Benjamin Dubansky, Brooke Dubansky, Brandon Ballengée, and Christopher Just, in collaboration with Le Bleu Perdu Project, "Fresh Sea," from the series Né dans le peche (Born in Sin), 2024. Digitized image from a histology slide of American alligator osteoderm, stained with a modified version of Ramón y Cajal’s picroindigo-carmine and Kernechtrot Nuclear Fast Red. Courtesy of the artists, Le Bleu Perdu Project, Atelier de la Nature.

Flashback: Remember the Draft

May 25, 2018

5/25/18 – Universal conscription—the draft—ended 45 years ago, and NPR is marking the milestone with a new series on the shift to an all-volunteer military. In Issues, two analysts have taken an even deeper look, concluding with a call for return of the draft. “Our thesis is simple,” they said. “We believe it is neither socially nor technically advisable to rely on a progressively smaller group of specialists, increasingly separate from the rest of society, to provide the collective defense, nor does having such a small elite control the tools of modern, automated, and computerized war comply with democratic principles.”