This event will take place on select Thursdays in April (04/04, 04/11, 04/25) from 6:00PM - 7:30PM at the Brookside Room in the UMKC Administrative Center. Rebecca Best, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science and Dr. Viviana Grieco, Professor, Department of History will be leading this course. It costs $40 to attend ($55 with a parking permit). There is also a Zoom option.

One year after the Jan 6 attack, CBS reported that 81 of those charged were military veterans or current servicemembers. In the final year of the Trump administration, Democrats and moderate Republicans called on high ranking military officers to hold the democratically elected president accountable and check his ambitions. In October 2023, after months of protests by military reservists and increasing politicization of the Israeli military, Israel was caught off guard by a devastating Hamas attack. Both are indicative of broader crises in civil-military relations within democracies. In the 1970s, Argentina’s civilian government was unable to defeat active guerrillas, and military forces seized the government, initiating the so-called “Dirty War” that “disappeared” and killed approximately 30,000 civilians between 1976 and 1983. This course will explore what Argentina’s experience in the Dirty War and its aftermath can teach us about modern civil-military relations in democracies and the risks of allowing civil-military relations crises to fester.