Roundtable Discussion with Phil Klay and Dartmouth Veterans

hello i'm steve swain the director of the montgomery fellows program and a professor of music at dartmouth college on our montgomery website you can see the names and photos of the more than 250 women and men that the program has brought to campus since the program's beginning in the late 1970s author phil cly was slated to be our 257th resident fellow this summer holding court from the montgomery house on auckland pond and exemplifying the tag line on our website about bringing exceptional people to an exceptional place given that phil is a dartmouth alumnus he already knows that dartmouth is indeed an exceptional place to lay his own claim to being exceptional phil agreed to undertake with us something we had never tried before a virtual residency rather than deliver a single public address phil engaged in conversations with different members of the dartmouth community i encourage you to join the many people who have already gone to phil's montgomery web page and taken in the wisdom humor and humanity that phil and his interlocutors have offered in their musings tonight's roundtable will also find its way to that page so others can participate in what we are all about to experience in real time before i turn things over to phil i could give you some ideas about how our time together will proceed we have assembled a panel of dartmouth student and alumni veterans to join phil in a discussion that phil will moderate the panelists and i expect that their remarks will generate questions that you might like them to address i invite you to submit those questions by using the q a button at the bottom of your zoom screen phil and i will be monitoring those questions and we will try to answer as many as possible both during the roundtable itself and then in the open q a that will begin around seven o'clock at that time i'll return and direct your questions that haven't been answered to the various members of the panel unlike other zoom events that you may have attended where people raise their zoom hands or communicate being the chat function you should know that chat has been disabled for attendees and i will not be calling on persons who raised their zoom hands so again please feel free to direct your questions to phil and the other panelists by using the q a button at the bottom of your zoom window lastly as we wind up this webinar after seven i will post a link to our round table reception which will take place in another zoom room during the reception you will have an opportunity to talk to phil and the panelists as well as to catch up with other friends who are in attendance i believe that takes care of tonight's ground rules having done that captain phil cly the floor is yours thank you so much thanks to um those of us who are joining in and especially thanks to my fellow uh panelists tonight this is very exciting to me uh dartmouth was uh really important uh informative for me as a person as a writer uh it's where i made uh met my wife uh it's i met some of the most important people uh mentors um in my intellectual life uh it's also where i made a series of dubious decisions uh deciding to uh uh start uh start up using uh doing rugby uh boxing and then ultimately joining the marine corps um and uh so i have a a a great uh group of dartmouth veterans who are going to introduce themselves very shortly so i'll just say i'm phil cly i'm a dartmouth 05 and a former marine public affairs officer and uh we're we're gonna go in in order of class year so the next one is is uh nathan nathan you want to introduce yourself thank you so much uh phil and welcome to all those who are joining uh this this great program from from home my name is nathan brewski i'm a dartmouth 10 from 2010 until 2015 i served in the navy as an an intelligence officer doing deployments from east asia to central america uh since getting out i now run a small business in upstate new york where i have the extreme pleasure of serving my neighbors as their elected county legislator i'm very excited to be here diane good evening my name is diane camerota i'm part of the dartmouth class of 2021 finishing up my major in classical studies i was a member of the new hampshire army national guard and served as a flight medic a non-rated air proof flight instructor and finally finished my career is the state air medical nco phil thank you for having me i'm looking forward to our conversation and i just realized that i am the one who screwed up the order skipping skipping over uh kate and brad so kate you graduated from dartmouth earlier thanks phil um hi i'm kate i'm class of 2013. after graduating i joined the marine corps as a logistics officer and served until 2017 and then served in the reserves for two more years as a civil affairs officer and public affairs so lots of affairs in there and i'm currently studying fiction writing at columbia university now fred thanks all um hi i'm brad carney and i served in the army until december 2015. uh when i got out i went to dartmouth i'm in the dartmouth 20 and i studied philosophy and then i am taking the lsat right now and planning on going to law school in fall 2021. and then finally we have colson you want to introduce yourself absolutely my name is coulson i'm a 22 at dartmouth i served in the air force from 2011 to 2017 i joined right out of high school i was security forces stationed in turkey and england a little bit of brief deployment in qatar and then found my way back to my home state of california um at dartmouth i'm i'm studying government fantastic and uh nathan you you you also uh studied uh in government right and and and and have a real world uh practical uh influence in government right now so i wondered if there was a connection and you felt there was a connection or a through line between the sorts of values that you learned at dartmouth um the things that you learned in the service and what it held you to go into the service and also what you're currently doing right now yeah um that's a a great question you know one thing that i i think the the quotes that you really see that make up the the tapestry of uh you know of dartmouth myth there's one by uh john dickey and he was challenging i think it's a class of 1954 to go make the world's problems their problems and you know i i took this ad quite seriously i felt like i was very very lucky to have gone to dartmouth um and while i was there i had a lot of my my friends had come to dartmouth from from foreign countries and i really saw how how hard they had worked to get here and then when graduation came a lot of them you know weren't allowed to stay and meanwhile you know i i got my citizenship by this random lottery birthright but i happened to be born in this country at this time and i think the the combination that really uh weighed on me that to be the the beneficiary of so many gifts and also looking for the right way to pay them forward and so i i really saw this as a chance to kind of earn my my citizenship i think a lot of dartmouth um the the experience that i saw uh was about people thinking about much more than than just themselves and that's very much what the curriculum was like in the the gov department was thinking about systems and how how how can you make a difference and at that time uh you know we we were in a war and you really couldn't feel on campus but i felt that by raising my hand and signing up i could kind of earn the citizenship and if not pay back a lot of the gifts that i have been given at least try to be be be worthy of them that i would at least have done something with them and i think that's kind of stayed with me uh is it with with me coming home i think people are shocked to fully understand how much of their lived experience is governed at that local level that we are all naturally drawn to to to federal topics and when that attention is is raised up a lot of stuff can happen at the local level uh that that that that you'll miss um and so coming home you know i spent my entire career going around the world making other countries safe uh rebuilding other countries when i got home i realized that there's a mission to be continued here and uh so that's why i you know put my name up and i ran a campaign a probably you know it's uh it's definitely a lot of hard work that goes in even when it's a very small raise um and that i guess what that lets me do is even though now that you know i'm i'm i'm working in in business i can still have that same the same impact that really drew me into it into the armed forces through my service at the the county level that's great i i i often feel like that uh people lose sight of that local level the importance of it um because it's so easy to get drawn into national politics and one thing that i find is people will look at what's happening in national politics and become sort of cynical or disaffected or feel as though there's not a lot you can do and i always tell them like whatever the issue is that you really care about they're probably organizations that are doing making real impact on people's lives in some way related to that issue right now um uh and you just need to sort of you know go out find those folks and put your shoulders to the wheel now i wanted to ask colson so you're you're you're current student you um you were the military first and i wondered if you uh you know what what your feeling was uh in terms of the relationship between your time and service uh and what that instilled in you and what you feel like um you felt and what you were getting coming to dartmouth yeah absolutely so um i think my my time in service obviously taught me the uh the importance of like duty and discipline um i think it it gave me an opportunity to be in an incredibly diverse environment which prepared me for the collegiate experience um and then it it also introduced me to college uh strangely enough i i think a higher education is not always supported in all the branches but in the air force we are uh encouraged to to pursue our higher education and i uh i was going up for a promotion uh first for senior airman and there's this program called below the zone and i initially just wanted to be competitive for that program so i enrolled in my first college courses when i was stationed in turkey um i took philosophy as my first course actually which coming right out of boot camp in tech school was a it was an interesting experience to have to think for myself for the first time as compared to you know following strict orders but it was a good introduction into college and the liberal arts uh ideology and uh yeah i i just i fell in love with with school from that point on i think uh you know post high school being sort of my own man in the military um the military was a way for me to sort of gain my independence in a way and uh yeah the military encouraged me initially to go to college and and then gave me the opportunity to utilize my gi bill when i separated and so that's how i found my way to dartmouth that's great and diane what about yourself in terms of that that that transition what it what it felt like my experience is a little bit different i didn't enlist immediately out of high school i actually started to go to bloomsburg university of pennsylvania with a scholarship in the senior rotc program however i learned that i wouldn't be able to take the option of national guard at that time which is what i wanted so i turned on the scholarship and came home tried going to school outside of that and learned that college is expensive so i went and spoke to a national guard recruiter and um i've been in school while doing while serving at the same time and it's it's been unique and it's experience and balancing of time which is where i felt at community college was uh incredibly beneficial for me um and the national guard has a unique program where they have the federal tuition assistance and then there's also federal tuition waiver in addition to the gi bill now i have to play twice and i'm at about 90 for gi bill which i'm using now but the national guard allowed me to finish my associate's degrees and transfer to dartmouth college before ever having to touch that and what i think the army has really helped me with is one my writing skills improve significantly which i think is kind of interesting when you take a look at a memorandum for record but more so in terms of being able to use an assertive voice or an active voice whereas before i was a very passive writer in addition to that time management organization skills and just confidence in myself i i grew up with the national guard and through that i kind of prepared myself for stepping through the doors of dartmouth college that's really funny what you say about the the uh how it changed your writing style you know i think of you know uh ulysses s grant the the the voice the sort of no-nonsense authoritative um somewhat steely but not lurid voice that he uses in the memoirs it wasn't just it's not just that his memoirs were uh you know a great book but they're actually tremendously influential to american letters right so people like gertrude stein and hemingway right or um uh are influenced by uh by by a style that comes straight out of the military so it's uh uh it's funny that you found the same thing yeah phil actually i i started reading this i think because when we talked last time you had mentioned it and you're exactly correct it's just the the economy of words that grant has like how he's able to describe an incredibly complex battle in a few lines like that's something that i i took away and that makes the book great not the action right right right right um and and um you know one of the things that i was thinking of that's really just i think probably different maybe from uh maybe maybe you and me nathan had more of this experience but you know when i was at dartmouth the war was such a topic of discussion at dartmouth and it feels as though even though the wars continue that sense has faded from public view and i wonder for some of the folks here um maybe you could answer this brad what it is you know what what your experience being a student veteran is right now how people relate to you and and and whether they actually relate that to the national conversation or not yeah i think it's actually just completely removed from so like your status as a veteran is completely removed from any type of war or anything like that right because uh people don't even realize it's still going on or maybe they do but it's just not a topic of conversation it's not an active um you know thing it's like more like especially i was you know on dartmouth campus from 2016 to 2020 so just a lot of social justice things and and things like that and so um you know when people came to know me it was just as a veteran what did you do in the military and then you know did you deploy did you do this stuff but like again just kind of very far removed from the the war effort and um uh so there there's not that that necessarily like um they're not drawing you into political discussions as a as a representative of like the warrior class of america right yeah no it you know it's completely removed it was like besides your own personal experience inside you know deployed or something like that it almost is like an individual nugget of information and very far removed from oh you're part of the system you're part of you know there was i imagine maybe in 20 or like 2006 2007 maybe that was a huge thing you're part of the system but you know 2015 2016 2017 it's it's like oh you did that thing that we used to do that war thing huh okay interesting yeah now do you do you like it like that or uh would you prefer the broader public conversation or or well i never got canceled i never got canceled i was happy with it because it's like oh i'm not even part of that i don't know what that is um you know and i never had to engage in that like bigger discussion i'm not saying that's necessarily good but i you know i am saying it's like well especially nowadays like i always wanted to be more i was aware of my surroundings at dartmouth and so you know outside of maybe a gov class where it's like i'm very happy to talk about these kind of national um topics about you know defensor or what we ought to be doing overseas i was actually happy to kind of have it removed from my person out you know outside of class but inside of class for sure you know go ahead yeah kate i uh um you you are uh both a marine and a writer uh which is two very good things in my book um and i feel like that uh sorry the rest of you guys it's okay uh um that sense of the kind of even whether we're at war not and the the public perception of what it is to be a vet is very much shaped by a lot of the cultural myths is that something that that's around service that's around our discussion of war is that something that you're you're tackling in your own writing and also is that you know how is that um something that you sort of navigate personally right now yeah i think i think the concept of writing about um the military and war is it's really complicated and i think it's definitely something i'm tackling in my own writing um because i think largely what kind of gets digested by you know the american public it's it tends to skew you know um male cisgender heterosexual uh and white and and that's kind of a reality of of how the military writ large is often portrayed and that's the everyone's military experience is so different and and i think being able to use writing as a tool to kind of convey the nuance and convey those differences and and really just the inherent complications of um how diverse the experience can be for people um is really important and definitely something that i'm exploring yeah um and it can be there's that diversity that you experience in the car i mean one of the things um that i always think about is just the the range of of people that i met while i was in the service but also the range of types of experience uh that people have and one of the things i think coulson you had brought this up when i was talking with you earlier about just uh one of those dividing lines is a sort of generational dividing line between those who even remember 911 uh as an originating point in these wars uh and those who don't um and what it feels like to be sort of straddling that line um is it is that something that you've actually sort of navigated in at dartmouth yeah absolutely um so you know i've i've come across uh people in my class who've said oh 911 is one of those things that we just use as an excuse to justify all these things and it was so long ago and it's because they don't really remember it because they were either too young or they weren't born yet um but i think you know for most americans who um who remember that day had a large impact on them and they saw how the world sort of shifted um in the aftermath of 911 and so personally i was around eight years old and so i wasn't old enough to have totally nuanced understanding especially with all the you know various international players in the aftermath of 9 11 in america's response but i certainly knew that it had impacted our nation um and it can be difficult to connect with people at school who um who just weren't old enough to know what was happening during that time and how formative it was um diane you're in uh a war stories class uh right now and uh with roberta stewart uh which had the privilege of sitting in on the other day and i was wondering in terms of that diversity of perspectives that we were talking about if there are things that that you think are missing from the cultural conversation or that could be better explored or that you're particularly enjoying sort of uh finding a new through through through other work uh so the war stories class actually is designed to explore all of those different perspectives and take a look at what elements of war stories seem to transcend through time and we started off with one of homer's epics the the odyssey and it's a really interesting class because the majority of the students are not veterans but they and we even have a few students who have never known a veteran their entire life so this was an eye-opening experience and what i really appreciate about this um about reading these different stories together including a few of your own is what i take away as a veteran from your stories and what someone who doesn't have the experiences of being at war get out of it and in some cases i feel like what they see is a richer picture than what i see uh especially because i am in some cases a little emotionally charged there are some elements to stories that are too close to the heart at that point or i just don't have words for and uh i've enjoyed how other students kind of bring forth or find words for me or in a way kind of provide me with the words that i didn't realize i could use to describe a particular experience oh that's fantastic can you back off that yeah go for it so um what diane said and and coulson said like when talking about 911 one of the things like i'm a philosophy major i you know and dartmouth is very analytic philosophy very analytic uh philosophy heavy and so i'm very abstract you know i love working in the abstract i don't like i don't want to tell any personal stories and the one difference between like the one thing i've seen where it's like trying to talk about 9 11. it's like i almost cannot talk about it but and i've never would have thought i was that type of person because it brings out so much it's just like it's so deep right it's such an emotionally deep time and point where it changed entire united states and so you know what kind of diane was saying it's like oh i just can't even talk you know i don't have the words to kind of express what i'm i'm feeling that it showed me like there is there are some things about you know this war um you know like everything surrounding it where it's it's you can't just abstract everything it does something will touch you and it's just so deep and meaningful and it's like wow all these other people just kind of don't understand it it's crazy can i piggyback off of that yeah um in addition the the power of sharing these uh narratives is the uh the different methods in which a story can be told sometimes it's direct in gruesome we have read stories where it takes you into the mind of someone who has you know tried to work their way through their own guilt or their own grief and then in addition it's just taking elements of nature or poetry as a means to not necessarily tell the story but show the story and in in an effort i think to kind of bridge the gap between the um the military service member and the civilian side because there's a very large gap i think of understanding and literature is a wonderful way to try to bridge that gap yeah and what's happening at dartmouth with with current students that's great um kate i i i wondered if you know the various things that are uh that they're bringing up here you know if there are particular works that resonate with you or particular things that you feel um need to be expressed or haven't been expressed yet and if that sort of bridging function is is the way that you see the role of what you're doing um i think for sure you know thinking of it thinking of maybe writing about the military as a bridging function is um super important and i think just not necessarily specific works but specific experiences maybe of either myself or my marines you know there's such a broad spectrum of of of what could be talked about you know you could you could talk about training you could talk about um going to the rifle range or you could talk about you know cockroaches in a case ban or a you know a tent um red pens uh editing letters of instruction there are so many different aspects to um what i think makes up the totality of one's experience and and trying to to put all those things in the same container i think can serve as you know that kind of that bridging mechanism um but i think just lately i've been trying to read um read more widely and and explore books that um maybe deal with war indirectly and um i think that's another way of kind of diving into um you know the historical timeline of of the wars and seeing how they're they're impacting not just military service members but maybe their families their friends um passage of time just through you know even even storefronts and that kind of thing so i i think bringing all of that together can can really end up acting as a shaping function for sure yeah yeah some of my favorite sort of you know when i think of war stories um you think some of my favorites or the ones have been really productive to me are like stories like you know mavis gallant uh where you're seeing you know world war ii that this woman is at a running a hotel um or uh beer in the snooker club just this egyptian novel about these basic like like hipsters during the suez crisis but um yeah that's great now one of what are the really seminal you know war stories like all quiet on the western front and then there's all these kind of world war ii narratives there's a ken burns civil war documented all kind of these seminal works and uh you know they all kind of speak to a certain narrative that they have at the time in the civil war being this fight of good and evil you see world war two having that well or one is a bit more complicated i think today it's it's really tough and one thing that i kind of got from your book is like it's kind of tough to make sense like what are we are we really fighting you know for uh in part because a lot of the work that gets done gets reversed later on you know you're we're fighting wars on behalf of like other uh people and uh you know the sometimes the the governments that you're working you know to prop up don't always live up to the values that they they say that they have you know sometimes as as time goes on just like the the practical effects of uh you know of politics come in and i think that that's always been one thing that uh you know i've i've seen in the more modern veterans that uh you know in world war ii it was a a relatively brief you know war from our side just a four-year war uh a stupendous victory with a definite day that it ended uh incredible narratives of good versus evil and a rededication to like educating the people that had gone through and and done this service and today it's like long drawn out you know we've pulled out of a rock like how many times now and yeah there's still people there you know it's uh so there's never an end date and when people come home you know there's the thank you for your service stuff and there's the honor flights you see but it really they're kind of creeping back into a nation that never really paused never really stopped while they were were gone and i think that's uh that's kind of weird like the weird tragedy at this moment is like what you know what are the themes that we're gonna see coming out of the the books in 20 years from now that can look back on this this moment you know there's like brad's point there's this really intense crucible that all these children go through as they witness 9 11 live on television and then they channel those energies at least into i think uh the the centcom environment the the middle east is a much more complicated narrative as to what's going on there and it you know it really hasn't uh we we never got that great finish line you you violated the no acronyms rule central command yeah um yeah by the way it's funny you mentioned you know 911 popping up again i didn't watch it on tv because i was on my dimensions of dartmouth trip so i was in i was out on the um the appalachian trail and we kept running into people who would say oh somebody flew planes into the world trade center we thought that they were screwing with us you know because we were out away from civilization and then uh eventually we realized that no this was this is actually had happened um and so then we had to hike back to civilization so i didn't have that experience that i think you know even though i'm i'm from new york um you know my uh parents were working in in manhattan at the time uh i didn't have that experience that people all over the country did of being sort of glued to their television wondering what was happening seeing this terrible thing it was something that that um i heard about and then you know only later when i came home and went to the site um you know was sort of had that i think this visceral reaction uh that other people had had experiencing it but you know one thing that i you know i wonder so one of the things that you did um you went back into public service and we were talking about sort of stories and art as a means of sort of bridging uh between uh you know sort of civilians and the military another thing i'm thinking about is in relation to what you're saying about how you know the wars don't end uh and the thing about a friend of mine the writer and former marine eliot ackermann talking about how in these wars you have to make your own separate piece right because you just sort of have to you know after you know you did a bunch of deployments then just saying okay you know now i'm done right the war is not done but i am and um and i'm thinking about another friend of mine who felt that his service wasn't completely come back and worked in the parks department right and sort of continued serving but serving at home right and serving alongside fellow americans right still sort of bound by a kind of common purpose but this time one of peace and i wonder if you felt that um sort of engaging in public service has fulfilled some of that that same sort of function of of you know drawing you back together with with your fellow countrymen that people talk about in terms of yeah um i i i think it is very powerful the idea that you know we shouldn't reserve all these virtues for war you know that we we have honor and heroism like it's a military thing it's because they're putting their their their bis on the line they should get the benefits and there's always quiet ways of doing service back home that i think are much more impactful even that that should be celebrated the challenge i think with with the public service is probably more uh tactical one in this environment is that even at the local level where i'm i'm lucky i have great colleagues and it's a pretty bipartisan chamber you know it uh i had a local law get passed on tuesday and it was 80 it was a 38 to one so like an overwhelmingly positive uh well there's a law that happened like tried and failed before but because you know we we built a coalition for it the challenge today though is like if you want to run for office if that's the vehicle by which you you want to keep serving you have to be like prepared that half of the public is going to actively hate you they're going to spend time out of their day hating you because of the party that you're in um and i mean there's a whole host of reasons why that's that's the case and i i see a lot of good people i think being chased out of public service and i don't blame them for a second um there is an incredible cost that uh comes on on you and your family i think i'm able to separate it um there's a great uh so ron heifetz is a leadership guru at harvard kennedy school you saw the story about um how he was uh talking with like uh the king of jordan so kind of name-dropping that he hangs out with these people but um i i believe that he was the king jordan that he had an assassination um an assassination attempt on him and ron was like you know what's uh like how how how did that make you feel the the people that you know that they're trying to kill you and what he was saying is that you know they weren't trying to kill me they were trying to kill the king and i just happened to be the king and i think that's that's how i approach it is like the same way that like i'm sure the guys that went to the middle east you know you're facing some pretty scary dudes they're not trying to kill philip fly they're trying to kill you know the people in their country they're trying to fight the other force you're not shooting them because of who they are it's because of like what they're doing and uh i think if you're able to in the unfortunate there's plenty of times i had to stand up for people and take a lot of heat but like that's what it took and the reason why they're attacking me is because i'm i'm the guy in charge the reason why bad guys don't like this is because we're we're the ones here if you care about it you should plow ahead and be able to say you know yeah they're saying not nice things about invest because i'm king like they're trying to they're they're trying to kill the king not trying to kill uh you i i wish there was a way i wish there was a uh i think a system where there's more of this camaraderie in in serving where uh it went beyond the politics which which is a zero-sum game and there was more of like uh you know a civilian conservation corps you know a modern equivalent of we're all gonna embark on this work together and it's gonna you know be a journey that we all go on together this time we all went out to war together we come home together and uh i've seen this idea bad around a lot and uh i think the times demand it and it's really unfortunate that we don't see it happening yeah so this actually relates to a question that we have from colonel matt putnam thank you uh uh for for uh tuning in for a question which is about um the sort of the the difficulty of seeing through the smoke of now and the state of the nation and he writes we uh about one of his best civilian leaders we both believe that military service is not the only form of valid service uh to our nation that we both served in the u.s army medical corps what are your thoughts related to service and increasing our individual awareness of others um and the uh i strongly believe in service and i think that it's unhealthy in our nation when we sort of we almost sort of defy military service as this sort of abstract thing sometimes um and yet you know our our job uh you know our primary duty is is uh service to the nation more generally right uh and i feel that it is uh it's it's very troubling when other forms of service are undervalued and i think it would be a really beneficial thing if we expanded opportunities for service uh and benefits and to attract people for different types of service i think that it would have good effects on um on us more broadly as citizens because it would you know give you the experience of being with people from from all walks of life in all different parts of the country uh i think that sort of by my pride and my nation my patriotism in my nation was increased through service even though i have you know i've written some pretty aggressive things about the wars that i served in and i wanted to throw that particular question also to colson because i think you you had spoken to me earlier about your feelings about uh adopt service um and opportunities for service in in in america more broadly yeah absolutely i i resonate with how you articulated the importance of service more broadly and just one point that all that i'll add is uh you know as somebody who enlisted in the military right out of high school i personally didn't have a whole lot of opportunities to go directly to college and so the military for me was really a pathway for social mobility and i think expanding our definition of service and as nathan mentioned creating a sort of 21st century civilian conservation court i mean there's certainly a lot of work to do here at home and i think particularly in these troubling economic times we can utilize some some keynesian economics in order to get people back to work and uh you know unite the country again and and advance opportunities for people after their service to uh to utilize uh something like something like the gi bill that will allow them to take the next step in their career so you'd like to see it both because you think it would be sort of healthy for us sort of civically but also for in terms of expanding opportunities and giving people more more sort of pathways in american life absolutely i think there are certainly educational access programs out there which i 100 support i just so happened to fall within a category in a rural part of california and a farming town sort of middle class had two two parents that didn't go to college but there there was nobody really targeting me personally telling me that i should go to college and so the military was that pathway for me and you know i had some uh you know i think part of joining the military as an enlisted person as well was seeing that there were people who came into the military and you guys can attest to this as those who were officers uh being in command having a managerial position flying planes being in charge of a nuclear reactor all of these things that require uh skills and a sort of higher level of aptitude and i always aspired to that level and so seeing that sort of like tiered system within the military made me realize that i needed to go and earn my degree in order to reach that level and i had some officers who were able to point me in the right direction and sort of steer me away from the for-profit colleges that maybe some of my my colleagues had been attracted to and just just offered me some advice that i didn't necessarily have in my local community or in my family yeah great does anybody else want to jump in on that question of sort of service more broadly yeah i do real quick i you know what's really interesting like this national conversation has been having been happening for a few years now i think what's that guy's name mike mike rowe he was like you know go to trade school and don't go to you know not everyone needs to go to college and one thing here it's like i mean sure you could go to trade school too but uh maybe you can't afford that or maybe you're just that's not what you want to do and it's like kind of what coulson is talking about these kind of pathways to allow lots of people to have a pathway to like see how they can move forward in their life and you know a kind of national service where where they can kind of do their time right in in whatever avenue and then kind of move forward it's like that would be that would be great and we get we have like everyone else said you know we have lots of things to do in the nation so there's no shortage of work i don't think i my friends in in tel aviv and they were telling me how like the conversations there don't begin with when you go to college i was like what did you do when you served and there's real meritocracy in the their their their armed forces such that like if you're in a certain if you're in their their their their crypto division you know that's like going to goldman sachs you know that's your goal stamp on the resume that that changes the arc of your life uh and yeah i i think to brad's point it's it's uh it's tragic that uh yeah i think the military is excellent at like the mobility to the middle class like it's that mobility um but we don't see it like all the way up and down uh all the way up and down in terms of what do you mean it's like i i don't think it it basically what the military i think has been really good at doing is it's it's good at giving access to education at kind of a base level increasingly through working gym right at like the top levels um though i i i would imagine a lot of the kids that you know dartmouth can recruit as as seen here they're all really smart kids you know they're they're probably very very far on on on their own um the veterans that i went to harvard business school with i mean looking around all of them they're probably gonna get there anyways you know they were you know they all went to a big brown or harvard i don't you don't see that like person who uh you know really didn't come from very much but through brute force of their work ethic and their intelligence which was recognized by military that could put them to you solving some important problem you don't see those those people um i think get all the way like up to the the the top of the strata and i think that's that's kind of one of the limits like why not why don't we create a world in which again like you have a job interview the very first question is like what was your service and what was your service more broadly not necessarily a military service but what did you do for the country more broadly right um and relating it to something that is sort of equally open to everyone right and it's you know it it's great we'd also stratify you know because if you if you perform well it's not like your service was more you know more more challenging but it's the fact that like you came in you took and and aptitude i mean we figured we took about this prior but the the military i find is like a it's a very lefty place you know we have radical paid transparency you know benchmark pay grades uh not a lot of of of of income inequality like zero homelessness on base free healthcare free healthcare for everybody you know the gender discrimination piece when it comes to pay is like you know i'm crystal happens but it's you know it's a heck of a better system for that and a lot of the jobs you get they're based on competitive tests you know if you do well on a test that that's how you get a a higher rank as i get selected for for for flight school and so there really is a pretty egalitarian method for separating people you know based on their you know not based on where they were born and and and who their parents were but based on what they can really do um and i think military used it for great effects and i would love to see that kind of continue outside of uh the armed forces as opposed to i think like treating service as like oh that's a nice thing like you're a good person and then welcome back to the real world it's not really that's you know that's a a separate space the um yeah i think the the the military as socialist utopia in right in some ways there are other ways in which the military has uh certainly got its its share of of problems and particular types of discrimination i think but um i do i do very much like the idea of thinking about sort of institutions that are much more accessible um and allowing people to to succeed any does anybody else want to want to jump in on on on the question of service i guess i have something what really comes to mind is because i was looking at colonel platinum's question again relating service and increasing individual awareness of others and i think that can go across branches as well as civilian sector military sector and how we can help each other and i think in just service itself builds community and in building community there's an understanding of how what your specific line of work does is beneficial to to another as an example in deployments there's um there's cross-service interaction quite a bit i was in helmand province as a desktop unit and our overwatch was the second marine airwing and i got to get a better understanding of what marines have to do with in comparison to what i personally have to work with and on stateside the new hampshire army national guard also works with the state in terms of search and rescue up in the mountains so there's there is these there are these opportunities for for overlap and understanding and i think broadening beyond um just those small sectors could be really beneficial and build a greater community and in many cases bridge that gap of not really knowing um you know what service members have to do with and starting a new dialogue i think is what that would be able to create for us and i guess um there's a final question i see that uh steve has put in about how the arc of the panelist's life was changed from attending dartmouth if at all um and uh i get uh i guess uh i suppose i can i can start that off i mean i already mentioned it um met my wife met important uh intellectual uh mentors people who who uh some some people who i still keep in touch with my my thesis advisor tom slays is now a good friend um and i think that uh in terms of what i was trying to learn to do at dartmouth uh which was right about things that i felt were really important um in trying to communicate those things to other people um and they often were things that are related to i think american civic life um that was i was a public affairs officer in the military so that was directly related uh and then it's essentially the same thing that i do now though in a different form and so it was a matter of building up the skills to be able to try and do that to the maximum effectiveness as well as sort of the people around me who supported me and i think that the community that i found was was deeply important as far as that go anybody else want to answer that question we've got about five minutes left so honestly it it changed my entire life like and and i don't mean in a in a minor way i you know i was coming from the army very much you know i've been i was only on the line i've never been not on the line in the line just means like in an infantry unit all male like that environment for multiple years and so and i started to read philosophy as i was getting closer to getting out and i thought i was doing philosophy and you know you get to dartmouth and you're like oh that's not what i was doing i don't know what i was doing but it was not philosophy but just realizing or given the ability to think about problems and and it's not i was given the ability it's just more that i was shaped in a way that made those types of um conversations i wanted to have very constructive and so i could you know get information from articles i could understand how to read court cases it's just it allows access it allowed me access to just it seems like an endless amount of information to where i can digest it now and it's it's probably it's not something i can i could probably ever pay back because it seems like it'll be valuable for the rest of my life that's great i'll jump in after brad and sort of uh yeah i i agree uh the the analytical skills that um that dartmouth allows you to develop are just absolutely unmatched i think uh you know going off this theme of service ever since i got to dartmouth i've had opportunities to to continue serving like initially through uh an interest in what's happening with climate change and i got involved with the sustainability community on campus and with the irving institute um and i was able to go to west virginia and learn more about the coal mining industry um and down to houston and along through to new orleans and go along the whole gulf coast to try and understand uh just our the the interplay between energy and society and all of the the various political um and environmental issues that that brings up um and then additionally the first summer that i had between my freshman and sophomore year i'm currently in my my second sophomore my second summer in my sophomore summer my first summer i was able to get an internship in in washington dc which was incredible i had never been there i worked for the u.s green building council and was uh generously supported by doosa's scholarship the dartmouth uniform service alumni association with which nathan started um and the winnie huang fund and uh additionally the the the same scholarship fund helped me uh come out to los angeles uh and continue service at that at that local level i worked for the for the la mayor's office of military and veterans affairs in the winter this last winter and so it has opened up so many doors for me that um i couldn't have even dreamt of prior to uh to coming to dartmouth so i'm eternally grateful i'll jump in um i think i'll answer this kind of in a in a way of how dartmouth kind of prepared me for serving in the military and then kind of life after but um you know it was certainly a huge opportunity to be able to go there undergraduate and i think what what it did was um it really teaches you how how to think i think and to relate to others and to kind of bring this full circle back to the pan uh one of the questions about like individual awareness for others i think um the intellectual discussions and you know non-intellectual discussions that you have at a place like dartmouth prepared me to be able to have that kind of empathy and understanding of you know my marines and and how to be able to relate to them even if we had different completely different backgrounds and life experiences so um i i think it you know it doesn't people can't always draw a straight line i think between um the liberal arts and and military service but um i i think you can absolutely make the case for it and and how just the humanities and thinking in general can prepare you for um you know on a fundamental level being able to relate and care for and lead humans so and and to pick up the the thread that that that kate started there and one of the i think the um the moments that uh i crystallized for me um my my path to go towards services there was some news documentary and there was a reporter embedded i think it was with a a marine corps unit and they were in afghanistan and some lance corporal he was the senior man on the scene and he was having to talk to this this village elder it's very clear that you know through the language barrier the customs barrier you're getting very frustrated and not being able to be understood by this old man with a a a red beard um and it was set up to me it's like you know all these thousands of miles away from washington like this corporal is our our state like he is the face of the government come all the way um you know there and i think there's a question who do we want to be there like who who who would would would be best served and i think you want someone who has had the benefits that dartmouth has to actually offer you know the the broad-based liberal um liberal education i think the ability through the d plan to be much more experimental in your your learning to to travel more by virtue of the 10-week courses where you only take three classes you know really go i think deeper into a subject and that you know as the world gets more complicated as the military has to take on a lot more responsibilities um you you want someone that has that that mental flexibility uh to kind of be out there and so whenever i go back to dartmouth and i kind of make the case it's like i want to know why you guys shouldn't join the armed forces you know here you are you're you're young and bright you you you want to to travel the world for the ones that care about foreign policy that they have that as well how else could they possibly use this degree to the maximum extent except to go into the armed forces and i think that dartmouth made me very prepared having not come from a a military family i've been really never thought about service until my my senior year i thought it'd be very natural great and anybody else want to jump in or should we hey i feel like this is kind of a difficult question for me especially since i came to dartmouth just last fall and i served before attending i really i feel like there's a lot that the military has given me to help me be successful at dartmouth and part of that is just was working as the state aeromedical nco where i worked with age groups from 17 all the way up to their 60s so i i came in with an open mind and i always i try my best to take a look at or listen to fresh perspectives especially from the younger generations um but what dartmouth has definitely given me is access to resources i i couldn't possibly have imagined that i'd be able to to use um as an example i was an organizer in the tedx at dartmouth although unfortunately we had to close down due to pandemic in addition to that i'm serving as an intern with the academic skills center where i get to help benefit first generation college students get prepared for school and being an advocate for academia or just being successful in college is very is is a passion of mine i'm also a first gen college student although i didn't consider myself one for a very long time um so i feel like the change for me has been subtle but that's only because i've been here for a very small amount of time i know there's a really roundabout way to answer your question but i'm really struggling to answer this one [Laughter] that's perfectly fair um well guys this has been uh a real thrill and real pleasure uh thank you so much for joining me thanks to everyone who is um uh listening in um and with that i think uh we will well you'll turn it over to me won't you i will turn it over to steve there you go all right because yeah well thank you all uh and and one of the things i don't think we necessarily got at the very top of this meeting well i mean we found out your names your your branch of service when you your year and stuff like that but where are you right now uh we kind of know where nathan is because he told us and uh and we we've been struggling with your clock in the background there phil because someone had to say it harry potter land or something like that that's a different time zone all together let's go around the room and help tell us where are you where are you anyone i guess i can start i'm in lebanon new hampshire all right i'm about an hour north of uh new york city what town i'm in i'm in bedford at my parents house is that bedford new york or i don't know it is bedford new york all right well wonderful nathan you're also in new york i am in albany uh new york so uh you know you go upstate and you keep going upstate you get to albany yeah right just before the mohawk comes in and phil you're in queens no i'm not in queens i'm in between actually uh nathan and kate i'm in ulster park right now uh missing yeah so and your parents live in a different time zone [Laughter] all right brad i know where you are but tell us where you are charleston south carolina all right and colson i think and yeah coulson yeah i'm in the mountains east of los angeles in a place called big bear lake oh my gosh as you know i think i told you i grew up in pasadena california so arrowhead and big bear yeah i know my point in that is to make two points actually uh number one uh thank you again phil for being able and willing to do this virtual residency because what it has meant is that we've been able to gather people from around the nation to participate with you in this way and the second thing i'd like to say is that one of the things that dartmouth seems to do extremely well is to weave alumni and students together into a tapestry uh that is a fairly solid one you know some of you have had experiences at different institutions uh dartmouth is almost insane uh maybe maybe it's like the military in that way where you get bonded into this environment and uh you know the granite of new hampshire is in your muscles and your brains and and for the fact that we have somebody from the class of 2005 and somebody from the class of 2022 and you're all sisters and brothers in the enterprise of the service that dartmouth has and i think this panel represents that in one big way and so i want to just thank you for that um are there any i you know my husband asked me if i had any questions i was going to ask you but i don't think i need to but is there are there any final things that you'd like to say to the folks out there you know and like i said this is recorded for all time so you can you can you know your final pitch about and it doesn't have to be about rah-rah dartmouth about um just service or you know thanking phil or whatever you'd like to do well i'd i'd just like to thank my fellow panelists i really enjoyed this and mxg came already just very very excited to see what uh what some of you guys are going to do next so that's great thank you for having us i enjoyed this uh i want to thank phil and everyone else um who participated with us but thank you phil for the book recommendation and my book is my book list is always long the backlog never ends but i am yours is kind of moved up to the forefront so i hope you like it you're so so with the whole times review but now that you met phil you're gonna actually get it you know um yeah i i i also want to thank uh all of our our panels today you know i think there's uh uh i'll i'll leave with the uh sebastian younger book war which i i i thought was a a great book the seminal question he asks is like you know why uh why is it that we we thank others for their service here when in i think countries of like true warriors like that that does make a lot of sense um i i think that all of us are kind of working towards uh a a world in which the things that we're doing are not going to be a really extraordinary thing that this is more of a common uh expectation that uh people can can go and do as part of a a rich and varied career and i think you see the fruits of of service by those that have gone uh and and done it and watched their their their their careers after and so if there's any dartmouth students that i think are are watching this and wondering how are they going to make the world's problems theirs i hope that they at least consider um serving uh because lord knows that we certainly need more darwin people to wear camouflage absolutely that's a great great point nathan uh i'd also like to thank the staff at the montgomery fellows program but with steve and ellen uh and and phil thank you so much for uh for directing this conversation and to the other panelists it's been it's been great um and i i just want to offer my appreciation for being invited on this panel there there are almost i think 30 undergraduate veterans just about on campus and there are a lot of folks doing a lot of great things so um i'd just like to offer my appreciation for that and for everyone who tuned in today to listen to our conversation thank you yeah thanks to uh steve and ellen and and to the fellow panelists has been awesome to be a part of and and to everyone tuning in thank you also and uh phil thank you so much for the conversation and um in in the continued endeavor to disprove marine stereotypes not being able to read and write um good to be here we do all our crafts drafts and cram don't we exactly well if if everyone's spoken um why don't i then wrap up and say thanks to all of you who participated in this round table and the other events that have comprised phil's residency a special thanks also go to daniel maxwell crosby our tech guru who kept everything moving behind the scenes and is recording this for us and ellen henderson the assistant director of the montgomery fellows program and the tightener of the nuts and bolts of our enterprise once again i invite you to go to phil's homepage or phil's page on the montgomery fellows program website for recordings of his previous conversations as part of his time with us and a recording of this roundtable will also be posted there next week phil and his family will be our guests at the montgomery house in the summer of 2021 where we will continue his residency face to face thank you and good night

Channel: Dartmouth

Views: 301

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: mSf6A_p1QFk

Length: 71min 47sec (4307 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020