The road from Harvard to Washington D.C. is a well-traveled path. The boundaries between academia and public policy have always been slim ones here, where countless professors have exchanged their scholarly robes for three-piece suits.

High-profile policy makers, like Ford Administration Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger '50 and one-time National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy '48, once taught at Harvard before their newsmaking days. Bundy was even dean of the Faculty prior to joining the President's inner circle in 1961.

Indeed, at that time, President John F. Kennedy '40 transported several Harvard professors to Washington under his administration.

And today, even with a Yale graduate in the White House, Harvard's professors are making headway--in Cabinet chambers, in the Justice Department and in the Defense Department, among other branches.

In particular, the recent outbreak of war and conflict in the Middle East has emphasized the position of scholars, particularly regional specialists and military strategists, in the Bush Administration entourage.

During the Vietnam War, planners looked to various experts to help them formulate public and military policy for the effort. And in these times, more than ever, Harvard professors say both media and government officials are seeking their advice.

ABC News

Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine general and former Vietnam War strategist, has appeared around-the-clock as a top military analyst for ABC News. In his spare time since the war started, he is director of the National Security Program at the Kennedy School of Government.

Reflecting on his experience in the military, Trainor says he is able to compare the current Middle East crisis to those that the U.S. has faced before. As a scholar now, Trainor can take the time to think about long-range issues--problems that often escape current military officials.

Trainor and other policy analysts, notibly Walburg Professor of Economics emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith, say that policy makers' inattention to military history and scholarship has led them astray. For instance, Galbraith and Trainor both say the Administration is relying too heavily on the use of air power against the enemy--a tactic that proved largely ineffective during World War II and Vietnam.

"Historical evidence has proven that the use of air power does not necessarily win the war," says Trainor. "In World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, it had little impact."

Beyond the military experts, scholars of public policy and international relations have sought to add their voices to the Middle East conflict. The U.S. role in that region's future, some professors say, is equally vital to the Administration's planning process.

After World War II, the U.S. emerged with the financial ability to help rebuild devastated European and Japanese economies, says Albert B. Carnesale, an academic dean and Littauer professor of public policy and administration at the Kennedy School. But today, the scholar and occasional foreign policy advisor says many industrial nations, including the U.S., "are not in the best of economic shape."

Getting the short-term go-getters to think about long-term goals is not always easy, some Harvard scholars say.

Kurt M. Campbell, an assistant professor at the Kennedy School who just returned from a stint as special assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says some advisors are "trying to spur long-term planning, but it is not yet at an advanced level."