Today at Brown

On a campus of nonconformists, Adam Swartzbaugh stands out.

He is the entire Reserve Officer Training Corps at a school that hasn’t offered ROTC since long before he was born. In order to participate, Swartzbaugh joined the Army ROTC Patriot Battalion at Providence College, where he is the battalion commander. How does he reconcile the two widely different world views?

“At Brown, I spend all of my time challenging authority, questioning the status quo, and inverting reality,” says Swartzbaugh. “The military environment at first was more of a yes sir/no sir atmosphere.” He sees Army training and service as a means to an end: a way to hone leadersihp skills that will help him pursue the humanitarian work that is his passion. “I’ve been able to bring together the Army values with the Brown ones: [taking] the structure, direction, and organizational effectiveness of the Army and apply[ing] it to the open, creative, and unformatted nature of Brown.”

Fellow Brown students have done double-takes when they've seen Swartzbaugh dressed in military mufti. “On the whole, they don't know the first thing about [ROTC],” he says. “For a school as open and ‘diverse’ as Brown, to have people dumbstruck by the sight of a student in uniform is a little curious.” However, he adds, “I've never received a negative comment regarding my participation in ROTC or the military in general.”

As in many other areas of his life, Swartzbaugh has succeeded in the military. “If Adam's accomplishments in ROTC were his only measure of success, he would be nearly off the scale,” says his ROTC leader, Lt. Col. Matthew R. McKinley, professor of military science at Providence College. McKinley’s praise is literal: On the Order of Merit list of more than 4,500 ROTC seniors at 273 U.S. colleges and universities, Swartzbaugh is ranked fifth.

But there’s more: Swartzbaugh is also a human-rights activist who co-founded child-education nonprofits Kid Launch in Thailand and New Hope in Burma (Myanmar). Last year he started his current project, the Human Defense Initiative, to implement his vision of “community empowerment with global reach that pays heed to no obstacle and sees all things as possible,” employing the concept of “global social networking.” The organization aims to create better communication networks among human rights organizations, foundations, and associations.

Until the end of the year, when his military service begins, “I will be spending most of my time getting sustainable development programs focusing on education and vocational training off the ground in Burma and Thailand,” Swartzbaugh says, “while building the Human Defense Initiative as an international human rights networking organization.”

With such globe-spanning goals, it’s helpful that Swartzbaugh speaks six languages. He learned French, Spanish, and Chinese in classrooms and picked up Vietnamese, Thai, and Burmese in-country. “This is kind of funny, given that I will be speaking Arabic for the next few years in the military,” he says, laughing. “I guess I’d better get started on that soon, too.”

As a teen, Swartzbaugh was a national champion in mountain biking and a two-time member of the U.S. World Cycling Team. “Competitive sports for me served their purpose and are far from a priority now,” he says. “Though I do enjoy riding for fun when I have time – which is never.”

At Brown Swartzbaugh has completed an A.B. in international relations and an A.M. in development studies concurrently. His senior thesis is on “A New Microphysics of Power: The Political Implications of Information and Communication Technologies in the Twenty-first Century.” Next year he’ll begin his Army service with the goal of commanding a Special Forces unit. After that, the multilinguist from Maine plans to earn another graduate degree, in government, and then pursue a career in politics. “As much as I don't like politicians, I also understand that policy development at macro levels is where you can make the biggest difference,” Swartzbaugh says.

“I have no doubt that he will make a huge difference,” says Swartzbaugh’s academic advisor, Associate Professor of Sociology Patrick Heller. “Not only is he determined, but he has that rare ability to appreciate the importance of ideas and critical thinking, while at the same time being very pragmatic, disciplined, and direct in his approach to solving problems in the real world.”

And that is Adam Swartzbaugh’s goal: “I intend to change this world and will die trying. So long as there is one person who is abused, suppressed, subjugated, or discriminated against, I have my work cut out for me. What we do in this life defines us. I don't intend to spend it sleeping.”