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From Bowdoin to the barracks: Francisco Navarro’s journey of public service through American Exceptionalism

January 31, 2025

Courtesy of Francisco Navarro
STUDYING AT SEA: Four Marines stand proudly in their gear, having completed the American Exceptionalism course taught by Bowdoin alumni Francisco Navarro that lasted nearly a year.

In his journey from Bowdoin student to a member of the United States Marine Corps, Francisco Navarro ’19 called upon the texts and teachings of Professor of Government Jean Yarbrough’s American Political Thought course.

From April to December 2024, Navarro taught a revised version of Yarbrough’s course to Marines aboard the USS Oak Hill deployed with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The course focused primarily on the Eastern Mediterranean.

Navarro was inspired to reteach the course after taking it as a first year at Bowdoin.

“I knew at the time how much I loved it, [but] I was still … too young to really, fully understand it, so I knew I always had to go back to it in some form,” Navarro said. “When this opportunity arose in deployment, I knew we would have some downtime, so in preparation [I thought], ‘What a perfect opportunity to revisit that syllabus and teach it.’”

Navarro believes that the U.S. Marines need more civic education, a point for which he advocated in the Naval publication Proceedings.

“Everyone gets enough of the Marine part [but] not enough of the U.S. part,” Navarro said. “There’s a baseline education in terms of general Marine Corps history, customs and traditions, … [but part of the Marine program] is creating a better citizen. So these are all things that were in the background.”

The course was offered to about 150 Marines, with about 14 attending the first class. Only five completed the course. However, this did not surprise nor discourage Navarro, for the optional nature of the course was designed to cultivate a group of students committed to learning.

By and large, Navarro maintained the texts and structure from Yarbrough’s course, though he removed some of her readings on Jefferson and added more classical political philosophy from the likes of Aristotle and Plato. The course examined the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the works of Lincoln and other key American thinkers.

Navarro re-titled the course American Exceptionalism, because he felt it was more befitting of a class that attempted to highlight the most unique and positive features of the American system.

“I think that’s really what [the course] underlines, once you actually understand it and read it and put it into perspective of … the Western tradition nations that consider themselves free,” Navarro said. “What does it mean to be a republic? What does it mean to be a constitutional republic? What does it mean to be the first one of all of these things?”

Navarro, who graduated as a Government and Legal Studies major, said he was inspired to join the Marines due to his family background and alumni connections initiated by his professors.

“I had always had this baseline patriotism, because I am the son of Cuban immigrants who lost their country to communism,” Navarro said. “But I didn’t really know what that meant.… I went to Washington thinking I liked government and politics, [but] I didn’t like what I found. So I asked myself, who do I want to be around?… Then I started just calling a bunch of Bowdoin alumni who were Marines, and one thing led to another.”

Navarro also cited his connections with Yarbrough, who invited him to an annual dinner with the Bowdoin Marine Corps society, and Professor of Government Chris Potholm, whose board outside his office displayed all the Bowdoin alumni serving in military careers, as playing key roles in him becoming a Marine.

According to Professor Yarbrough, Navarro kept in touch with her throughout his career, and reached out after the course had concluded, though she was not involved in the planning of the course Navarro taught.

“I knew him very well.… I heard from him when he decided to become a Marine,” Yarbrough said. “He writes to me whenever he’s somewhere interesting to let me know what he’s up to. And when he got engaged, he told me that.”

Ultimately, Navarro hopes his work has inspired a further reevaluation of what it means to be an American.

“What [American Political Thought] does, and what this course [American Exceptionalism] attempted to do, is a work of restoration,” he said. “It’s saying … ‘Here are the pillars of this country. Let’s dust them off.’ … You look at what you’ve been given. A huge lesson to anyone who is an American, or wants to be an American, is that you have a duty to understand what that means, because being a citizen is an immense gift, but it also means you owe something back.”

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