The Role of the Military in Modern America: Somewhere Between a Coup and Agents of a Regime

Join award-winning scholar and Navy veteran Allen Linken for a frank discussion about the fascinating and often misunderstood role of the military in today’s society. With fewer and fewer people serving in the military, there is a disconnect emerging in the United States about what the military is and what they actually do. Coupled with high profile tensions between the military and civilian society that most recently include women in combat and whether military commanders should be able to prosecute sexual assault crimes, there are deepening concerns about the role of the military. What autonomy should we have in the military? How do we strike a balance where soldiers are not openly hostile to civilian leadership, leading to a coup, while not blindly following civilian leadership, causing them to be agents of a regime?

Dr. Allen Linken earned his J.D. at Albany Law School, his M.P.P at the University at Albany, and Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. After completing his J.D., Linken served as a judge advocate for the United States Navy both in the United States and abroad, deploying to both Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

After serving on active duty, Linken earned his Ph.D., and his research focuses on civil-military relations, and specifically examining and understanding the civil-military gap, which is, broadly, the relationship between civil society as a whole and the military, and the space between understandings of each group.  His research and analysis have been published in academic presses and respected blogs. He has served as chair and discussant of multiple panels at professional conferences and is currently writing his first book, on modern civil-military relations. Linken’s teaching centers on examining law from multiple perspectives and cultivating each student’s understanding and voice in discussing it.