Heather M. Haley

Affiliation:

Auburn University

Advisor:

Dr. Melissa Blair

Academic Interests:

U.S. Military History

Dissertation:

“Unsuitable and Incompatible: Ensign Vernon “Copy” Berg, Bisexuality, and the Cold War U.S. Navy”

Bio Note:

Heather M. Haley (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate who focuses on twentieth-century U.S. social and military history. Her primary research identifies how citizenship rights and military service intersected in the Cold War U.S. military. In her dissertation project, “Unsuitable and Incompatible: Ensign Vernon “Copy” Berg, Bisexuality, and the Cold War U.S. Navy,” Haley chronicles the incongruities in official policy between the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the armed forces as it related to the compatibility of homosexuals—a catch-all that includes gay men and women and bisexuals—with federal employment and active duty military service. This research has received financial support from the Adams Center for Military History & Strategic Analysis at the Virginia Military Institute, the Society for Military History, and the Department of History at Auburn University.

Haley is the recipient of the 2021 Graduate Student Prize in Applied Military History. Presented by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Project on History and Strategy and the Society for Military History, the prize is awarded to the author of the best essay that uses rigorous academic historical study in military history to inform international security problems relevant to current policymakers. Heather’s research, “Suppressing the Homosexual Menace: Harvey Milk, Vernon “Copy” Berg, and the Navy’s Lavender Scare,” is under consideration for publication in the Journal of Military History. She is the first woman to receive this prize. In April 2020, Haley received accolades from the Graduate School at Auburn University in the form of the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award to recognize her outstanding accomplishment and scholarly achievement in history.

Heather received her Public History certification in 2018. With the oral history skills she honed as a student of the Auburn University Public History Program, Heather initiated the Social Justice and Women’s Right’s Oral History Project. As the project lead, she conducts and transcribes oral histories and collects ephemera from the students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni of Auburn University who participated in local, regional, and national marches to advocate for women’s rights, science- and evidence-based policy, and social justice. Following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, Heather expanded the project to feature BIPOC voices, specifically students, faculty, and staff who continue to fight for social justice at Auburn University. She has partnered with the Ralph Brown Draughton Library Special Collections and Archives to permanently display the collection’s audio and visual contents online, making the materials accessible to researchers. The project has been generously funded through a Women’s and Gender Studies Program grant, the Samia I. Spencer Creative Mentorship Award (2019) and the Frank Sturm Memorial Fellowship (2021) from the Graduate School.

Heather Haley holds a master’s degree in history from Texas State University. While under the direction of Ellen Tillman, her thesis, “Strategic Surprise: The Dispersal of Agent Orange in Vietnam and Korea in the late-1960s,” received the distinction of Outstanding Master’s Thesis in the Humanities and Fine Arts from the College of Liberal Arts.

She may be found on Twitter under the handle @gallifraean. (All views, posts, and opinions shared on her personal Twitter feed are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Auburn University or the Society for Military History.)


Updated July 2021

Stacks Image 3600