The idea took shape at Gettysburg. While touring the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania, four Stanford juniors with an interest in government began discussing what students need to know about the military. History was whispering that citizenship, especially for aspiring policy makers, requires an understanding of the armed services, from their basic operations to their culture.
Or maybe history was shouting. "We're all interested in such a broad range of issues," notes Kate Powell, '10. "But I had never been exposed to the kinds of military questions that this raised for us." Powell and two of her tour mates, Courtney Khademi, '10, and Kelly Gleischman, '10, saw little in Stanford's curriculum that would fill the gap, so they developed a student-initiated course about military strategy. The class, which revolved around speakers such as the Hoover Institution's national security affairs fellows, took place last spring and foreshadowed an initiative involving other universities.
Powell, Khademi and Gleischman's efforts were aimed at the Stanford community. About the same time, the Truman National Security Project Educational Institute in Washington, D.C., was looking for students who could oversee a similar undertaking—ideally, to bridge what it sees as a long-brewing disconnect between future political leaders and people in the military—at a handful of U.S. universities. The faculty sponsor for the Stanford student-initiated course was Hoover senior fellow Larry Diamond, and he put the educational institute in touch with the class organizers. Powell, Khademi and Gleischman became Truman employees who plan and coordinate events at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and the University of Chicago, as well as at Stanford.
Diamond, '73, MA '78, PhD '80, also is a senior fellow with the institute's sister organization, the Truman National Security Project, which offers specialized instruction to individuals it identifies as potential progressive leaders. Rachel Kleinfeld, the chief executive and president, says it's fair to characterize the organization as center-left ideologically but emphasizes a viewpoint that has both Democratic and Republican adherents. It's vital, said Kleinfeld in an email, to move beyond a Cold War mentality and focus on "a world where we have malevolent state-based threats such as Iran, malevolent non-state-based threats such as al-Qaeda, and malignant threats such as climate change and our energy posture that exacerbate our traditional threats."
Both Truman organizations are nonprofits, but the educational institute eschews all political or partisan activity. Among its endeavors are Military 101 presentations that offer an introduction to the different service branches, including a demographic overview of enlistees and officers, and discussion about military values.
Powell, Khademi and Gleischman (plus fourth Gettysburg tour mate Jessie Knight, '10, and Wil Treseder, '11, a former U.S. Marine) first arranged a Military 101 session at Stanford in November, drawing a few more than a dozen people. A second presentation in January attracted a crowd of about 40. Both sessions were conducted by Paul Clarke, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and Truman senior fellow, and Ben Renda, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and Truman fellow.
In January, in addition to clicking through a slide show with facts and figures, they sprinkled in anecdotes such as Clarke's account of how, despite his 20 years in the Air Force, his sister's routine question was always, "How's Army life?" And Renda prodded the audience for the names of military-themed movies and TV shows as a way to discuss casual public perceptions and stereotypes.
"Our main focus at the start has been to create a much more open discussion," says Khademi, who's among those concerned that antimilitary sentiment has dampened scholarly attention to security issues at elite universities. "We're going to work on a transition to students who come after us, so this gets passed on."
