THIS IS REGIS | FACULTY FOCUS
Michael Baxter Peace Activist and Director of Catholic Studies
Just before the 1990 Gulf War, Regis Director of Catholic Studies Michael Baxter assembled a team of counselors and traveled to Germany. In bars and backrooms, Baxter and the team spoke with U.S. soldiers who were considering becoming conscientious objectors.
The soldiers were weeks from being re-deployed to the Persian Gulf — and to a different era than when they enlisted during the Cold War. As part of the process, the soldiers met with the group to discern their consciences and fill out military paperwork. Their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush instituted the stop loss program, which retains service members past their original contractual end-of-service date, and conscientious objectors were met with resistance by the military. But Baxter continued his work. When
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he and the counselors returned home, they started a campaign of letter-writing to the military in support of the conscientious objectors. “I was always motivated by the idea that someone is caught in the machine of war and has conscience qualms about it, and no one wants to hear it,” Baxter said. “The Church teaches that this is an issue that one must discern by conscience. I thought the Church should be there.” Baxter, a former priest, joined the Regis faculty in 2015. Between earning a Ph.D. in Theology and Ethics from Duke University in 1996 and teaching, Baxter dedicated a large part of his career to counseling conscientious objectors. He got his start in 1980 in Colorado Springs when he was in his novitiate, a period of prayer and community for those intending to become Jesuit priests, and encountered peace activists.
