H-Net Review Publication: Salazar on Downs and Murtazashvili, 'Arms and the University: Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military Students'
Donald Alexander Downs, Ilia Murtazashvili. Arms and the University:
Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military
Students.
New York Cambridge
University Press, 2012. xiii + 441
pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-521-19232-3; $34.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-15670-7.
Reviewed by Heather Salazar (Norwich University)
Published on H-War (September, 2012) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
In _Arms and the University_,_ _Donald Alexander Downs
and Ilia Murtazashvili argue that institutionalized interaction in a university
setting between nonmilitary students and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps
(ROTC) strengthens civic and liberal education of both groups. The authors
contend that current tensions between the two groups stem from three historical
phenomena:
decreased civilian wartime participation, the American
public's rejection of the military following the Vietnam War, and both the
implementation and reversal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy. These
tensions, while not easily overcome, demonstrate productive friction between
the university's civilian population, the university's administration, and the
military. To overcome these tensions, open lines of communication and
interaction are required.
The American public's retreat from supporting a massive
standing military post-World War II and its eventual dismissal of Vietnam
weakened Americans' approval of military and university interaction.
The public questioned the presence of the military on
university campuses since the teaching and interaction that came in conjunction
with a military presence challenged the moral and ethical mind-sets of the
university. University officials moved toward removing ROTC programs as some of
them believed that the military could not meet their curriculum demands and
wanted to prevent further public outcry.
Eventually, after many discussions, along with petitions
and support from advocacy groups and alumni, university administrators began to
gradually reinstate ROTC programs.
A significant source of tension between the military and
the university lay in the DADT policy implemented in 1993. Some universities
did not reinstate their ROTC programs until after the repeal of DADT. However,
Downs and Murtazashvili show that even after the repeal of DADT in 2010, the
reinstatement of ROTC on university campuses was not inevitable. The authors
use Columbia University as a case study to show that even after its repeal,
administrators, students, alumni, and faculty failed to agree on how and when
the university should reinstate the program. Struggles to assimilate the
military onto campus with diversity, equality, and tolerance along with
military conceptions of patriotism, duty, and use of justifiable force
continued to plague administrators. The university held meetings to discuss the
role of ROTC on campus, the level of interaction between military and
nonmilitary students, and the availability of classes to both groups, and to
decide how to balance a liberal education with military education and training.
These discussions eventually led to the reinstatement of ROTC on campus but not
to the level previously known.
Despite these struggles, Downs and Murtazashvili
demonstrate how universities and the military benefit from each other. ROTC's campus presence may break nonmilitary
students' perceptions of equating the military with militarism by confronting
nonmilitary students with the institution itself. Having ROTC on campus
humanizes the military by showing that that officers too are people. The
university curriculum broadens officer candidates' education experience.
Universities are diversely populated and offer a chance for officers to learn
to interact with civilian populations. This education reinforces the
perspective of civilian control of the military, a key aspect of America's
military. The teaching and learning of military history on university campuses
is significant as well as it leads to active discussions on important issues
pertaining to the military, national security, and the university. The military
challenges thoughts and ideas in history and national security classes that
provide nonmilitary students with diverse perspectives on the reasons war is
fought and the lessons learned from the past. A well-rounded officer corps emerges
from the benefits they receive through interaction between ROTC and nonmilitary
students both in and out of the classroom.
Downs and Murtazashvili rely heavily on oral history
interviews, student surveys, and memos from Ivy League universities and the
University of Wisconsin. Their use of both qualitative and quantitative data
provides the reader with a study of the impact of ROTC at some of the country's
most elite universities. While this provides a detailed examination of the
emergence of ROTC, its removal, and reemergence at these universities, an
additional and more diverse sampling of America's schools would have given the
reader a stronger understanding of this issue.
_Arms and the University _highlights the importance of
discussing civil-military relations. The culture of the military and its
interaction with the civilian world significantly changed during the last
century, and Downs and Murtazashvili provide a detailed comparison and
explanation of the current relationship between universities and the military.
This book adds to the literature on civil-military relationships and
educational importance. As the authors demonstrate, these two components within
our society are critical in establishing a future well-rounded, well-educated
officer corps and a generation that understands the military's role in society.
Citation: Heather Salazar. Review of Downs, Donald
Alexander; Murtazashvili, Ilia, _Arms and the University: Military Presence and
the Civic Education of Non-Military Students_. H-War, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2012.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.