New Broom at Navy

On springtime Wednesday afternoons at Annapolis, the U.S. Naval Academy's 4,300 midshipmen, starched and polished, march smartly to the drum and bugle of dress parade. It is a traditional display of martial crispness for academy brass and visiting VIPs. But these Wednesdays, after the last salute is snapped, many a middie returns to the not-so-traditional company of Machiavelli, Malthus or Montesquieu--required reading in such brand-new majors as literature, economics and political science. The marriage of military discipline and academic freedom is uneasy at best, but Rear Admiral James F. Calvert, now in his second year as academy superintendent, has proved himself a talented matchmaker.

From the start, Calvert, 49, knew he was dealing with a generation "more sophisticated and better educated" than any before it. And more skeptical: Viet Nam had done little for the image of the military profession, and the Navy was still under the cloud of the Pueblo affair. At Annapolis, Calvert found the engineering-oriented curriculum sadly outdated--symptomatic of the "cultural mismatch" between a hidebound service academy and the young men--black as well as white--he wanted to attract. Some black middies (there are now 38) are even jeered when they try to recruit others back home.

Dumb Dedication. Last fall Calvert unveiled a new curriculum that included 24 majors--17 of them non-engineering. For the first time, a midshipman could work toward a liberal arts degree. A black-literature course was set up. Even the required military courses were spruced up: navigation and naval tactics, for example, are now based on actual fleet situations rather than textbook theory. The new majors program attracted 7,000 applicants for the class of '74, more than 1,000 above the previous record.

Calvert is seeking a balanced approach. "If you allow military training to get downtrodden and produce only intellectuals, you have officers who can't work with enlisted men. But if you emphasize the production of officers to the exclusion of everything else, you'll end up with fine-looking, dedicated people who are a little vacant."

Calvert's new broom has also swept aside a number of nonacademic traditions, such as freshman hazing. No longer do upperclassmen make a plebe stand at attention and jab at his breastbone until he passes out; gone are the impromptu push-ups and relay races through the endless corridors of the middie dormitory, Bancroft Hall. Plebes are still made to perform menial tasks for upperclassmen, but Calvert firmly maintains that harassment and degradation will not produce respect for authority.

Calvert and Captain Robert Coogan, 48, commandant of the brigade of mid shipmen, encourage their charges to question the rules they live by. Calvert thinks a regulation with no purpose should be jettisoned. Coogan tossed out the rule requiring seniors on liberty to stay within seven miles of the campus. "It didn't make much sense," he says. "Seven miles was purely arbitrary --probably how far Dewey could get down the road in his horse and buggy."

In or Out. Next year the curriculum will be reorganized; the present seven departments will expand to 18, of which eleven will be chaired by civilians. Department heads and the academic dean (a civilian by statute) decide on faculty hiring and firing and the granting of tenure. Superintendents' terms are brief, and Calvert has delegated some of his administrative powers in an attempt to provide continuity between his superintendency and the next.

The admiral's two closest aides are officers who never attended Annapolis. Calvert is a Clevelander who spent two years at Oberlin College before switching to the Naval Academy ('43). A much-decorated submariner in World War II, he later commanded the nuclear submarine Skate on its historic voyage to the North Pole in 1959. For all his progressive educational views, he is a totally committed Navy man. He exhorts his middies: "You can't have it both ways. You have to stand up and be counted. Either you're with us and believe in preserving our society or you don't belong here. You can't take off this uniform and put on a wig." Calvert means to prove that "love of country and dedication to its service can exist in the same institution with academic freedom and excellence." When a crusty old grad grumbles that he is achieving nothing but chaos at the academy, Calvert just grins. "We need a little chaos around here," he says.

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