Going to War to Go to College: Students Veterans in Academic Contact Zones By Ellen Moore A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Social and Cultural Studies in Education in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Jean Lave, Chair Glynda Hull Gillian Hart Wendy Brown Spring 2014 2 Abstract Going to War to Go To College: Student Veterans in Academic Contact Zones By Ellen Moore Doctor of Philosophy in Education University of California, Berkeley Professor Jean Lave, Chair In the current all-volunteer U.S. military, many low-income recruits enlist for educational benefits. Yet many veterans find that their military training and combat experience complicate their ability to function in civilian schools; many drop out. Extensive research explores military training methods and outcomes of the G.I. Bill, yet little has been written about site-specific intersections of military and civilian pedagogies and cultures on college campuses. Moreover, there has been little written about how the presence of student veterans on contemporary campuses affects public discourse about U.S. involvement in foreign wars. This dissertation contests one often-cited explanation for low veteran success rates in college: that civilian campuses are anti-military, and by extension, hostile to veterans. Using Lave’s analysis of situated learning and Pratt’s notion of ‘contact zones’, and drawing upon Gramsci’s concept of ‘common sense’, this dissertation explores the experiences of U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans on two California college campuses. It follows student veterans as their previous military socialization comes into contact and conflict with civilian academic, student and cultural norms. Drawing on interviews, observation of classes and everyday practice of veteran support NGOs, the dissertation shows that conflicting pedagogical and cultural norms and practices, rather than ostensible hostility towards veterans, impede veterans’ success in higher education. There is little evidence to support the claim that contemporary college campuses show anti-veteran bias; indeed, framing campuses as hostile to veterans and conflating veteran support with support for U.S. wars produces a militarized common sense. Militarized common sense is a worldview based on the assumptions that war is a natural and necessary aspect of maintaining and protecting nationhood; that military priorities are more important than non-military ones; and that war veterans should serve as positive public symbols and proxies for U.S. military projects and wars. Acceptance of these common-sense understandings has the effect of silencing debate and dissent about the wars on campuses. The trope of the anti-military campus, while not reflective of contemporary reality, is rooted in historic narratives about the Vietnam War, and when veteran support programs are embedded in a context of uncritical esteem for the military, veteran support becomes a social force that organizes and regulates public discourse about the wars. Through the creation of discourses of care for student veterans, which simultaneously frame veterans as victims of discrimination and as heroes deserving of 1 public valorization, campuses promote programs that conflate support for the veteran with uncritical support for the institution of the military, which has the effect of silencing debate on campus about contemporary military conflicts. This dissertation reveals some of the unintended consequences of these discourses of care. Campus veteran support efforts that conflate support for veterans with support for the military may be counter- productive to veterans, their teachers and classmates, because they tend to preclude candid discussions about the U.S. military and U.S. wars, which can heighten the cultural divide between civilians and military members. Moreover, for many veterans, these enforced silences, coupled with heroic narratives about past and current wars, increase the cognitive dissonance between veterans’ lived military experience and their campus lives, which in turn can negatively affect their success in college. 2 Dedication To Charlie, Josie and Maya, with love. i Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Origin Story ........................................................................................................................................... 1 Situated militarism ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Militarist Hegemony ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Banal Militarism, Gendered Nationalism ............................................................................................. 7 Combat Trauma .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Research Goals, Questions and Methods .................................................................................... 9 Ethnographic Method ................................................................................................................................ 11 Research Settings: Rural Community College and Urban University .................................... 12 Halcón College .............................................................................................................................................. 12 Northern University ................................................................................................................................... 13 Interviews ...................................................................................................................................................... 13 Participant recruitment process ........................................................................................................... 15 Terminology .................................................................................................................................................. 15 Overview of Chapters ................................................................................................................................ 17 Chapter 1: Basic Training: Making the Soldier, Militarizing the Civilian ........... 21 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 21 Basic Training: Pedagogies of Power and Domination ...................................................... 22 Role Dispossession: Unmaking the Civilian ..................................................................................... 24 Standardization through Ritualized Practice .................................................................................. 31 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 2: What They Bring with Them: The Imprint of Military Training on Student Veterans.................................................................................................................... 38 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 38 Pedagogical and Cultural Disjunctures .................................................................................... 40 Divergent Practices—College and Military ...................................................................................... 40 Pedagogical Disjunctures: Kinesthetic and Abstract Learning Styles ................................... 41 Practical Competence and Theoretical Comprehension ............................................................. 44 Cultural Disjuncture: “Battle Buddies” and Individual Orientation ...................................... 46 Explicit and Covert Formality and Hierarchy .................................................................................. 49 Relations of Formality and Informality .............................................................................................. 51 Habituation to External Command and Independent Self-Regulation ................................. 52 Traumatic Response in the Classroom: Cody ........................................................................ 56 Silences and Erasures: Compounding Alienation ................................................................ 62 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter 3: Campus Veteran Support Initiatives ........................................................ 66 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 66 Services at the Sites ......................................................................................................................... 67 Services at NU: building on Transfer Student Services ............................................................... 71 Differential resources create differential outcomes ....................................................................