WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK THAT HARVARD PRODUCED SO MANY MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS?
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The university celebrates its history of valor.
By WILLIAM MCGURN
Most Americans would not be surprised to learn that Harvard is our nation’s oldest institution of higher learning, that it boasts the largest endowment, and that it has produced more U.S. presidents than any other university.
Most Americans, however, might be hard-pressed to guess another Harvard distinction: the highest number of Medal of Honor recipients outside the service academies.
The bar for our highest military award is high: a recipient must distinguish himself by “gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” Since the medal’s establishment during the Civil War, 10 Harvard men have received it. And next Wednesday at 11 a.m., these 10 will be honored with a plaque to be placed in the sanctuary of the university’s Memorial Church.
“Even those of us who have served were surprised to find so many Medal of Honor recipients,” says Thomas Reardon ’68, who heads the Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization that is raising the money to pay for the plaque. “Many more would be surprised to know that today there are about 150 military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan now studying on the Harvard campus. With this Veteran’s Day ceremony, we honor their service as well.”
The ceremony comes at a timely moment. Over the past eight years of war, six Americans have been awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery they have shown in battle in Afghanistan or Iraq. All six died in the actions that earned them this award. Yet notwithstanding the prominence and rarity of the honor, we live in an age when few of our leading papers—I am happy to report The Wall Street Journal an exception—ever deem these medals worthy of front-page attention.
Harvard’s prominence among Medal of Honor recipients is a recent discovery. It grew out of a reference by a speaker during a 2005 commissioning ceremony. The reference intrigued Paul Mawn ’63, a retired Navy captain. With a little research, he unearthed the names of all 10—the most of any university outside the United States Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Altogether the Harvard list shows eight Army soldiers and two Marines. It includes the father-and-son recipients Teddy Roosevelt (for San Juan Hill) and Teddy Roosevelt II (for D-Day). Others range from the Army’s Leonard Wood, who was awarded the medal for carrying dispatches through Apache territory in the 1880s, to Marine Sherrod Skinner, who threw himself on a grenade in October 1952 during the Korean War, saving the lives of two comrades.
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Harvard Yard
Recognizing the valor of alumni like these men might seem easy. At many college campuses these days, however, questions about what history to honor and how to honor it often come wrapped in current controversies. It’s no different at Harvard, where the ceremony for soldiers and Marines past inevitably draws comparisons to Harvard’s modern relationship with a United States military that defends the freedoms which make the university’s work possible.
In particular, this means the Reserve Officer Training Corps. ROTC was chucked off campus at the height of the Vietnam War and remains officially unrecognized today.
The university says the 1993 law that prevents openly gay men and women from serving in the military conflicts with its own code. But some of the university’s alumni, including Mr. Mawn, worry that the effect is felt far beyond ROTC, and puts Harvard in danger of forgetting its long and storied tradition of military service.
“For many members of the Harvard community, the medals of honor awarded 10 of our own probably seem as distant and foreign as reports of the Roman legions,” says Mr. Mawn, who is the chairman of Advocates for Harvard ROTC, a co-sponsor of next Wednesday’s event. “By honoring these people, we hope to bring their stories to life, to awaken awareness for the long Crimson line of service, and to inspire a new generation of Harvard students to answer the call.”
So far, Harvard President Drew Faust has not called for official recognition for ROTC. But Mr. Mawn says she keeps her door open to his group. And he points out that President Faust has spoken at the last two commissioning ceremonies—and will be speaking at next Wednesday’s Medal of Honor ceremonies along with the Chief of Staff for the United States Army, Gen. George Casey.
For more than 12 generations, Harvard has been well represented in the uniform of our nation. Let us commend the school for the decision to recognize those members of its family who have earned our nation’s highest honor in this service. And let us hope for the day the university finds it within itself to recognize those Harvard men and women who, inspired by this example, now step forward to follow these heroes into that long Crimson line.
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