Description: 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 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.
Brief description: Donald Alexander Downs is Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science, Law, and Journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of five books: Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment; The New Politics of Pornography; More than Victims: Battered Women, the Syndrome Society, and the Law; Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University; and Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus. He is the co-founder and director of the Wisconsin Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy at the University of Wisconsin and a frequent contributor to local, state, national and international media.
Review Quotes: "Distrust or disdain for 'the military' may foster one's isolation from those more familiar with it, and lead to mutual misunderstanding. Utilizing relevant political theory and sound empirical evidence, Downs and Murtazashvili demonstrate that the university's role in providing civic and liberal education is fostered, rather than injured, by enabling members of ROTC units and student veterans to interact with other students in classrooms (and cafeterias). They note cogently that ignorance of military institutions and wars impede students and potential future policymakers from grasping strategic limits in crises. A long overdue case for the return of ROTC to those campuses that exiled them over a generation ago, as well as a good brief for the teaching of military history." --Peter Karsten, University of Pittsburgh, author of Law, Soldiers & Combat