A Pacifist Takes to the Battlefield : John Dickinson went to prison instead of the Gulf War. Now his political stance threatens his future as a teacher.

IRVINE —  John Dickinson--devoted husband, popular schoolteacher and military felon--shakes his head at the small TV in the corner of his living room. News of the Los Angeles riots blares alarmingly, but Dickinson is not surprised by the looting and arson.

“If the state shows people that in every case the solution to problems is to use violence, why are they surprised that citizens act this way?” he asks. “The government has a problem with Panama, so they invade it. The police have a problem with a suspect, so they beat him to a bloody pulp. So now, when the people in Los Angeles are upset, how do they react? By following the examples of their role models, their leaders.”

Dickinson has suffered the consequences of his views on leadership and nonviolence. In November, the 34-year-old Air Force Reserve lieutenant was released from military prison after serving 5 1/2 months for a felony count of refusing to participate in Operation Desert Storm. Dickinson, the supervisor of 43 reserves, was the military’s only commanding officer to go AWOL.

It was a classic case of pacifist convictions running head-on into the expediency of a popular war.

His application for conscientious-objector status was ignored, he says, as March Air Force Base officials sought to make an example of his case. His imprisonment made headlines when Amnesty International named him one of its few U.S. prisoners of conscience. Throughout the ordeal, his wife, Carol, suffered severe medical problems that she blames in part on stress resulting from her fight to gain him clemency.

Now Dickinson has found himself at the fulcrum of two social issues: the Gulf War resistance and a debate about professional licensing.

Dickinson, who teaches fifth grade at Jackson Elementary School in Santa Ana, was notified in March by the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing that his military conviction may cause him to lose his credential. Later this month, a committee will decide if his behavior toward Air Force rules constitutes “moral turpitude,” an offense that could oust Dickinson permanently from public school teaching.

The committee, which consists of teachers and a school board member selected statewide, will meet informally and either end the inquiry or schedule the matter for a formal meeting.

This possibility has alarmed the American Civil Liberties Union insofar as it muddies the distinctions between military and civilian law, says Carol Sobel, senior staff counsel of the ACLU’s Southern California office.

The fear is that if Dickinson’s Air Force felony affects his right to teach, then members of any profession, including law and medicine, who have moral turpitude clauses in their codes of ethics would hesitate to criticize the military.

“Conscientious objection is a right that each person has, and whether or not the military accepted John’s argument, it is not evidence that he’s an unfit teacher,” Sobel says.

“John hasn’t committed treason or aided or abetted an enemy. He specifically did not sign up for combat-oriented duty; he originally signed up for the Air National Guard. He researched it to find out how he could fulfill his obligation to his country without compromising his values.”

Teachers’ associations in California and Oregon have backed Dickinson and have supplied his lawyers with more than 80 letters of support. Two-thirds of the faculty at Dickinson’s school also wrote in support.

“It’s not just a parochial issue, it’s an issue around the state,” says Bill Shanahan, executive director of the 1,100-member Santa Ana Educators Assn. “If the commission can do something like this, we’re opening up a Pandora’s box. The next person could be anybody who doesn’t conform to individual standards of morality. The most obvious targets would be gay and lesbian teachers.

“(Dickinson) is a fine teacher doing what good teachers do: working hard to help children. The same backbone that John had in order to deal with the issue in the service is something he has as a teacher, to help children get a foot up in life.”

The coordinator of the case, Nanette Rufo of the credentialing commission, says she is merely following state guidelines.

“We review anyone who’s been convicted, including military, although we receive only one or two complaints from military courts per year,” she says. “Since we issue credentials to authorize people to teach children, whenever they spend time in jail, we investigate it on a case-by-case basis.

“We do not have a list of crimes that are not subject to review. It’s important for the protection of the public that crimes are reviewed.”

A parallel case in the medical profession is now under way in Kansas. Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, an Army reservist and physician who had worked in depressed areas of Kansas City, not only refused Persian Gulf service but also publicized her anti-war beliefs.

She served time in Ft. Leavenworth prison and now, based on her military charges, faces an investigation by the Kansas Medical Society that could lead to a loss of her medical license.

The quick mustering of troops for the Gulf War caught many reservists such as Huet-Vaughn by surprise, says Michael Marsh, a military counselor at the War Resisters League in New York.

“Many had also been misled by recruiters who had indicated that reservists aren’t shipped overseas,” he says. “In fact, the military investigates 4,000 cases of recruiter fraud each year.”

However, Pam Nault, spokeswoman for the Air Force Reserve at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, disagrees.

“The literature given to reservists states that they are subject to worldwide assignment based on recall and mobilization,” she says. “Our candidate base is of such quality and competence that our recruiters have no reason to mislead candidates.”

Delays in the processing of conscientious-objector applications were widespread during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, say military support groups.

About 2,500 members of the Armed Forces filed for conscientious-objector status from August, 1990, through March, 1991, Marsh says. He says that figure, which his staff compiled by phoning 30 counseling groups across the United States, is disputed by military officials because they count only those applications that have wended their way to the conscientious-objector review board.

Indeed, a Pentagon spokesman says the Armed Forces received fewer than 400 applications during 1991 and granted only 211.

“Unlike during Vietnam, the military didn’t automatically keep people in this country who had filed a C.O. claim,” says Tod Ensign of Citizen Soldier, a support group for military families. “So once they found out they were to be sent to the Gulf, a lot decided not to file a claim.

“For the most part, AWOL service people who made no public statements against the war were treated with kid gloves,” Ensign says. “They were allowed to resign if they were officers; and enlisted people were given Article 15, a non-judicial punishment. It was a slap on the wrist. They might lose a grade in rank, for example, or three months’ pay.”

Maj. Patrick Rosenow, staff judge advocate at March Air Force Base, denies that Dickinson was singled out because he publicized his views.

“We had no reason to believe he was making outspoken statements about the Gulf War, and that would not be taken into consideration even if he had. To say that we were making an example out of him is related to the purpose of military justice in general, which is to generally deter violations.”

Rosenow adds that the sentencing was handed down by a military judge who has no supervisory ties to March Air Force Base.

“Absence offenses strike at the very heart of military discipline,” he says. “The one thing you have to be able to count on, especially for reserve forces, is to answer the call when it comes. Lt. Dickinson, for whatever reason, did not answer the call and had no legal justification for doing so.”

During his legal battles with the Air Force, Dickinson said he learned that his sincerity and strait-laced upbringing did not make a difference.

The eldest of four children in a Roman Catholic family, Dickinson was a three-sport letterman in high school and never failed to make the honor roll. (An ancestor, also named John Dickinson, was the first governor of Delaware and a signer of the Constitution.)

He finished at the top of his class in officer training school. Although while in Illinois he was a member of the Air National Guard, Dickinson transferred into the Air Force Reserve when he moved to California after discovering the Air Guard had no openings.

Despite warnings from his wife and friends that the two services were quite different, Dickinson defended the Air Force.

He now ruefully admits his naivete:

“I thought I had picked a service where I never would have to be in an active combat role. I went from being in the ‘gentleman’s Air Force’ to being trained by Army Special Forces to run around singing songs about killing women and children. I didn’t join the service to sing songs about killing babies.”

So on Feb. 14, 1991, he filed his conscientious-objector claim. Just one hour later, Dickinson said, his commanders told him that despite the claim, he was being activated for Persian Gulf duty. By the time the Dickinsons could organize a legal response 18 days later, the Air Force had declared him AWOL.

Medical problems, including grand mal epileptic seizures and colonic ulcers, plagued Carol Dickinson during her husband’s military travails. A neighbor and Carol’s 25-year-old son by a previous marriage helped care for her while Dickinson was imprisoned.

“It’s ironic that we’re fighting for John’s constitutional rights when his ancestor was a founder of those very rights,” she says. “Do we have those ideals, or do we have to work to get those ideals back? I guess that’s what we’re doing--working to get those ideals back.”

She gestures to the TV, where the anarchy in Los Angeles was continuing to build.

“The commentators are pleading with the rioters, ‘Don’t do what everyone else does. Follow your conscience.’ Well, that’s what John did. He followed his conscience. So now he’s going on trial for doing the very thing that our nation’s ideals say you must do.”