There are several universities that are already engaged in such efforts, such as Tufts University and Boston University, but there is certainly room for many more to become involved. They are instead reliant on the resources passed down to them from parents and schoolteachers. They require a steady stream of affirmation and feel entitled to things they haven't earned. Democracy itself was at stake, but we were delivered by the sacrifice of our GI heroes. After ten weeks in the classroom, the course culminated in a one-week trip to the Washington DC area. That millennials advocate the use of the military but avoid serving denotes a deep tension at work in how they process the question of military intervention. As of 2011, the number of countries with some form of US military presence was up to nearly 150. We conclude by offering a list of policies that can be adopted to bring millennials closer to their peers in the military. Even mid-to-senior-level officers (O-4 to O-7) have the opportunity to do Pentagon rotations and engage with civilian defense officials. We see this distinction between supporting the troops and supporting the military as an institution in questions of policy and of trust in military messaging. Our group spent the first portion of the trip at the U.S. 8 tough transition for the Millennial generation, and while that may be true, the reality is Millennials that join the military do not represent a cross-section of American society, nor their generation. In the spring of 2012, we designed and taught a survey course for undergraduates, The US Military in International Security. Its adherents understand the one-thousand years of Revelation 20 to represent the entire span between Christ’s first and second advents, in which Jesus reigns from the right hand of the Father. Some suggest millennials are preoccupied with themselves and hedonistic. Firstly, it confirmed our intuition that there was some unmet demand for more avenues to engage with the issue of civil-military relations and the supposed civil-military divide. They joined the military after 9/11 and see the world through a lens that includes terrorism. Adolescent millennials could eat their Fruit Loops in peace, ignorant of the decades of political and military manoeuvring that had brought it to them. Considering topics here converge on its subject, I thought it would be good to reprint. The proximate cause of this shift in campus opinion was the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) law, which barred homosexuals from serving in the military and was often invoked to justify excluding the military from college campuses on the grounds that DADT constituted illegal discrimination. When they interact with service members or are asked their opinions of the military and its role in American foreign policy, then, they may not appreciate how much autonomy and responsibility an enlisted “grunt” may actually have had while deployed to an Afghan village, or how little influence even a high-ranking officer may have had in planning the war in Iraq. Here again, the prospect of military service is unappealing. Millennials are also the only demographic of which a majority does not support raising taxes to provide veterans with “the best health and retirement benefits” (CM1T 47). One of the primary conclusions we draw from the YouGov data is that millennials exhibit some skepticism about the US military as an institution while showing notable respect for men and women in uniform. Active-Duty Officers Teach Full Time at Civilian Institutions. Appears in Winter 2016. The best way to resolve the tension and ambivalence toward the military is to lean forward and own the conflict of today. Rather, it is in enabling interpersonal connections between young people and their peers in the military—connections that can inspire interest and important discussions about military and civilian values and the differences and commonalities between both groups. 1. How many Millennial vets? The generation prior to millennials stayed in their roles for roughly the same amount of time as millennials are now. They are the most technologically connected, but least socially communal group of people. In a period characterized by shockingly low levels of trust in our fundamental institutions, the military has consistently been the most trusted. The biggest and most important takeaway, therefore, was this: if there is indeed a millennial-military divide, the key to closing it is not in forcing millennials to learn more facts about the military or in studying American military history. Even if we completely owned and secured Iraq, the ideology and threat of terror would simply move elsewhere. A majority of millennials believes the military’s public portrayal of the progress made in the war in Afghanistan is either “very” or “somewhat” inaccurate, while just one in five millennials thinks it is “mostly” accurate, and only 1 percent believe it is “completely” accurate. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents are concerned that they have too much debt. Millennials’ views also clash with military policies on “social” issues, with 75 percent of young people supportive of allowing homosexuals to serve in the military and a majority disagreeing either “somewhat” or “strongly” with excluding women from the infantry. We've been dropping bombs in the Middle East for fifteen years, and there's no end in sight. There are a couple sources on the Census Bureau for this, but the best one links to data that shows about 1.7 million Millennial vets in 2014. In a study published by the Cato Institute from June 2015 on millennials' views of foreign policy, they were shown to be significantly less willing than older generations to resort to use of force in foreign affairs. The terrorist organizations were on their heels, but the countries in which we fought were left in political disarray, and US presence was the only thing staving off anarchy, and thus terrorist resurgence. And whether it's toward institutions, community clubs, or even relationships, they are markedly noncommittal. The second portion of the trip involved meetings with senior Pentagon officials, a visit to Andrews Air Force Base, Marine Corps Base Quantico, the House Armed Services Committee, and the White House Office of Public Engagement. But focusing on these issue-specific disagreements risks missing the proverbial forest for the trees. Lectures and PowerPoint, however well designed and presented, can only be so inspiring. Without understanding the basics of military structure and culture, millennials are liable to underappreciate the positive contributions of some service members, misattribute blame for failures to others, and, overall, fundamentally misconceive the nature of the military and its relationship with civilian policymakers and civil society. Selling a Home. Through a variety of media, from guest lectures to film screenings to a poetry performance by student veterans, the course exposed the students to basic facts about the US military and a variety of issues in civil-military relations. When we followed up with our counterparts at Annapolis, we were told that there was similarly strong feedback from the USNA midshipmen who were paired up with our students. The political turbulence of the past two decades has had an immense influence on this generation. Millennials do not exhibit the same open antagonism towards service members that many of their parents or grandparents might have during the Vietnam era, yet neither do many of them understand the difference between a sailor, a soldier, an airman, and a Marine. As the United States military begins its final drawdown from Afghanistan and reassesses its strategy and legacy in Iraq, millennials will begin to witness the end of a period that for most has comprised the majority of their lifetimes. Now, what does this have to do with millennials? Rather, we need fresh minds to approach the world as it is today and discover how a smarter and savvier military can make it better. Our youngest adult generation grew up watching this war drag on and internalized the overarching narrative that military intervention, far from solving the problem of terrorism in that region, has only exacerbated whatever problem there was. On factual questions, millennials are not much better: their mean estimate of the Marine Corps’ manpower was upwards of 3 million—off by a factor of twenty (CM1T 57). We welcome any and all feedback — please contact managing editor Dan Postma at dpostma@cardus.ca. While these are important topics worthy of scholarly attention in their own right, if they are to be more than interesting intellectual exercises, curricula must be redesigned (or new classes added) that emphasize interactivity in the classroom and interaction with service members through, for example, class trips to nearby bases or meetings on campus with visiting officers and enlisted personnel. There are lessons to learn from clumsy interventions of the past, but that lesson should not be apathy. Ostensibly the objective would be peace, but there is little evidence of moving toward that end anytime soon. Elizabeth Samet, a civilian English professor at West Point, has written about her experience helping cadets find meaning in literature and how the lessons they learned in her classroom stuck with them as they deployed and returned home. At civilian institutions of higher education, most courses on military strategy are in the context of ancient warfare, and discussion centers on strategic theory and accounts of battles long past. Many take for granted that our military should succeed with ease and don't appreciate the wonder that, despite encryption methods and a million places to communicate online, our military has been able to stay ahead in the new cyber arms race and dismantle hidden organizations intent on causing violence. To deny otherwise is to deny both recent polling and common observation. Millennium Space Systems says an experiment launched to space on Nov. 19 will show that a small satellite with a deployable tether can safely deorbit in about 45 days. Recent history taught us that wars are supposed to last four to eight years, tops. This would allow them to both share their perspectives as operators of finely tuned systems and make clear that there are many paths in the military other than that of the traditional infantry “grunt.” The service members, in turn, would bring to their next assignments a deeper knowledge of their field of study and a broader intellectual perspective; teaching skills, which are crucial to good leadership; and an understanding of the civilians they serve. There has been no shortage of discussion of their merits and demerits in the workplaces they've inherited from baby boomers and Gen-Xers. They dramatically overestimate its size, are not familiar with the myriad roles service members may play outside of combat, and frequently respond with uncertainty to other factual questions, suggesting a self-awareness about their lack of familiarity. As they process the question of how the military should be used today, millennials are uniquely without the advantage of having lived through the military engagements of prior decades. Moreover, millennials tend to seek jobs in which they can identify with the end goal. While the post-9/11 GI bill provides education benefits to veterans, it only covers the cost up to that of the state’s most expensive public university, and only does so for four academic years (thirty-six months). The opinions expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University. Some of the ideas we propose below are straightforward and relatively easy to implement, while others might be slightly more controversial and difficult to execute. Join 7000+ readers who receive fresh, thought-provoking articles once a week right in their inbox. All the more surprising, then, that when the student body voted on whether to support the Faculty Senate’s decision to invite ROTC back, those in favor won a plurality of the vote. Throughout this analysis, we will also offer observations from our own experiences as students at Stanford University teaching student-initiated courses on civil-military relations and leading a group of students to the United States Naval Academy and Washington DC. Use of the military is emphatically not an impotent effort doomed for quagmire. Claims that allowing ROTC to return would support an institution that murders innocents and preys on the poor and uneducated for recruits were met with the response (from civilian students, of course) that civilians should not question military policies because they could not possibly understand it without having served. The only sensible war is one that ends. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 2012 and received his M.A. This paper addressed the Millennials’ shaping factors, trends, spirituality, unique military issues, and concluded with eight Department Though the application of the jig will differ depending on the context in which it is applied, we can nevertheless use it to understand and evaluate the use of our military in past generations. Despite the furor over these topics and resistance to changes from within the military, though, only 41 percent of millennials believe the military’s treatment of women and homosexuals is unfair, lower than any other generation (CM1T 43). We have encountered many young people who were unaware that it is possible to be a lawyer, or a nurse, or a priest, or an electrician and have a significant role within the US military (whether on active duty or as a reserve billet). Unfortunately, the data do not point to an obvious explanation for why the military seems to receive the benefit of the doubt from young people. In a similar way, we can ask such questions about war: How did our cultural perception of military service change so drastically in just over half a century? Yet the slogan hails from victories of older wars. Within days of joining the Air Force, I learned that our favoured slogan is to "Fly, Fight, and Win." Another option would be to allow active-duty service members to participate in long-term civilian service programs while stationed stateside. In April 2011, just over forty years after the Stanford University faculty voted to kick the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program off campus, the Faculty Senate voted in favor of inviting ROTC programs back. Sept. 11 is critical not only to understanding policy, but also to understanding an entire generation: the millennials, or those born in 1982 through 2004. In November of 2015, shortly after the Paris attacks, a poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics revealed that 60 percent of millennials were in favour of the use of military force in Iraq and Syria to combat ISIL, yet only 15 percent were willing to serve in the military. When it comes to the military specifically, millennials are the least likely demographic to advise a close friend to join the military, perhaps suggesting that it is not seen as an attractive career option (CM2T 11). We observed anecdotally during the ROTC debate at Stanford that even students who were passionate about the issue displayed an ignorance of the basic organization, demographics, and principles of the military. 5. In the throes of total war, the service of the Greatest Generation saved the Western world from the ambitions of conquering tyrants on either side of the globe. So military service is, for many, a dubious proposition. Against the traditional jig that the purpose of a military is to achieve national defence and security, millennials have developed a counter-jig which assumes that the military is ill-suited to meet that purpose. So, even where the use of military force does not align with this jig, the tool is still useful for evaluating how the military should be used, and what a justifiable war looks like. Some sociologists characterize millennials as needing to be deeply involved in every aspect of the organization from top to bottom, and this can strain the military unit. See our, The Shipwrecked Book: Mark Lilla's Nostalgic Prison. The shift in opinions towards the military in the Stanford case highlights the need to update our understanding of how millennials view the military. The existence of extremist terrorism depends on little else than the ideology that spawns it and the Internet that propagates it, and neither of those things will go away soon. and, How does it achieve that end? In our review of the literature, there is a mixed finding. The problem today—and one could go so far as to call it a crisis—is that we're not sure how to win. The concept of "young millennials" will age out in … The demolition of cultural scaffolding made room for invisible cages. In that case, shorter exchanges, such as the week-long program we developed, can still be immensely valuable. Ultimately, exchange programs of any length are an essential tool for exposing future military officers to the independent, innovative thinking taught at the best civilian schools and for exposing civilian students to some of their most disciplined, driven, and service-oriented peers in the country. Another view finds they are volunteering a lot and giving of themselves. The issue of civil-military relations, particularly millennial-military relations, is one that merits further investigation and consideration, both in a scholarly sense and in the context of a broader societal discussion. The reality that is slowly settling in on us is that the conflict in which we've been engaged since 9/11 will likely continue indefinitely in multiple forms. Regardless of your take on young millennials in the military, all sides can agree on one point: The issue's about to become moot. Even some students who were personally and ideologically close with those opposed to ROTC’s return spoke in favor of it as bringing a diverse and underrepresented perspective to campus. Morris Fiorina is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Is all social conservation just defensive reaction? Because of this, some do not identify with their generation; this coincides with most millennials having a lack of exposure and … It is being stretched to solve problems we've never had to solve before. Adolescent millennials could eat their Fruit Loops in peace, ignorant of the decades of political and military manoeuvring that had brought it to them. 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