Acropolis

After fighting the “Good War,” a small group of soldiers enters Vassar College, previously a women-only institution, courtesy of the GI Bill, and each attempts to settle in to a civilian life. The clash of cultures between privileged and working classes combined with personal struggles with PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and simple civilian readjustment struggles, amid the creative intellectual world of higher education, makes for an engaging tale. As these young men struggle to recapture lives disrupted by war encounter the beginnings of the McCarthy era, each finds himself facing unexpected challenges. The response of the students and the Vassar administration to politically-motivated attacks upon academic freedom, free speech, and independence of thought blur long-held beliefs of patriotism and service, as the men are exposed through their college studies to the philosophies of Reinhold Niebuhr and others who question the nature of war, nationalism, and aggression, as well as the conflict between personal ethics and group patriotism.