“Gays and Minorities in the Armed Forces and the Evolving Role of Women in Armed Combat” was the topic of the latest Southern Illinois University Edwardsville International Speaker Series held Nov. 7.
Nearly 30 students, and some SIUE and ROTC faculty members, attended the event, which took place in the Morris University Center. Dr. Paul Viotti, executive director of the Institute on Globalization and Security (IGLOS) at the University of Denver in Colorado, talked about the evolving role of minorities in today’s military, mostly from a U.S. vantage point. He took the discussion back to World War II and moved forward to recent times.
Viotti talked about the long road to military integration of minority populations:
• Addressing and overcoming race barriers, with African American men pushing forward with their military careers in spite of challenges they faced during and following World War II
• The inequities faced by Asian-Americans during and post-World War II, and the strides that they, and those descending of Asian, Latin and other minority populations, have made during the last 50 years
• The push for gender equity, with women advancing beyond clerical roles and the hospitals, and into combat-ready positions
• The “big secret” of sexual orientation and the implementation, and subsequent repeal, of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy in the U.S. Military
He noted the changes he has seen during his lifetime: “The generation in which I exist and the one preceding me were extraordinarily homophobic.
“Your generation is much more understanding from the degree of acceptance,” he told the students. “That degree of progressive understanding was unheard of in my time.”
He recounted a very recent military dinner he attended, hosted by Spectrum, the U.S. Air Force Academy’s first club for gay, lesbian and bisexual students, and their heterosexual friends and supporters.
“I was having a discussion with a graduate from the class of 1968, which was around the time I graduated from the Academy,” Viotti said. “This person was a woman. Women were not allowed entry into the Academy until 1976.
“It didn’t occur to me until later that I had been speaking with a transgender individual. This person had been born a man, and had changed identity after leaving the military.
“The transgender part of LGBT has always served, but that has been in a private identity.”
Viotti noted the transgender community still has not been wholly integrated into the military, and that the Pentagon currently is working on a policy to address this.
“Progress has been made, but it’s been glacial,” Viotti said of the changes that have come to the U.S. military. He noted that gender prejudice still exists, and the military needs to become a more diverse mix of the population at large. This mix needs to be reflected in gender, politics, ethnicity, beliefs and in all other ways in order to fully exemplify the true climate and culture of the people living in the U.S.
During the discussion, Viotti briefly touched on the issue from a global perspective. He referenced how the U.S. is different from Israel, which requires mandatory service for all its men and women, and Switzerland and Sweden, which both allow voluntary service among females.
Viotti said the U.S. should adopt integration techniques of the Swiss and the Swedes, having their military personnel living and co-existing within non-military communities. He noted this concept is mandatory in Switzerland and Sweden, and after men have served in the military, they are required by the governments in those countries to keep their arms in their homes following their service to their countries.
Since 1992, Viotti has been a professor at Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1978.
For 20 years he taught political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and for 30 years he served in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a colonel. His career has taken him to California, Vietnam, Europe, the Pentagon and Colorado.
His publications include International Relations Theory, International Relations and World Politics, American Foreign Policy, American Foreign Policy and National Security, and Arms Control, Terrorism and Homeland Security. His forthcoming publications include U.S. National Security Policy and The Dollar, National Security and Foreign Policy.