A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Professors Teach College Courses for U.S. Troops Stationed in Afghanistan

By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006

During training for deployment, people asked professor John Barbato whether he is right- or left-handed. Then they said, "Search for mines with your left hand so you can still grade papers."

They were joking. He thinks.

Barbato has a strange, sometimes surreal, job; he and a few other University of Maryland University College professors are teaching this spring on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. It is an odd sort of ivory tower for them, a makeshift college campus walled off from most of the danger around them.

It is a lot safer, Barbato's colleague Hernando Dominguez said only half-jokingly, than the time he went to Baltimore and got lost. The professors are well protected, and they rarely leave the security of the base.

"You forget that you're in a war zone," said Dominguez's wife, Army Capt. Carol Calix.

But there is a reason the university calls the teaching assignment "deployment" and the military slang for such locations is "downrange": That is where the missile heads after launch.

Every once in a while, something reminds them.

There are UMUC professors in Kabul, Kandahar and Camp Salerno, near the border with Pakistan, as well as Bagram air base. The school has been teaching overseas for more than 50 years, on more than 125 bases. No public school offers more online classes to the military; last year, tens of thousands of service members enrolled. UMUC hopes to eventually offer classes in Iraq, not just online.

There is more demand than can be met by the classes in Afghanistan, with a handful of professors and thousands of troops in the country. Some of the students joined the military to earn money for an education. Some see the classes as their chance for a better life. And some enroll for a respite from the fear and exhaustion of service.

The professors could be anywhere besides the stretch of desert ringed by mountains north of Kabul. They don't have to be there, teaching in chapels, in courtrooms and in other camps, living in eight-person rooms partitioned with scavenged scraps of plywood. They offered to teach downrange for the adventure or the hazard pay (a 25 percent bump) or a sense of patriotism.

"This is what I can do" for the troops, said Gae Holladay, who teaches English, "to let them know we appreciate what they're doing, and the sacrifices they're making."

Or for love: Dominguez volunteered so he could be with his wife, a preventive medicine officer who was deployed to Afghanistan last year.

They miss Maryland, their house in Arnold, the Kennedy Center. They miss blue crabs. Barbato misses his wife and his brothers in the Washington area.

Yet at least two have volunteered for another six-month stint. "This is where we belong," Holladay said of her and Barbato's request to stay. "This is where we want to be."

Dominguez had to leave the base recently because of an illness but hopes to return to Bagram soon.

The professors received Defense Department readiness training, a week of lessons on military life and survival, before they deployed. They learned first aid, search and rescue, how to handle weapons and ways to spot explosive devices.

Now they are in a country devastated by years of fighting, where soldiers hunt terrorists and human rights groups have in past years accused U.S. troops of abusing prisoners. In two 2002 cases ruled homicides by the U.S. military, detainees died after blunt-force injuries.

And the professors teach about literature, investing, biology.

Afghanistan is beautiful and ugly, they said, with stark mountains and the devastation of years of war. On base, it is always loud, with bulldozers, generators, heavy trucks and helicopters thundering.

They sleep in unfinished plywood huts, share the showers, brush their teeth alongside students and don't flip the lights on after dark without asking bunkmates.

Outside is where the danger is. Dominguez, who had not gone off the base at the time, worried about if they had to leave it to help soldiers elsewhere in the country. "The roadside bombs are what everyone is most afraid of," he said.

On base, they feel secure. Barbato wakes every morning to the rumble of military police officers gathering outside his door.

Holladay said, "You can't imagine the envelope of caretaking around the civilian population."

Yet the reminders come -- sometimes in flashes, such as the warning flare lighted from a military helicopter or the perimeter security lights being triggered. Or in bursts, such as a speeding armored convoy sending dust flying as the vehicles pass small villages. Or in slow motion, watching children begging for candy in a minefield.

Sometimes everything stops.

Not long ago, Barbato said, an announcement boomed over the public address system.

People put down tools, stopped typing, left plates of food uneaten and walked to the main road running through the base, from the hospital to the runway. A three-star general stood in front of Barbato and lines of troops, civilians and contractors. It was silent, he said, a silence all the more profound in a place so crushed by noise.

A delay was announced. Still, no one moved, he said. No one spoke.

Finally, the coffins -- plain metal boxes stamped with a destination -- rolled out.

"You don't just walk away when it passes," Barbato said. The memory makes him shudder. "It stays with you. Even when you walk into your classes, walk into your meal, it's" -- he stopped for a moment. "I'm sorry, I just got a little bit -- "

Mostly, the professors said, they work, scrambling to set up additional classes, searching for more teaching space and enjoying how steely soldiers turn into eager young college students, offering answers and worrying about quizzes.

Most days, Barbato said, he doesn't notice the M-16s strapped to his students' backs. It almost seems normal now. He doesn't worry until he sees an empty seat.