Authors and students prepare to discuss military strategy, ethics, related topics

By Marshall Bates
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Students and faculty alike are beginning to get ready for one of the biggest events of the year at Norwich University.

"It's one of the few things we have here at Norwich that allows students to come in contact with original artists who are writing today," said Professor Andrew Knauf, Head of the Division of Humanities. "Also, authors that are writing on topics such as the military, war, why we fight, and the history of conflict, which I think would be of interest to students at military school."

On April 10-12, Norwich University will once again host the William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium. The object of discussion this year will be "Raging War: Understanding the 21st Century Enemy."

"Each year we try to design a program around the participants themselves, what they bring to the campus and the university," said Ed Tracy, executive director of external affairs and executive director of the William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium.

"First of all you have a group of people who all have expertise in one area or another, so you're looking for a central topic that everyone can speak to," Tracy said, adding that the program must be interesting to the audience; you would not want to do a program that wasn't timely.

"So, we have the benefit to gauging our topics pretty much towards current events," Tracy said. "Leading up to this year especially, we didn't know what the status of the war in Afghanistan would be or what the effects of September 11th would be, and having the Army go through a transformation right now. These are the three topics that have kind of hovered over that topic we would choose."

"We decided on the topic that would involve identifying our understanding of the 21st Century enemy," Tracy said. "Mainly because that enemy could be any number of things, human or otherwise."

Over the two days the symposium will be on campus, there will be many different events and activities for students to get involved in.

"I would tell students to get as involved as they can," Knauf said. "I would have them go down and buy a book and get it signed, try and ask questions at the public forum, try and to go the dinner or luncheon or prepare questions if they have an author coming to an in-class session."

"We have a series of special topic sessions on Thursday afternoon which showcase the two Colby Award-winning authors," Tracy said. "At the same time there will also be another session presented by Carlo D'Este and Geoffrey Perret on writing a biography."

There will also be in-class sessions, where the authors will be attending classes on Thursday and Friday mornings to talk to students, Tracy said.

"This does not only appeal to the military student, which arguably have the most to gain, but also of the civilian students as well," Tracy said. "Our hopes are to create a program that kind of wraps our arms around both groups of people, and that there are interests for all of them."

"We are trying to provide a new kind of experience for the students," Tracy said. "I would ask the students to identify a part of the program that interests them or is important and go for it."

Tracy emphasized that "everything is designed so that that students can get something out of it, no matter what it is."

"There is everything from the open forum, to book signings in the bookstore and after the forum, or even the 'Meet the Authors' dinner."

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