Arms and the University
Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military Students

Demonstrates how some military presence on campus can contribute to the diversity of ideas and the education of all students.

Donald Alexander Downs (Author), Ilia Murtazashvili (Author)

9780521192323, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 February 2012

456 pages, 14 tables
24.1 x 16.1 x 2.5 cm, 0.76 kg

"Anyone who visits the nation's major universities observes the ubiquity of athletics and the absence of the military. Although the United States has been at war for a decade, our universities have largely avoided any serious discussion of the subject. Arms and the University explains the sources of military exclusion on many campuses, and it examines the intellectual and policy ramifications. The authors make an eloquent case for liberal education and the vital role that military perspectives must play, along with non-military points of view, in a free marketplace of ideas. Every citizen who cares about contemporary foreign policy, civil-military relations, and the health of democracy should read this urgent book." —Jeremi Suri, University of Texas, Austin, author of Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama

Alienation between the U.S. military and society has grown in recent decades. Such alienation is unhealthy, as it threatens both sufficient civilian control of the military and the long-standing ideal of the 'citizen soldier'. Nowhere is this issue more predominant than at many major universities, which began turning their backs on the military during the chaotic years of the Vietnam War. Arms and the University probes various dimensions of this alienation, as well as recent efforts to restore a closer relationship between the military and the university. Through theoretical and empirical analysis, Donald Alexander Downs and Ilia Murtazashvili show how a military presence on campus in the form of ROTC (including a case study of ROTC's return to Columbia and Harvard universities), military history and national security studies can enhance the civic and liberal education of non-military students, and in the process help to bridge the civil-military gap.

Part I. A Normative and Pedagogical Framework: 1. The closing of the university mind: the military/university gap and the problem of civic and liberal education
2. Education in the regime: how a military presence can enhance civic and liberal education
Part II. ROTC and the University: 3. ROTC and the university: an introduction
4. ROTC and the Ivies: before the storm
5. ROTC and the Ivies: the divorce
6. ROTC, Columbia, and the Ivy League: Sisyphus renews his quest to renew a troubled relationship
7. Post-DADT: Sisyphus nears the top of the mountain
8. Pedagogy and military presence: the educational influence of student-soldiers in their own words
9. Winning hearts and minds?: The consequences of military presence for non-military students
Part III. Military History Examined: 10. Military history: an endangered or protected species?
11. Half empty or half full?: Military historians' perspectives on the status of military history and the leading departments
12. Military presence in security studies: political realism (re)considered
13. Security studies in the wake of the Cold War university: paragons of productive fiction, or throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Part IV. Concluding Thoughts: 14. Conclusion: placing the military in the university.

Subject Areas: Military administration [JWJ], Politics & government [JP], Higher & further education, tertiary education [JNM], Moral & social purpose of education [JNAM]