My article for the New Journal at Yale:

“Gallup’s annual institutional confidence survey reports that the military is now the most trusted institution in the United States. It handily beats out the church, the medical system, the Supreme Court and the presidency. But the topic of the YVA summit—the civilian-military divide—suggests that rebuilding a relationship within the academe may not be easy. The bridge the University has chosen is an élite one, with illustrious faculty, officer-track students, and only a handful of veterans to inform classroom debates with first-hand experience. For the modern liberal arts university, the frontlines still seem far away.

“I think there’s a little bit of responsibility for me and other veterans to bring the perspective of combat to the table and to help enlighten undergrads and grads and faculty members as to what the reality on the ground is like,” said Chris Harnisch, a master’s student at the School of Management and the President of the Yale Student Veteran’s council.

Students like him are facing a large swath of the Yale population that has set foot on campus without ever having met a member of the U.S. armed forces, even though the country has been at war for the majority of their lifetimes.