BU professor creates scholarship fund in memory of son killed in Iraq

Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, the father of an Army lieutenant slain last weekend in Iraq, is establishing a memorial fund at the university that may be used for scholarships.

The announcement came in a release from the school's BU Today online site.

The elder Bacevich, a former Army lieutenant colonel who served in Vietnam and Gulf War vet, has been a strong critic of President Bush's war in Iraq, calling such preventive wars "immoral, illicit, and imprudent.'' His son, 27-year-old Andrew John Bacevich, was a victim of a roadside blast on Sunday in Balad, Iraq.

The younger Bacevich, of Walpole, graduated from BU in 2003 with a degree in communications. He is the 56th service member from Massachusetts to be killed in Iraq.

The elder Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations, has been opposed to the war from the start. In March 2003, he wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "If, as seems probable, the effort encounters greater resistance than its architects imagine, our way of life may find itself tested in ways that will make the Vietnam War look like a mere blip in American history.''

In the BU Today release, Bacevich asks that, in lieu of flowers, people send contributions to:

First Lieutenant Andrew John Bacevich Memorial Fund

Boston University Donor Relations

One Sherborn St.

Boston, MA 02215

Checks should be made out to Trustees of Boston University, with the fund name in the memo line.

Correction: A Page One story Tuesday and a City & Region story Wednesday about the death in Iraq of the son of Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich gave an incorrect military rank for the elder Bacevich based on a profile of him in a BU magazine. He is a retired Army colonel.