How the Academy Responded to International Politics: 1970-1991

From the Vietnam drafts of the 1970s, nuclear threat of the late ’80s, and Middle Eastern crisis of the early ’90s, international war of the late 20th century marked eras of the nation—and eras of Deerfield.

The Cold War began between the United States and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of WWII and reached its peak during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the ’60s, the closest nuclear threat came to turning into warfare. The Cold War continued until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, but throughout the ’70s, national attention shifted to the Vietnam War—a proxy war between North and South Vietnam.

Former Deerfield History and Religion Teacher Michael Cary saw the early-to-mid 1970s as a “distinctly anti-institutional period,” while anti-Vietnam war movements spread across American college campuses. He found that the student body’s attitude mirrored national interests and perspectives. At the time, he said, the Deerfield boys were “rowdy and rebellious.”

By 1976, military reputation had sunk. Former Deerfield English Teacher Mark Scandling, who served in the Army for four years on a chemical weapons base, described the fall in military pride after Vietnam, and the shame of wearing a military uniform.

The focus on the Cold War, then, was low, said Steve Carr Davis ’80, who came to Deerfield at the end of Vietnam. “The country was exhausted,” Mr. Cary said.

But after his election in 1981, Ronald Reagan’s presidency aimed to place the military back at the forefront of the United States and encouraged a strong pro-American ideology. “The mood changed on campus when the mood changed in the country, and that was with the election of President Reagan … he promised a new, more vital, more confident, and stronger America,” Mr. Cary said.

At Deerfield, Mr. Davis remembered discussion around current events, in particular the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, when 66 Americans were taken hostage at the United States Embassy in Iran. Every Thursday, the school would have an international news update, informed by newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. He added that the majority of the student body subscribed to paper newspapers, and the school also held a mock convention every four years in parallel to the national election. Classes were canceled for three days, and groups of students would represent the candidates of the party up for primary election. To stay informed, both the student body and the Academy had to actively integrate current events into conversation in and outside of the classroom.

In the late 1980s, nuclear threat hung over Deerfield and over the nation, Edward Harvey ’88 described. “It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived through it, but there was this sense that any day we were going to die from a nuclear war,” said Mr. Harvey, who currently works at a classified facility after spending 24 years in the Air Force. When he was at Deerfield, the Young Republicans club stood at the center of social dialogue, but he and other students also formed STOP, the Students and Teachers Organization to Prevent Nuclear War, and protested on Boston Common to advocate for the end of nuclear threat.

Mr. Harvey traveled to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1987 through a Deerfield travel program and spoke with Russian students. “What was eye opening for me was … realizing they [the Soviet students] didn’t want nuclear war either. And in America, we kind of thought the Soviets wanted to kill us,” he said, adding, “I think that cultural alienation … drove a lot of the animosity and the fear that existed between the two countries.”

The Cold War was coming to an end. In 1989, then-President Reagan met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík, Iceland. In the next year, the Soviet Union split into a series of independently-governed countries, ending the Cold War.

Reagan’s Americanism of the late ’80s spread into the early ’90s with the beginning of the first Gulf War. “The entire emphasis changed from a focus on the Soviet Union to a focus on the Middle East,” Mr. Cary said. The first Gulf War began with an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, leading to the United States’ bombing of Iraq in 1991.

At the time, the student body remained conservative, Mr. Scandling remembered, and for the most part, firmly in favor of President George H.W. Bush’s bombing of Iraq. “I was in Barton the first night when we were bombing Baghdad, and it was like a football game … boys were sitting in the lot in the common room, cheering as Wolf Blitzer was reporting from downtown Baghdad,” he said.

“The new point student viewpoint was distinctly pro-American; they thought that President George H.W. Bush had absolutely done the right thing,” Mr. Cary said. He added that students would chant “USA,” a cheer that originated in the Winter Olympic Games of 1980 against the Soviet hockey team, in the dining hall. Boys would dare each other to enlist and ask each other if they had the courage to fight, Mr. Scandling described. Soon, however, Scud missiles started to land in Aramco, Saudi Arabia, where a few students at the time were from. “That same space that had been full of tears two nights earlier … suddenly was solemn and quiet beyond belief, because the nature of the war became closer to home,” Mr. Scandling said.

As Mr. Cary described, the introduction of girls in 1989 brought moderation and diversity of perspective. The faculty, too, brought in a handful of guest speakers during the first Gulf War to provide an anti-war perspective, which riled up the student body. “The other side of the story is Iraq has missiles too, and some Americans might die,” Mr. Scandling said.

Through the Vietnam War and into the first Gulf War, the decision to fight remained at the forefront of many boys’ minds—and throughout Vietnam, in particular, the decision hung over Deerfield boys, and boys across the country. “Those were pretty serious conversations … the moral test that you would face as a young person at your age, 17 or 18,” Mr. Scandling said.

“Imagine the seniors at Deerfield having to make that choice now,” he added.