Retreat of ROTC

In the last few decades, the Army has pulled its officer training and recruiting programs out of the Northeast and big urban centers, choosing to concentrate on campuses in the lower-cost South and Midwest. But the decision could be expensive when it comes to diversity. (See article.)

Shifting Focus

The Army's recruiting shift has been driven largely by economics, senior Army officials say. Because urban students are less familiar with the military, officials say they are harder and more costly to recruit.

The below map shows current ROTC programs and those discontinued since 1987.

Source: Department of Defense/Population Bulletin December 2004

Officers by Region

Having scaled back its urban ROTC programs, the Army is drawing more officers from the Midwest and South and fewer from the culturally diverse big cities in New England and the West Coast.

Proportion of new Army officers by region, 2004

Source: Department of Defense/Population Bulletin December 2004

In Comparison

In New York City, which produced more than 500 military officers a year in the 1960s, the two remaining ROTC programs -- at St. John's and Fordham universities -- last year yielded 34 Army officers. In contrast, the state of Alabama, which has a student population that is about one-fourth the size of the state of New York, has 10 ROTC programs that last year produced about 200 Army officers. The South generates about 40% of all Army officers, according to Pentagon statistics.

ALABAMA NEW YORK CITY

Total Population 4.5 Million 8.2 Million

Number of ROTC Programs 10 2

Officers Produced in 2006 174 34

Source: US Army and U.S. Census Data.Photos: University of Alabama ROTC program, courtesy Major Dan Clark; St. John's ROTC program, by Greg Jaffe

Recruiting Goals

Last year, Cadet Command, which oversees the training and recruitment of ROTC officers, came up 500 officers short of its goal of producing 4,500 second lieutenants.

Army ROTC officer production

*Year not completed. Source: U.S. Army

Scholarships

Cadet Command will get about $175 million for scholarships this year in hopes of improving its recruiting score. But it won't get additional officers and sergeants to expand to urban campuses.

Value of Army ROTC Scholarships, by fiscal year. The 2007 fiscal year began Oct. 1, 2006.


*Proposed budget. Source: U.S. Army

Spending Breakdown

Scholarships and stipends make up more than half of the Pentagon's ROTC budget.


ROTC budget for fiscal year 2007, which began Oct. 1, 2006

Source: Pentagon

Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario

These 84 pages from the Army War College were published in Feb. 2003 and seem to portray the current situation in Iraq quite well. Many of the problems that are identified in the paper have since ocurred, though most of the solutions presented have not.

Some highlights:

"Successfully executing the postwar occupation of Iraq is consequently every bit as important as winning the war. Preparing for the postwar rehabilitation of the Iraqi political system will probably be more difficult and complex than planning for combat. Massive resources need to be focused on this effort well before the first shot is fired. Thinking about the war now and the occupation later is not an acceptable solution. Without an overwhelming effort to prepare for occupation, the United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America’s own making."

"While a struggle for power between civilian and military elites would contribute to Iraqi fragmentation, the military can also serve as a unifying force under certain conditions. In a highly diverse and fragmented society like Iraq, the military (primarily the ground forces) is one of the few national institutions that stresses national unity as animportant principle. Conscripts are at least publicly encouraged to rise above parochial loyalties and may be stationed in parts of the country far from their ethnic kinsmen. To tear apart the Army in the war’s aftermath could lead to the destruction of one of the only forces for unity within the society. Breaking up large elements of the army also raises the possibility that demobilized soldiers could affiliate with ethnic or tribal militias."

Complete work may be found here:
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB182.pdf

DADT Reform

Interesting Opinion From The Progress Report March 2, 2007

MILITARY --- Ready for Repeal Since the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy went into effect, the Pentagon has dismissed more than 11,000 servicemembers, many of whom have key specialty skills such as training in medicine and language. At a time when the military faces a readiness crisis, the Pentagon can ill-afford to dismiss two service members a day as it is doing under the current policy. The time is right for repeal. Recent polling shows a large majority of military personnel are comfortable with gays and lesbians, and nearly a quarter of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars knew that someone in their unit was gay. High-profile military leaders, such as former Joint Chiefs chairman John M. Shalikashvili, have called for repeal. In May, Ret. Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, the first woman to achieve the rank of three-star general in the Army, also called for repeal of the law, saying it is "a hollow policy that serves no useful purpose." "The truth is something's wrong with this ban," retired Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, the first American soldier to be seriously wounded in Iraq, said yesterday. "You're asking men and women to lie about their orientation, to keep their personal lives private, so they can defend the rights and freedoms of others in this country." The Urban Institute estimates 65,000 lesbian and gay Americans are currently serving in the United States Armed Forces. It is time to allow these heroes serve their country openly and without fear of dismissal. Make your voice heard here.

TIME IS RIGHT FOR REPEAL: Last December, Zogby Interactive polled servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan on their views on homosexuality. Seventy-three percent of those polled were comfortable around gays and lesbians, 55 percent said the "presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others," and 21 percent of those in combat units knew for sure that someone in their unit is gay. A 2004 poll found a majority of junior enlisted servicemembers believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 16 percent in 1992. "There has been a seismic shift among the military and the public in favor of welcoming gay patriots in our armed forces," said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). For the first time, the student body of Uniformed Services University (USU) elected an openly gay student council president. Last summer, "a West Point graduate received a prestigious academic award for his thesis opposing Don't Ask Don't Tell, the ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual service members." Anecdotal evidence also points to a changing attitude within the military ranks. "Last year I held a number of meetings with gay soldiers and marines," Shalikashvili wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. "These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers." Alva said of his experience, "I have tons and tons of friends that were in the military at the time who knew I was gay because I confided in them. Everybody had the same reaction: 'What's the big deal?'" "Being on the front lines and serving with the people who even actually knew that I was gay, you know, that was never a factor," Alva said. "We were there to do a job." Twenty-four countries allow open service by gays and lesbians, including nine nations that "have fought alongside American troops in Operation Iraqi Freedom." A University of California, Berkeley study of these foreign militaries, "suggests that lifting bans on homosexual personnel does not threaten unit cohesion or undermine military effectiveness."

AN ISSUE OF READINESS: Entrenched in two major wars, the U.S. military is stretched thin and thousands of troops are being deployed unready for combat. The approximately 11,000 gays and lesbians discharged since 1993 would account for more than one-third of the total number of troops in Afghanistan. With American troops being called back for multiple tours of duty in the Middle East, the current discharge rate of two soldiers a day makes little logistical sense. A study conducted last year for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network showed that the U.S. military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays and lesbians were allowed to be open about their sexual orientation. Approximately 800 of those who have been discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" were specialists with "some training in an occupation identified . . . as 'critical.'" In a hearing before the House Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed the need for more service members with foreign language skills for covert operations, yet 322 of those discharged had skills in critical languages such as Arabic, Farsi, or Korean. Furthermore, the discharged and subsequent recruitment associated with "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is estimated to have cost taxpayers $364 million dollars. "The real issue here is that you have a policy that is costing us money, hurting readiness and is really not fulfilling any national security objective," said Lawrence Korb, a Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and former Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. "It just doesn't make sense now, particularly when you're having such a hard time getting people to join the military and retaining them in the right skills."

CONGRESS TAKES AIM AT REPEAL: "Our military is stretched to the breaking point," Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA) wrote to his colleagues in the House. "Yet, because of the discriminatory policy set up in the 1993 more than 11,000 able-bodied, capable and willing soldiers, sailors, and airmen and women have been kicked out of the military for no other reason than their sexual orientation." Meehan is attempting to do something about it. Yesterday, he reintroduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, a bill that would allow gays to serve openly in the military. The bill has bipartisan support from more than 100 lawmakers, including Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT). Shays, who appeared with Meehan at a news conference yesterday, called the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy "foolish and cruel." Activists will make a strong push on Capitol Hill on Lobby Day -- March 26, 2007 -- to show Congress grassroot support behind the repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." Learn how you can get more involved in pushing for an end to the policy here, and contact your member of Congress here.

"A Retreat From Big Cities Hurts ROTC Recruiting, says Wall Street Journal

Note: By having few ROTC programs in big cities, the military is missing out on recruits who have familiarity with foreign cultures and languages. One of the NCOs said of New York City "There were times when I felt like I was back in Iraq. There were people dressed in those man-dresses that they wear in Iraq. The women had veils. I know I shouldn't say this, but it made me want to look for IEDs".

See commentary on Intel Dump blog: http://www.intel-dump.com/posts/1172430725.shtml

Click here for complimentary graphics: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-urbanchrtbk0702-14.html

"A Retreat From Big Cities Hurts ROTC Recruiting:
Though Army Seeks More Ethnic Officers, It Shuns Northeast".

By Greg Jaffe
QUEENS , N.Y. -- The ROTC program at St. John's University here seems perfectly placed for an Army that's desperate for officers who are bilingual and comfortable in foreign lands. About 40 of the 120 students speak second languages, including Turkish, Korean, Mandarin, Hindi, Albanian, and Gujarati.

"I had never even heard of Gujarati until I learned I had a cadet who spoke it," says Lt. Col. Timothy Walter, who heads the program. But instead of being hailed as a model for the Army's future, the St. John's Reserve Officer Training Corps program is a lonely outpost of diversity. In the past few decades, the Army has pulled its officer training and recruiting programs out of the Northeast and big, ethnically diverse urban centers, choosing to concentrate on campuses in the South and Midwest.

There is no Army ROTC program in the Detroit area, with its large middle-class Muslim population, and only one in Miami and Chicago. In New York City, which produced more than 500 military officers a year in the 1950s and early 1960s, the two remaining ROTC programs last year yielded 34 Army officers. In contrast, Alabama, which has a student\n population that is about one-fourth the size of the state of New York, has 10 ROTC programs that last year produced 174 Army officers. The South generates about 40% of all Army officers, according to Pentagon statistics. An officer's background didn't matter so much when the U.S. was focused on fighting big armies in large conventional battles. These days, though, U.S. success in places like Iraq and Afghanistan hinges on the ability of Army officers to win the trust of a suspicious and often culturally alien population. Officers must court sheiks and warlords and work closely with indigenous security forces. At a time when the country is growing more and more diverse, the Army is struggling to build an officer corps that takes full advantage of America's multiethnic society. There are only about 1,500 Muslims in a force of about 500,000 soldiers. Arabic speakers are in critically short supply throughout the force, say senior Army officials. Even in those cities, like New York, where the Army maintains ROTC, it is undermanned and culturally out-of-synch with the people it is trying to recruit. "

There is no Army ROTC program in the Detroit area, with its large middle-class Muslim population, and only one in Miami and Chicago. In New York City, which produced more than 500 military officers a year in the 1950s and early 1960s, the two remaining ROTC programs last year yielded 34 Army officers.

In contrast, Alabama, which has a student population that is about one-fourth the size of the state of New York, has 10 ROTC programs that last year produced 174 Army officers. The South generates about 40% of all Army officers, according to Pentagon statistics.

An officer's background didn't matter so much when the U.S. was focused on fighting big armies in large conventional battles. These days, though, U.S. success in places like Iraq and Afghanistan hinges on the ability of Army officers to win the trust of a suspicious and often culturally alien population. Officers must court sheiks and warlords and work closely with indigenous security forces.

At a time when the country is growing more and more diverse, the Army is struggling to build an officer corps that takes full advantage of America's multiethnic society. There are only about 1,500 Muslims in a force of about 500,000 soldiers. Arabic speakers are in critically short supply throughout the force, say senior Army officials. Even in those cities, like New York, where the Army maintains ROTC, it is undermanned and culturally out-of-synch with the people it is trying to recruit.

"We've been very shortsighted," says retired Gen. Jack Keane, who served as the Army's vice chief of staff until he retired in 2004. "We have leaders in the Army who are uncomfortable in big urban areas. They feel awkward there."

The Army's retreat from urban areas has complex roots, from antimilitary sentiment in big cities in the wake of the Vietnam War to simple economics. Urban ROTC programs have generally produced fewer cadets and are considered poorer investments than programs at large campuses in the South. Internal Army studies say the best ROTC candidates are students whose parents have served in the military and enjoy physical activity. "They may have rafted, canoed, rock climbed or sky dived," an internal Army report states. Prime candidates also have served in leadership positions at school.
ROTC, which is open to full-time college students, produces officers who are the professional and intellectual core of the Army. The program graduates about 4,000 officers a year and supplies two-thirds of the Army's officer corps. Cadets must attend classes at least twice a week and work out in the mornings three times a week. The other officers come from West Point, which produces about 900 graduates a year, and the Army's Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga. ROTC graduates typically agree to serve eight years in the military after they graduate. The time can either be spent on active duty or in the reserves.

To prepare soldiers better for dealing with local populations, the Army has added language and cultural-awareness classes. At West Point, for example, cadets in the Social Sciences Department spend three days each year in Jersey City, N.J., a city of about 250,000 that includes large numbers of Muslims, Hindus and Egyptian Coptic Christians. The West Point cadets meet with local political and religious leaders. They spend the night in a mosque, meet with the Imam there and observe evening and morning prayers. During their last trip they were treated to a homemade feast from Hindu, Egyptian and Coptic Christian communities.

"The goal is to help cadets understand how a big, diverse, ethnic population works," says Maj. Stephanie Ahern, who oversees the trip.
But when it comes to recruiting officers from Jersey City, the Army has taken a pass. It closed its only two ROTC programs in Jersey City in the mid-1990s because they weren't producing many officers.

The Army's shift South began in the late 1960s at a time when anger over the war in Vietnam was prevalent on many Northeastern campuses. At some high-profile schools, like Harvard, Yale and Columbia, disagreements between the military and school administrators drove ROTC off campus. Many small Southern schools actively courted the military by setting aside new buildings for ROTC programs.

As the Army shrunk after the Cold War, it also shuttered large numbers of bases in the Northeast and relocated troops to sprawling facilities in the South and Midwest which were far from population centers and offered big training ranges. As a result, urban students today have far less exposure to the military, making them harder and more costly to recruit and retain in ROTC programs.

"We want to produce an officer corps that is fully reflective of the rich ethnicity and cultural diversity of our country," says Maj. Gen. Montague Winfield, who oversees the Army's ROTC programs nationwide. But, he says, the Army must also focus its money and personnel on areas that are likely to produce the largest number of high-quality officers at the least cost to taxpayers.

Last year, Cadet Command, which oversees training and recruitment of ROTC officers, came up 450 officers short of its goal of producing 4,500 second lieutenants. This year, the command will get about $175 million for scholarships to bring in more cadets, twice what it received in 2001. But it won't get additional officers and sergeants to expand programs to more campuses in urban markets.

"We are in a resource-constrained environment," says Gen. Winfield.
No place shows the shortcomings and the potential of urban ROTC programs better than New York. Created after World War II, ROTC was a big presence on campuses throughout New York City. The City College of New York, for example, swelled with more than 1,500 cadets in the 1950s, making it among the largest in America. Its most famous graduate is Gen. Colin Powell.

In the early 1970s, the Army began to leave the city. From 1968 to 1974, the Army closed 43 ROTC programs in the Northeast and opened 45 new programs in the South. In the early 1990s when the Army was downsizing at the end of the Cold War, it closed 70 more programs, including its remaining programs in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

For many Army officers and senior sergeants today, New York is an alien place. Master Sgt. Darrel Jolley got his papers sending him to teach at St. John's University while he was in Iraq. The official Army order listed his assignment as "Jamaica, Queens." "I thought I was going to the island of Jamaica," he says. When he found out he was going to New York, the 43-year-old sergeant says he tried to get out of the assignment. He failed.

Driving through Brooklyn and Queens Sgt. Jolley said he was initially taken aback by the clamor and the large number of people who looked as if they recently arrived from the Middle East. "There were times when I felt like I was back in Iraq. There were people dressed in those man-dresses that they wear in Iraq. The women had veils. I know I shouldn't say this, but it made me want to look for IEDs," he says, referring to improvised explosive devices.

It wasn't just the city that felt foreign. The ROTC students were also different. Many spoke with heavy accents and struggled with their English. About half of the cadets were female, a big change from Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., where he served in all-male units. Standing before his first class, Sgt. Jolley says he felt compelled to preemptively apologize for anything he might say to offend the students.

Three years into his St. John's assignment, where he teaches courses in military science, Sgt. Jolley has formed strong bonds with his cadets. Among those with whom he has formed closest ties is Yesim Yaktubay, a 20-year-old junior who attends St. John's on a ROTC scholarship.

Ms. Yaktubay, who migrated to the U.S. at age 10 from Turkey, says she was drawn to ROTC because she needed money for school and wanted to travel. Her father works as a carpenter in Queens and her mother is a homemaker. Her parents initially tried to talk her out of joining the military, and remain troubled by the Iraq war, she says. "They are from the Middle East. They have family over there and they were worried the war would spread to Turkey," she says. Her mother "kept saying I was going to get hurt or killed," Ms. Yaktubay says. Like many of the St. John's cadets, Ms. Yaktubay says she has her doubts about the wisdom of the war but "I support our troops."

As one of a handful of Muslims in the St. John's program, Ms. Yaktubay says she frequently finds herself answering Sgt. Jolley and her fellow cadets' questions about Islamic culture. The questions range from mundane queries about dietary laws to more serious ones about the role of jihad in the religion.

Ms. Yaktubay says she hopes her background growing up as an immigrant and a Muslim will make her a better officer. She plans to go into military intelligence. "I think it will help me understand people better, particularly their cultural differences and their background," she says.

Initially Ms. Yaktubay had her doubts about Sgt. Jolley, a broad-shouldered infantry soldier from western Pennsylvania. "We all expected him to be meaner and really push us," she says. Although her grades are strong, Ms. Yaktubay struggled with the Army physical-fitness test. Sgt. Jolley skipped lunch and took extra time in the evenings to help her and other recruits cut their time in the 2-mile run. "He has become like a second dad to me," she says.

Jessica Jurj came to the U.S . from Romania at age 14 and attends John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York system in Manhattan. She struggled with her grades her freshman and sophomore years because she was working as much as 50 hours a week to support herself.

Today she is one of the leaders of the Fordham ROTC program in the Bronx. Her teacher, Lt. Col. Randy Powell, who runs the program, recalls how several years ago, he took the unit he was leading to an exercise with the Bulgarian military. "I was unprepared for the level of poverty," he says. "Having Jurj on my staff would have been a huge help."

The two remaining New York City programs -- at St. John's and Fordham -- are both fragile. Cadets often have long commutes involving buses and trains to reach them. Ms. Jurj says she has to get up at 4 a.m. to make it from Queens to her 6 a.m. mandatory Saturday ROTC class at Fordham. On days when she sleeps late she has to pay $40 in cab fare.

Without aggressive leadership, the programs can also quickly falter. In 2000, the ROTC program at Fordham University in the Bronx was producing about five officers a year and was on the verge of being shut down. The officers, who ran the program, rarely left the Fordham campus to recruit cadets.

Today it yields about 25 officers a year. A key player in the turnaround is Maj. Mike Hoblin, a Fordham ROTC grad and native New Yorker who was assigned to the program at its low ebb. Shortly after he arrived, Maj. Hoblin began offering ROTC classes at Fordham's campus in Lincoln Center, easing the commute for students who attend colleges in Manhattan, such as Columbia and New York University. Today the Fordham program has nine cadets from NYU, up from none in 2000.

But Maj. Hoblin also looked beyond the elite campuses. He focused attention on John Jay and City College of New York, two of some 20 schools in the 200,000-student CUNY system. At the time the CUNY system was producing virtually no ROTC candidates. He started attending career days and built relationships with professors and administrators who had connections to the military. Today, about 25% of the 112 cadets attending the ROTC program based at Fordham are from CUNY schools.

Even as he was expanding the Fordham program, Maj. Hoblin says he was struck by the missed opportunities in New York, particularly on the immigrant-heavy CUNY campuses, where there is no ROTC presence. "I have always found that first-generation immigrants in New York City are eager to serve," he says.

Click to read on WSJ >>

Professors Analyze Iraq War

Panelists Clash on Future of Country
By Zack Hoopes

Panelists expressed contrasting views on the future of Iraq on Wednesday night at an event hosted by Columbia Political Union, Columbia University Veterans Association, and the CU chapter of Foundation for Defense of Democracies.Professors Richard Betts and Robert Jervis of the political science department at Columbia emphasized the negative effects of American involvement, while Professor Joseph Skelly of the history department at Mount St. Vincent's College explored the possibility of positive future developments. Click here to read more >>