Sunday, October 19, 2014

Young Harvard Goes to Washington?

At least three young alums are running for Congress, and one for Senate:

Ruben Gallego, AB'04, is running for a Congressional seat in Arizona as a Democrat.

Elise Stefanik, AB'06, is running for a Congressional seat in New York as a Republican.

Seth Moulton, AB'01, is running for a Congressional seat in Massachusetts as a Democrat.

Tom Cotton, AB'99, already a Congressman from Arkansas, is running for Senate as a Republican.

Pretty unusual group. Gallego and Moulton both served in the Marines, Cotton in the Army. Moulton was decorated for bravery, something he never mentioned and the Globe, apparently, turned up only while routinely checking his military records.

Are there others?

"Public service" is a term that tends to be used at Harvard to mean community service, Teach for America, and so on. With all the "Excellent Sheep" blather about the myopia and narcissism of Ivy League graduates, it's nice to see alums in their 20s and 30s serving in the armed forces and running for public office.

It's one of the stated purposes of our General Education program to "prepare students for civic engagement." It would be nice to the university signal to its students that it takes that seriously. How about an "I voted!" sticker on the lapel in some November 5 Gazette photo of Faust, Smith, or Khurana?

2 comments:

  1. Tempted to say `if there were more Ivy Leaguers in the Army the country we would be fighting in less wars'- but thats a bit to glib since in WW I and II there were many Ivy Leaguers. Perhaps we would be in better defined wars.

    But in any case, KUDOS to those four, and to anyone who does any sort of community service and puts their society above their own needs.

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    1. I heard an interesting statistic the other day. Of the 42 members of Harvard's two governing boards, exactly zero are military veterans. Not sure it's accurate, I heard that third hand.

      I wonder if any of them is like me, a former officer in the US Public Health Service -- during the Vietnam War we were referred to as the "Yellow Berets" because two years of service as a USPHS officer was equivalent to military service from the standpoint of fulfilling selective service [draft] requirements. Just a whole lot safer and cushier.

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