This article by Friends House Moscow staff member Sergei Grushko originally appeared on the Web site quakers.ru. Translated and reposted here by permission.
"I feel bound to recommend that policy which will enable us to do positive good rather than merely to refrain from evil."
— John Nason, wartime president of Swarthmore College.
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| Soldiers and students sit on the steps of Swarthmore's Parrish Hall. Source. |
World War II presented a severe challenge for American colleges. But perhaps no group faced a more difficult dilemma than the institutions of higher education founded by Quakers. How could they reconcile a centuries-old witness to peace with the need to survive? Different colleges came up with different answers. And this experience gives rise to reflections on how the Quaker commitment to peace was maintained in the face of total militarization and war hysteria.
With the United States' entry into the war in December 1941, male students began leaving campuses en masse—some students enrolled in military service voluntarily, while others were conscripted. Private colleges, already struggling with funding—Quaker colleges among them—found themselves facing threats of closure.
The numbers speak for themselves. By the spring of 1943, only 296 students remained at Earlham College (the Quaker college in Indiana)—97 boys and 199 girls. The college had lost nearly 48% of its male students. By October of that year, the total enrollment had dropped to 267, of whom only 64 were men. At Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), during the same period, only 527 students were enrolled (down from 700 in 1940), 143 of whom were boys. The decline in male enrollment was catastrophic.
The school administrations were faced with the question of how to preserve their educational institutions. The U.S. government offered higher education a solution: participation in the V-12 program for training junior officers for the Navy, which would provide the colleges with a steady supply of military students as well as government funding. For Quaker colleges, this response was dangerously tempting.
The Quaker witness to peace was one of the cornerstones of the identity of these educational institutions. Swarthmore's founders believed that "the disposition to introduce military drill into the course of instruction in our public schools … is especially objectionable to Friends." The college's co-founder, Benjamin Hallowell, had himself been a conscientious objector.
However, by the 1940s, the Quaker identity of some colleges had weakened significantly. Swarthmore had officially given up its affiliation with the Society of Friends as early as 1909*, and by the start of the war, Quakers constituted a small minority among the student body. The number of actual conscientious objectors in the 1940s was minimal.
* For retired faculty to receive payments from the pension fund organized by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, colleges had to comply with its rules. The fund in its early years did not provide pensions to faculty from institutions "controlled or owned by religious organizations." This was primarily why Swarthmore had to end its formal Quaker affiliation.
Swarthmore President John Nason, himself a Quaker, chose a path that could be called ministry through presence. He reasoned that if the college didn't embrace the military, it might not survive as an institution. And if it disappeared, who would train the future peacekeepers, scientists, and doctors who would restore peace after the war? "I feel bound to recommend that policy which will enable us to do positive good rather than merely to refrain from evil," Nason declared.
Nason didn't see this as a contradiction to Quaker values. He sought to find new expression for these values in the changed circumstances. He ensured that the military presence on campus didn't turn the college into a barracks. And he succeeded. By the end of 1943, Swarthmore had 297 naval officers, 234 female students, and 155 civilian men enrolled. In addition, 49 Chinese naval officers arrived to study English. Each of them, in addition to military disciplines, took a full academic course. It was during these years that Swarthmore took two important steps toward social justice. It admitted its first African-American students, Dorothea Kopczynski and Gloria Clement. And it accepted Japanese-American students, who had been interned in camps by the government. Nason personally chaired the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council. The college used the military presence to protect its existence while remaining a place that valued human dignity.
Earlham College took a different path. In 1942, its president, William Dennis, declared to Indiana Yearly Meeting, "A Quaker college as such should not participate directly in the war effort…." And he remained true to his word. Military personnel were not allowed on campus. But the search for ways to collaborate with the government continued. Dennis proposed establishing a military police training unit on campus. He envisioned the military police not as an offensive force, but as a structure for maintaining order. However, the board of trustees rejected this proposal, deeming it incompatible with Quaker principles. This episode illustrates how even within a single Quaker community, there can be different understandings of the line between unacceptable compromise and acceptable service.
The failure to establish a military police unit strengthened the resolve of Earlham’s president to pursue an alternative direction. The college joined the Civilian Public Service (CPS) program, an alternative for conscientious objectors. It was a conscious choice: to help the country not with weapons, but with knowledge that would be useful after the war. But even here, difficulties arose. The program was underfunded, Congress reduced support, and by 1943, it effectively ceased to exist. Dennis turned to alumni, to Quakers, to those who believed in the college's mission. He asked for help. The response was overwhelming. A Free Will Fund campaign raised over $10,000—three times more than any similar campaign before it. Alumni wrote: "I was so grateful that Earlham College had remained true to Quaker principles in not taking a military unit onto the campus, that it was my intention as soon as possible to respond with a contribution to the Free Will Fund." "I am so proud of Earlham for the stand she has taken" The college also admitted 12 students of Japanese descent.
Representatives of seven Quaker educational institutions—including Haverford, Guilford, Friends University, William Penn, and Wilmington—met in September 1942 and decided to organize an alternative Civilian Public Service Reserve Force program to train conscientious objectors rather than soldiers. This initiative, proposed by historic peace churches (Quakers, Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren ), would allow pacifist students to continue their education instead of being sent to Civilian Social Service camps. However, the government limited the program's total quota to 260 places for all participating colleges, of which Quaker colleges received only 100–120.
In the postwar years, the schools that had made their varying decisions continued to reflect on their choices. At Swarthmore, the debate continued. In 1950, prominent alumnus Thomas McCabe declared, "I was never more proud of Swarthmore than in the early days of the war when this Quaker institution, in spite of its traditional stand against war, offered all of its facilities voluntarily to our Government in time of need." William Richards (Class of 1948), who was imprisoned from 1942 to 1946 for resisting the draft, strongly disagreed: "A Quaker college has no place in aiding a war. Swarthmore should have taken a stand for peace and not sold its birthright for a mess of pottage." This debate reflects the deep tension between different understandings of the Quaker peace witness: from strict abstention from any participation in military action to active service to peace, even if it requires compromise.
Today, Swarthmore, Earlham, Haverford, and other Quaker colleges are proud of their Quaker heritage and are considered Quaker in spirit, although Quakers constitute a small minority of their student bodies. Their experience during World War II demonstrates that Quaker identity is not monolithic—it can be expressed differently in different institutional and historical contexts. The ability to remain faithful to the witness of peace, regardless of how it is practiced, is a characteristic feature of the Quaker tradition, allowing it to remain vibrant in diverse contexts. Fidelity to principle does not require uniformity.
Sergei Grushko lists these resources he consulted in writing his article:
- LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES IN THE TUMULTUOUS 1940S: INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF WAR AND PEACE. A Dissertation in Higher Education by Jordan R. Humphrey etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2963 (the most significant resource);
- Swarthmore at War (part 1 - swarthmorephoenix.com/2010/02/19/swarthmore-at-war-part-1/ . part 2 - swarthmorephoenix.com/2010/03/01/swarthmore-at-war-part-2/ );
- Founded by Friends: The Quaker Heritage of Fifteen American Colleges and Universities - historyb332.blogs.brynmawr.edu/files/2015/01/founded-by-friends_20150212132902.pdf :
- ... and Wikipedia.
For some additional interesting information concerning the internment of Japanese Americans and Quaker advocacy and hospitality for Japanese Americans during the displacement camp era, see
- The testimony of Gordon Hirabayashi;
- Japanese-American Internment (AFSC);
- Earlham College and Japanese Americans.
A more recent case of U.S. Quaker colleges vs conscription: the Solomon Amendment (1982) prohibiting federal financial aid to nonregistering students.
Looking for summer reading? Kristin Du Mez has some suggestions.
Jemar Tisby on The Pastor No One Can Correct. "Douglas Wilson can hold paedocommunion, dominionism, household voting, and his long apologetic for the Confederacy, because he answers to almost no one."
Jeremy Morris on a certain leader's "magical thinking." (By the way, I wrote a post about Russia, Ukraine, and avos' three and a half years ago.)
Ursula K. Le Guin's house here in Portland, Oregon, is added to the National Register of Historic Places. (Should also be on some intergalactic registry....)
Three Danish bluesmen cover "Dust My Broom": H.P. Lange, Troels Jensen, Hugo Rasmussen.
