“‘The Culture of the Army Wasn’t Ready’: Mental Health and Organizational Change During the Iraq War,” 11/8 Co-Sponsored Lecture with Columbus State Colonel Richard R. Hallock Distinguished University Chair in Military History David Kieran

In a lecture co-sponsored with MU’s Center for the Humanities, Columbus State University Colonel Richard R. Hallock Distinguished University Chair in Military History David Kieran will shed light on the mental health crisis the United States Army confronted during the Iraq War, focusing specifically on the challenges the Army faced, and the successes it had, as it wrestled with the complexities of implementing widespread change to organizational culture. The talk will be held on Friday, November 8, at 3:30pm in Jesse 410, and there will be no livestream option for this particular event.

Abstract

By 2007, it was clear that the United States Army was facing unprecedented challenges. Faced with increasing rates of post-traumatic stress, an elevated suicide rate, and other challenges, as well as public and political pressure to do something about what many considered a growing crisis in the ranks, Army leaders discovered that Soldiers were reluctant to seek help; some commanders were skeptical that troops were really facing serious issues; and clinicians were unsure how best to identify and treat those who needed help. As the demands of two protracted wars required continued deployments, Army leaders discovered that the challenges they faced were as much cultural as medical and embarked on imaginative and aggressive efforts to change the organization’s culture. This story of both successes and failures reveals how change takes place within a complex organization that is beholden to and part of a culture that enables war and stigmatizes mental health.

David Kieran is Associate Professor of History and the Colonel Richard R. Hallock Distinguished University Chair in Military History at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA. He is the author of Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military’s Mental Health Crisis (New York University Press, 2019) and Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). He is also the editor of The War of My Generation: Youth Culture and the War on Terror (Rutgers University Press, 2015); the co-editor, with Edwin A. Martini, of At War: The Military and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Rutgers University Press, 2018); and with Rebecca A. Adelman, of Remote Warfare: New Cultures of Violence (University of Minnesota Press, 2020). His scholarly articles have appeared in Modern American History, American Studies, The Journal of American Studies, War & Society, and the Journal of War & Culture Studies, as well as in eleven edited collections, and he has published op-eds in publications including Slate, The Washington Post, Psychology Today, The Albany Times-Union and the Toledo Blade. His current projects include a history of organizational change in the U.S. Army after Vietnam, tentatively entitled When In Charge, Take Charge: Carl Vuono, Max Thurman, and the Remaking of an Army (advance contract, the University of North Carolina Press); co-editing, with Beth Bailey, a volume examining how the Army has approached cultural change from the Second World War to the present; and co-editing, with Michael Denehy, an oral history collection, The Long War: American Experiences During the Iraq War. He earned his BA in English from Connecticut College and his PhD in American Studies at The George Washington University and he has received fellowships and grants from the American Culture Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis, the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mississippi State University. During the 2024-25 Academic Year, he is serving as the Harold K. Johnson Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.