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.

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
 

Ellen Moore is a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the University of California, Berkeley.