1.
Dear members of ‘The Spectator’ editorial team,
I am writing with regard to the article ‘Veterans in the classroom’ in today’s issue of your paper. This article seems to be emblematic of an extremely worrying trend at VSU and in American higher education at large, namely the unquestioning and uncritical acceptance of military
perspectives and military values in higher education. In a democratic society with a supposedly clear separation of powers and institutional spheres, it
seems worrying that military values—hierarchy, authority, unquestioning obeisance of orders, the use of violence, etc.—are intruding into institutions of higher learning like VSU, apparently with no questions asked. In a society already characterised by an ever-growing punitive ‘carcereal archipelago’ and in an already crime-plagued and violent town like Valdosta, questions ought to be asked as to the role of military personnel in criminal justice programmes, instead of just uncritically offering a description of their activities, as in your article. Moreover, in a situation in which the USA is already engaged in two illegal wars of conquest abroad, questions ought to be asked at institutions of higher learning such as VSU as to the role which the military has come to play in this society. The total lack of awareness of those issues reflected in
your article is deeply troubling to me. It seems to contradict the very mission of this university.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Daniel Nehring
Assistant Professor of Sociology
2
Dear Mr. Johnson,
Ms. Green’s November 12th Article on “Veterans in the Classroom” was recently brought to my attention, and I am at a loss for words. As a ten-year service member in [...]
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