5-C Faculty Split Over Iraq War
By Jenny Mertz-Shea
News Associate

With America at war with Iraq, students are not the only ones voicing concerns. On both sides of the intervention debate, Claremont faculty are weighing in as well.

"I haven't spoken with a single faculty member that is in favor of going to war," asserted Scripps Politics Professor Thomas Kim. "But I have spoken with dozens opposed."

Kim and other like-minded colleagues recently joined together to organize Claremont Faculty for Peace and Justice. According to Kim, this particular group of professors has been working together since the fall. "It wasn't until about three weeks ago that we decided it made sense to organize formally," he explained.

"The role of an intellectual should be to question conceived truths," said History Professor Victor Silverman. "We're intellectual leaders, and if as intellectual leaders we don't help people figure out what's really going on, then what's the point of being a scholar?"

Silverman, himself, is firmly opposed. "I don't see that Iraq poses a significant immediate threat to the U.S.," he said.

Their goals include working towards "a positive vision of peace and justice" and "linking global struggles, including the current standoff on Iraq, to important sociopolitical issues in the United States," Kim said.

The group has organized film screenings and discussions about connections between Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. They are also planning events that will focus on US foreign policy toward North Korea and Guatemala.

Of course, he added, "that's not to say that pro-war faculty members don't exist at the Claremonts. But I don't know of any."

Actually, to find pro-war professors, one has only to walk across the street to Claremont McKenna College.

"I support attacking," said CMC Government Professor John Pitney. "I support the President." Pitney claims that if he is not stopped, "sooner rather than later," Saddam Hussein will reach a "critical mass" and will be capable of great harm.

Pitney's colleague Ward Elliott also adopts a pro-war stance. "It seems to me that Saddam Hussein is a very dangerous man," he said.

According to Elliott, many CMC Government professors are behind him on this. "I would say on the whole that most people in my department tend to support intervention," he claimed.

For the time being, however, Pitney and Elliott appear to be in the minority. In fact, they both acknowledged as much.

"Probably at the colleges on the whole, most faculty are on the other side," Pitney observed.

For his part, Elliott seemed to believe support for war is split along partisan lines, which explains why it's so hard to hear hawkish viewpoints on the other campuses. Pomona College, he pointed out, is not exactly a stronghold of Republicanism.

"I did a survey a couple years ago which indicated that as many as ten people on the Pomona faculty are Republicans," he said. But, he added, about five of those were coaches, and some of the others were math and science faculty.

If pro-war faculty do find their ideological camp somewhat lonely, they at least seem to have a sense of humor about it.

"I've been in the minority since graduate school," said Pitney. "This is not a new experience for me."

Are the anti-war leanings of Claremont professors merely symptomatic of larger trends in academia, then?

"I would suspect that faculty nationwide are slightly more against than for [the war]," said Silverman. "But that's just a gut feeling."

Kim attributed professorial naysaying to reason, not partisanship. "Academics by training are respectful of good arguments," he said. "Because the Bush administration ultimately failed to make a good argument for going to war now, it's hard for most professors to believe it was necessary to do so."

"In my opinion," said Kim, "the vast majority of faculty across the country do not feel that the case has been made to go to war, especially now."