Nov.7 Symposium to Explore Military, Civic Culture in US

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

By Office of News & Public Affairs

The at-times tense, occasionally contentious relationship between military culture and civil society in the United States will be the focus of an afternoon symposium to be held this Saturday, Nov. 7, in Robsham Theater.

“Soldiers & Citizens: Military and Civic Culture in America,” the sixth annual Mass Humanities fall symposium, will feature panels of military experts, academics and journalists, who will discuss three inter-related topics: issues of race, gender and class across the two cultures; the implications of an all-volunteer army versus compulsory military service; and the role of the military and military issues in US electoral politics.

MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow, former Atlantic Monthly editor Cullen Murphy and UMass-Amherst History Professor Christian Appy, author of Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides, will serve as moderators.

The symposium begins at 12:45 p.m. with “Diversity in Uniform: Race, Gender, Class, Sexuality and Religion in the Armed Forces,” moderated by Appy. Panelists are: Mary Louise (Missy) Cummings, one of the first female Navy fighter pilots; Nathaniel Frank, frequent writer and commentator on gays in the military; Michael Weinstein, Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; and Lt. Col. Isaiah Wilson III, an associate professor at the US Military Academy at West Point.

Murphy will moderate the second panel, “United We Serve: The All Volunteer Force, National Service and Democracy,” at 2:15 p.m., which includes: retired Colonel Charles D. Allen, a faculty member at the United States Army War College; former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb; and Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

At 3:45 p.m., Maddow will moderate “Cultural Influences: The Military, Politics and Society in 21st Century America,” with: Pulitzer-winning journalist Rick Atkinson; Boston University Professor of International Relations and History Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power; and Sarah Sewall, director of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Program on national Security and Human Rights.

The symposium is free and open to the public. To register, and for more information on the panels and panelists, see www.masshumanities.org/?p=symposium.


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