What would it take to send a demure assistant dean at Vanderbilt off for a year embedded with the U.S Army in Iraq? The nearly simultaneous death of her last grandparent, a called-off wedding and the death of her beloved furry dog, Tumbleweed. "I needed to get out of town, something to cut me off from all that," says Katherine Carroll.
In the summer of 2007, Carroll heard that the Army was searching for Ph.D.s with specialties in Middle Eastern culture and history to embed with combat brigades, to "help them take into account the social, political and cultural context," she says. Carroll just happened to have the required doctorate, in her case from the University of Virginia in political science with a specialty in Middle Eastern politics. She sought advice from everyone she knew. "By November, it was clear I wanted to go."
So in early 2008, she was sent to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for a basic introduction to military procedures and practices. This immersion in the culture of war, Iraq and the military was very stressful for the self-described "cocktail-drinking gal from a wildly leftist family" whose father was an English professor.
In Baghdad, to her surprise, she found active mentors in the colonels with whom she worked. She was treated as a valued member of the staff, and the enlisted men with whom she worked were eager, for the most part, to understand the Iraqi people. And the surge was beginning to reduce casualties.
Among other things, Carroll worked on mapping the astonishing 150 different political parties in a particular section of Baghdad to determine where violence might break out during elections. And although spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a year embedded with the U.S Army in Baghdad may seem like hell, Carroll says it "was a charmed year" — even though her best friend from training, Nicole Suveges, was killed by a bomb in Sadr City, along with two others in the program.
"It was really transformational," Carroll said. "I needed a boost of self-confidence. The Army picked me up, and said, 'Hey, Doc, great to have you here.' " Carroll said she feels a "sense of privilege that I got to see this birth" of democracy in Iraq and "so privileged to go and come back here and share it."
Upon her return, the dean of Vanderbilt's College of Arts and Sciences encouraged Carroll to transition out of the dean's office and into full-time teaching. Now an assistant professor of political science at Vandy, she uses the Iraqi experience as she teaches a full load of classes on Middle Eastern politics, political Islam, terrorism, and a team class on the Iraq War. Asked if she wanted to go back on another such grand adventure, she said she's a homebody and a gardener, but ...
"As any hobbit will tell you, if you go off on a great adventure, it gets into your blood." —LYDA PHILLILPS
Photographed by Eric England at Vanderbilt University with a declassified aerial map of Iraq.
