Author Archives: Meredith Kleykamp
Military spouses to veteran spouses
It’s been a while since we’ve posted here, so thanks if you’re reading this. Professional life has a cadence, and for a variety of reasons, the cadence of work and life has led to a lull in our posting. Hopefully we can get back in the saddle! As a scholar of veterans and their experiences, […]
Teaching (about) Veterans
This semester I’m back to the classroom to teach a large, general education course, Veterans in American Society (SOCY120 here at UMD.) I spent a lot of time designing and pitching this course as one that would meet the i-Series requirements here at UMD so I could teach a class that could broadly connect undergraduate students to veterans issues.
When A Simple Statistic Isn’t So Simple: The Story of Rural Enlistments
On Monday April 3 I participated in a congressional briefing sponsored by the Population Association of America, and several other organizations, on the demography of rural America. I was asked to present about rural veterans in the short time span of twelve minutes, but twelve minutes goes by quickly and doesn’t offer much time to […]
Who supports contemporary US veterans? And who’s lying about it?
In the nearly fifteen years since we began “creating” veterans of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it would seem that the public has embraced contemporary veterans. The ritual of thanking those who serve or have served in the military at sporting events is one example. While veterans from the Vietnam War may have returned […]
Do employers discriminate against veterans in hiring?
I am currently in Tucson at the Arizona Methods Workshops refreshing and updating my knowledge on experiments in social sciences. It’s been a number of years since I last conducted a field experiment of hiring, often called an audit study. This research method is deceptively simple—send applications for fictitious job seekers in response to real […]
Military graduate students in civilian universities
In recent years, the Department of Defense has made the wise decision to allow mid-career officers increased opportunity to pursue advanced degrees at civilian universities. There have long been programs allowing officers to earn civilian graduate degrees as part of their official military duties, but these opportunities appear to be on the rise. I am […]
Military service as a transformative experience
In Transformative Experience, philosopher L.A. Paul grapples with the dilemma of how to make decisions about life-changing experiences when the nature of that experience can’t be understood until experienced, and when the experience itself might change the very values upon which one would make such decisions. She offers several running examples of transformative experiences, such […]
What’s the best state for veterans?
I frequently see links to sites purporting to identify the Best ___ for Veterans. Best Cities for Veterans, Best Colleges for Veterans (although this list is different from this one, or this one, or the others that circulate on the internet.) These rankings combine multiple criteria like actual outcomes for veterans, availability of veteran-connected resources, and […]
Veterans Day and popular attention to veterans
If you’re like many other internet users, your interest in veterans peaks on November 11 each year. Google Trends data shows the relative frequency of searches for “veteran” or “veterans” spikes on November 11 each year–Veterans Day. From my own research analyzing major media attention to veterans, a similar pattern emerges if we look at […]
Sidra Montgomery
Meredith Kleykamp
Veteran Scholars 