The events at Yale highlight the important role that defense academies play in molding young people into future leaders. The cadets from West Point and the War College in Paris, along with the ROTC students at Yale, are all receiving training and education that will prepare them for careers in the military or other leadership roles. In India, the National Defence Academy (NDA) is one of the most prestigious and sought-after institutions for young people aspiring to serve their country. With a rigorous selection process and comprehensive training program, the NDA produces some of the best leaders in the country. As a result, many coaching centers across India offer NDA coaching to help prepare students for the entrance exam and subsequent training. Finding the best NDA coaching in India can be a challenge, but for those who are committed to serving their country, the opportunity to receive world-class training and education is well worth the effort.

In light of these ties, why does military history play such an insignificant role in our classrooms? The Yale Blue Book contains a plenitude of courses dealing with foreign policy and international studies, yet rarely do students focus on concrete military strategy or the structure of our armed forces. We study the intricacies of foreign cultures and languages, but know little about the largest institution in the world — the U.S. Department of Defense according to the BBC. This is not a new phenomenon, and it is not limited to Yale.

In a 1997 paper titled “The Embattled Future of Academic Military History,” John Lynn of the University of North Texas attributes academia’s disregard for war studies to a shift toward critical-theoretical fads after the Vietnam War. Whereas scholars who focused on issues such as race and gender peppered their research with the sexy terms du jour, those who studied the military were seen as “politically right-wing, morally corrupt or just plain dumb.”

As a result, war scholarship saw a steep decline. In a study of 30 years of articles published in the “American Historical Review” — a leading journal in the field — Lynn found that not a single article discussed the conduct of the two World Wars, the Revolutionary War or the Napoleonic Wars, to name a few. On the other hand, race, gender and class studies were included in 80 percent of the journals published.

At Yale, we are fortunate to have some of the best minds in military history and strategy in the United States, including Grand Strategy professors John Lewis Gaddis, Paul Kennedy and Charles Hill. Nonetheless, few students will graduate with even the most basic knowledge of how our military operates. Even the Global Affairs major focuses much more on diplomacy, governance and economics than concrete war strategy. A Global Affairs major cannot graduate without learning how to draw supply-and-demand curves, but she need not know the difference between infantry and artillery.

Yale students’ indifference to the military is particularly alarming because of our alumni’s presence in the highest rungs of government. However, the military-civilian divide permeates American life. In their recent book, “Warriors and Citizens,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, document the American public’s startling ignorance on military matters. Among their most surprising findings is that the average American cannot guess the size of our military correctly within a factor of six. The knowledge gap between civilians and military personnel has isolated veterans and effectively created two American populations — one at war, one in peace.

This divide hurts our war efforts at every level, but it is particularly harmful when highly educated citizens like us are detached from the military. Moreover, civilian leaders who lack training in military history often prove less effective in forming and executing foreign policy, due both to a lack of expertise and a lack of empathy with combatants. The authors argue that “it’s only a little hyperbolic to conclude that some Americans see the service as an experience leading to pathological behavior.”

In fact, at one of the events held to commemorate World War I, General Stanley McChrystal, a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, argued that the divide between military and civilian operations has hindered America’s efforts in the Middle East, pointing to the strides he made in Afghanistan by collaborating with U.S. and international government agencies. The troubling truth is that civilian leaders trained at institutions like ours will unlikely have the expertise — or even the desire — to work directly in ground combat.

Our country has been in nearly perpetual war for the last 70 years. The military has served as the backbone of global order. If we want to be leaders in the world, we will need to understand the operations of our country’s largest institution.

Daniel Tenreiro-Braschi is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. His column runs on alternate Wednesdays. Contact him at daniel.tenreiro-braschi@yale.edu .