The Tufts Democrats will take on the military during their third annual Issues of the Future Symposium on Saturday.
The day-long event, which is cosponsored by the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) and the Peace and Justice Studies program, will focus on the "Challenges and Dilemmas of U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the 21st Century."
The symposium will feature four panels on topics relating to the military. The first one will serve as an introduction, and the other three will zero in on private military contractors, veterans and civil-military relationships in higher education.
Sophomore Will Ehrenfeld, the press secretary for the Tufts Democrats, said the event's sponsors decided to address the relationship between civilians and the military because the topic often slips under the radar on campus.
"At Tufts we feel insulated from the military." he said. "It is the kind of thing we should pay more attention to."
Tufts Democrats President Courtney Houston-Carter, a senior, agreed. "Every year we work with another student organization to put on a symposium ... to highlight an issue that's not given enough attention," he said.
"Hopefully we can spark some interest," he said. "What happens when the soldiers return home? What's happening in terms of the private military contractors?"
Saturday's panels will include prominent professors such as MIT's Harvey Sapolsky, who specializes in defense politics; the U.S. Naval War College's Mackubin Owens, who focuses on civil-military affairs; and Middlebury's Kateri Carmola, an expert on private military and security contractors.
The symposium will also feature remarks from the International Peace Operations Association's Director of Development Derek Wright. He will speak about responsible private military contracting.
According to junior Maya Karwande, the Dems' vice president, programming will also include a pre-weekend screening of the 2006 documentary "Hidden Wounds" tomorrow night in Pearson Hall. Students will be able to ask director Iris Adler about the film, which chronicles the lives of three Iraq War veterans from Massachusetts who returned with post-traumatic stress disorder.
"It is a really powerful documentary that introduces the challenges vets face when coming back," Karwande said. "It is the face of the war you usually don't see, and it is important to see."
Junior Jesse Sloman, a co-chair of ALLIES, agreed that the documentary will serve as an eye-opener. "Every time you watch a movie about this you are kind of galvanized into doing something," he said.
Sloman hopes that the panelists this weekend will have the same effect. He said that when he came to Tufts, he was shocked by the lack of knowledge students had about the military.
"I noticed a void on campus," he said. "I found it disturbing that we're in the middle of two serious conflicts and there's a real lack of understanding among the students."
He said he was thrilled when Karwande approached him and asked if ALLIES would be interested in cosponsoring the symposium with the Dems. But he stressed that ALLIES is not endorsing a particular viewpoint.
"We just want to debate something that isn't really debated," he said.
The first-ever symposium, which took place in 2005, covered energy and transportation, while last year's focused on the impacts of immigration and featured Simon Rosenberg (LA '85), the founder and president of the New Democrat Network, as the keynote speaker.
Sloman said this year's issue is of critical importance to our democracy.
"One of the tenets of our democracy is that civilians run the military. That's what separates us from a banana republic," he said. "[What] we are seeing now are things like the War in Iraq, where you have people who don't know enough about the military and just go along with the program. The vast majority of Tufts students are not going into the military, but it is important for us to understand some of the problems we are going to face as we move into the 21st century."
Beyond that, Karwande said it will help participants become informed voters.
"A big part of this is to take ownership of our party, so that we don't just vote on party lines but make informed decisions," she said.
Marc Raifman contributed reporting to this article.
