Grateful Nation: Student Veterans and the Rise of the Military-Friendly Campus (Global Insecurities)

In today's volunteer military many recruits enlist for the educational benefits, yet a significant number of veterans struggle in the classroom, and many drop out. The difficulties faced by student veterans have been attributed to various factors: poor academic preparation, PTSD and other postwar ailments, and allegedly antimilitary sentiments on college campuses. In Grateful Nation Ellen Moore challenges these narratives by tracing the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at two California college campuses. Drawing on interviews with dozens of veterans, classroom observations, and assessments of the work of veteran support organizations, Moore finds that veterans' academic struggles result from their military training and combat experience, which complicate their ability to function in civilian schools. While there is little evidence of antimilitary bias on college campuses, Moore demonstrates the ways in which college programs that conflate support for veterans with support for the institutional military lead to suppression of campus debate about the wars, discourage antiwar activism, and encourage a growing militarization. Ellen Moore is a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the University of California, Berkeley. "Through extensive work with hundreds of veterans and a detailed investigation into veterans in college, Ellen Moore has powerfully illuminated and analyzed the ways the military has strategically positioned itself in US society. She has done something unique and powerful in the scholarship of war and peace—a work that should be broadly disseminated and debated." — Rick Ayers, Huffington Post Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Basic Training: Making the Soldier, Militarizing the Civilian 25 2. What They Bring with Them: Effects of Military Training on Student Veterans 43 3. Campus Veteran Support Initiatives 77 4. Veteran Self-Help: Embracing, Re-creating, and Contesting Gendered Military Relations 97 5. Spectral Wars and the Myth of the Antimilitary Campus 127 6. "Thank You for Your Service": Gratitude and Its Discontents 165 Conclusion 189 Notes 201 Bibliography 237 Index 253 Basic training : making the soldier, militarizing the civilian -- What they bring with them : effects of military training on student veterans -- Campus veteran support initiatives -- Veteran self-hel p: embracing, re-creating, and contesting gendered military relations -- Spectral wars and the myth of the antimilitary campus -- "Thank you for your service" : gratitude and its discontents Tracing the college experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, Ellen Moore challenges the popular narratives that explain student veterans' academic difficulties while showing how these narratives and institutional support for the military lead to suppression of campus debate about the wars, discourage anti-war activism, and encourage a growing militarization