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

Donald Alexander Downs · Ilia Murtazashvili

Feb 2012 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

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.

About the author

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.

Ilia Murtazashvili is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his research interests include institutional design and political economy.