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Michael S. Foley
Department of History
University of New Hampshire


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Current Research

Like many historians, I am currently working on several projects, most of which are in the early stages of planning and research. At the moment, my first priority is revising my dissertation, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War, for publication. This page offers a description of that work, as well as some details on other projects.

Dissertation
Confronting the War Machine makes several new arguments that substantially revise prevailing interpretations of the antiwar movement, the New Left, and the 1960s in general. Most important, it argues that draft resistance is worth remembering. Although it has been virtually ignored by most historians of the period, I argue that draft resistance constituted the most important strain of the antiwar movement in 1967 and 1968.

Draft resisters raised the stakes considerably for the movement and for the Johnson administration. The Resistance set an example of defiance that cause draft age men opposed to the war - especially college students - to consider their place of privilege in a draft system that sent disproportionate numbers of working-class and minority men to war but protected them. Thus, it radicalized many in the antiwar movement. In addition, it raised the stakes for policy makers in Washington. After more than two years of sporadic marches and teach-ins that achieved no lasting impact on the administration, draft resisters forced Lyndon Johnson to acknowledge domestic dissent by taking legal (and illegal) action against them. Draft resisters turned an antiwar movement that relied on legal acts of protest into a movement that used massive civil disobedience to draw the administration into a confrontation.

Second, this study asserts that draft resistance activists possessed a certain moral clarity that created in them an unbridled urgency to stop the war. This impatient sense of citizenship, perhaps the most striking characteristic of the movement, mobilized the local antiwar community to take positive, direct action against the administration and against the war in ways that marches and teach-ins could not. They confronted the draft and the administration; they did not dodge it. That said, the serendipitous nature of the movement is not overlooked. As the narrative shows, few strategies unfolded as planned; organizers consistently misjudged the administration just as it repeatedly misjudged the movement.

Finally, in contrast to common perceptions that so many in the New Left were "red-diaper babies" (i.e., children of communists), this manuscript demonstrates that the vast majority of draft resistance activists grew up in middle-class suburban homes, the children of Republicans and (mostly) Democrats. For the most part, their parents were liberals who voted for Lyndon Johnson. Frequently, their resistance created upheaval in their families. Most resisters and supporters possessed activist experience in civil rights and other peace protests, and decided to resist the draft only after they believed they had exhausted all other legal means of lodging their protests. Most important, they did not see their acts as disloyal.

In a more general sense, Confronting the War Machine also raises questions about the place of an individual in a civil society and the meaning of American citizenship. Draft resisters challenged not only the Selective Service's policy of "channeling" men into occupations and other endeavors deemed in the nation's interest, but acted on the assumption that when one's government is engaged in illegal or immoral behavior, citizens are obligated to disagree with those policies, disobey them if necessary, and accept the legally prescribed punishment. Opponents, of course, regarded these acts as traitorous and disloyal, but resisters saw their disobedience as a clear expression of their high regard for the finest American values.

In addition to using traditional archival sources, the research for this project relied heavily on the use of previously untapped personal manuscript collections (frequently housed in boxes in the attics and basements of activists), underground newspapers, federal court records, and approximately 70 oral interviews that I conducted with draft resisters, supporters, and government officials. These sources help to uncover the day-to-day drama that surrounded the movement and enveloped its participants.

Upcoming Articles
The dissertation has also spawned a couple of spin-offs which have taken the form of articles that I am currently trying to place with appropriate academic journals. One article, "Confronting the Johnson Administration at War: The Trial of Dr. Spock and Use of the Courtroom to Effect Political Change," examines the conspiracy trial of the "Boston Five" and the conflicting strategies behind it. Another article, not quite finished, analyzes the sanctuary movement - a movement that grew out of draft resistance in which draft resisters and AWOL servicemen took sanctuary in churches as an act of protest. To date, it has been totally neglected by historians even though it is one of the key examples of the intersection between the civilian and GI subsets of the antiwar movement.

Other Projects
Over the summer, I began preliminary work on two other book projects. One will be an edited collection of letters to Dr. Benjamin Spock in which ordinary Americans expressed their views of the war in Vietnam. Amazingly, Spock appears to have kept every letter written to him (his papers are deposited at Syracuse University) and during the mid and late 1960s much of his mail focused on Vietnam. It is one of the only collections I know which can give us a window into the minds of so many rank-and-file American citizens regarding the war.

In addition, in another project that is evolving out of my dissertation, I have begun work on draft resistance during the Vietnam War in Puerto Rico. During the war, Puerto Rican draft age men were conscripted into service even though Puerto Rico did not (and still does not) have a voting representative in Congress and even though most did not speak English. More than 100 men were tried in Puerto Rico for refusing to comply with draft laws (if they appealed, their appeals court was in Boston, where the appeal was heard in English), and the movement that sprouted to support them overlapped in significant ways with the island's independence movement. The final project, therefore, will examine not only the nature of Puerto Rican draft resistance, but the culture from which it emerged, questions of identity, citizenship, and the ongoing legacy of American imperialism.


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