Q&A: John Parrish, MPP Class of 2025, on His Military Service and Studying Foreign and Domestic Policy

After 13 years of active duty service for the US military, John Parrish, MPP Class of 2025, joined the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy as a first-year MPP candidate this fall. His work took him from his home in Richmond, Virginia, to Seattle, Washington, to Japan and other areas of East and Southeast Asia, and eventually to the Middle East. He described most of his work abroad as “stereotypical military work,” until the past four years when his assignments focused more heavily on security planning and foreign policy. This renewed his interest in studying policy, both foreign and domestic, and Parrish took the chance to return to grad school, finding the right fit at Harris.

In honor of Veterans Day, Parrish shared his experiences in service and how he connects it to his work in the program. The following is an edited conversation with Parrish.

Can you share your background from before you arrived at Harris?

I half-jokingly say I joined the U.S. Army for two reasons: to get free college and to make my parents angry, and I succeeded on both of those fronts. I finished undergrad and was an unmanned aerial vehicle pilot/operator for several years, but didn’t care for the position very much. In 2011, a superior suggested I try for the Special Forces program.

I ended up with the Green Berets for nine years. They are the Army’s premier unconventional warfare force, performing combat missions and working with foreign forces, training and leading foreign militaries. Their philosophy of “by, with, and through”–meaning by foreign forces, with foreign forces, and through foreign forces. The intention is, if you can enable allies to win their own wars, you don’t have to send in U.S. troops where they may not be welcome or able to do as good of a job.

The last four years, I did more work on the security planning side, helping foreign militaries at higher levels build up their actual doctrinal plan of how they want to organize their military. I did more work out of embassies in that role, interacting with the State Department and some NGOs and public-private partnerships. I spent a lot of time doing foreign policy.

What eventually drew you to the MPP Program at Harris?

I realized I wanted to try creating change domestically in the U.S. That’s difficult when you’re spending all of your time abroad, and after 13 years of moving around all the time, a chance to be in one place for more than a couple of years would be nice.

The Harris program aligned best with my needs. I have a lot of “soft skills” like management experience and critical thinking, but I don’t have much in the quantitative skills department. Harris’ pitch, that they could give me those skills, sounded like a good complement to what I already know.

Where have you found a community within Harris?

In addition to the friends I made at Math and Coding Camp, I’m pretty involved with the Military Affiliated Students at Harris (M.A.S.H.). It’s a great bunch of people. They’ve done a good job with integrating those coming directly out of service into an academic setting and helping former service members find footing. It’s a good support network and a nice transition program. They also have a number of interesting events during the year that I think are helpful for both military and civilian folks.

How do you anticipate your experience and your service influencing the direction that you’ll take your coursework for the rest of the program?

Something that has struck me the most interacting with other students is that there are a lot of individuals in their mid-20s with very minimal exposure to the military. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how curious people are, as a lot of things about foreign policy and the U.S. military are not commonly understood by the civilian population. One policy issue that I have focused on is how the military is controlled by civilian policy makers, and how that requires the voting population and civilian lawmakers to understand military issues and policy nuances in approaching them. Classes or seminars that focus on bridging that civil-military gap would be very interesting to me.

You mentioned being pleasantly surprised by the curiosity of other Harris students–can you explain why that curiosity is so important?

I do feel like a lot of students can be a little bit apprehensive asking about the military. They are curious, but maybe are afraid of triggering some type of reaction or sounding uniformed. I want to encourage them to ask questions. Most service members are generally very happy to talk about it. If we’re at Harris, we’re probably policy nerds anyways, so if you want to put a policy spin on it, I’m sure that would be well-received.

One thing I would say: there is this tendency to do the whole “thank you for your service” thing, which is great, every service member does want to feel appreciated and valued, but personally, I would much rather be understood than thanked. That expression of genuine interest in the issues facing the military and its role in the world, to me, is the most meaningful thing that I could get out of an interaction with somebody who hasn’t served.