Charles Moskos was born May 20,1934, in Chicago, Illinois, to ethnic Greek parents who migrated to the US from the Greek-inhabited village of Catiste, Ottoman Empire.
30 Facts About Charles Moskos
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Charles Moskos was drafted into the US Army right after graduation in 1956.
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Charles Moskos's first teaching job was at the University of Michigan, but he was recruited to Northwestern University, where he was one of the most popular sociology professors in the school.
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Charles Moskos visited American troops in Vietnam ; the Dominican Republic ; Honduras ; Panama ; Saudi Arabia ; Somalia ; Haiti ; North Macedonia ; Hungary ; Bosnia and the Serb Republic ; Kosovo ; Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq.
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Charles Moskos insisted that enforcing a shared military experience for Americans of different classes, races and economic backgrounds forged a sense of common purpose.
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Charles Moskos was a respected source for the military and the media and his influence in the military went very high.
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In 2005 Charles Moskos completed a study for the Joint Chiefs of Staff on international military cooperation.
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Charles Moskos was the author of All That We Can Be: Black Leadership And Racial Integration The Army Way, which won the Washington Monthly award for the best political book of 1996.
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Charles Moskos was a leading figure in the field of civil-military relations.
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Charles Moskos was decorated by the governments of the United States, France, and the Netherlands for his research and held the Distinguished Service Medal, the US Army's highest decoration for a civilian.
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Charles Moskos contributed to the creation of the domestic service organization AmeriCorps in 1993.
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Charles Moskos served as President and Chair of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.
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Beyond his reputation as a military sociologist, Charles Moskos was a leading advocate for national service in civilian contexts.
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Charles Moskos played a significant role in the conceptualization and creation of AmeriCorps, the domestic service program launched in 1993.
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Charles Moskos argued that national service would bridge social divides and instill a sense of common purpose, a theme he promoted in public debates and policy discussions throughout his career[1][6][7].
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Charles Moskos outlined his vision for national service in his book *A Call to Civic Service: National Service for Country and Community*.
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Charles Moskos contended that such a program would not only benefit society but address the lack of social representation in the volunteer military, helping to create a more equitable and engaged citizenry[2][6].
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In 1993, to help break an impasse between the Clinton administration and military leadership over the status of gays in the military, Charles Moskos devised a compromise policy and coined the phrase "don't ask, don't tell".
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Charles Moskos recognized that it was an imperfect solution, but one that could work if effectively enforced.
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In 2000, Charles Moskos told academic journal Lingua Franca that he felt the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy would be gone within five to ten years.
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Charles Moskos criticized the unit cohesion argument, the most frequent rationale for the continued exclusion of gay and lesbian service members from the US military.
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Charles Moskos was a leading figure in the field of Military Sociology.
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Charles Moskos was a prolific scholar who had a knack for spotting trends in military organizations.
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Charles Moskos showed how the armed forces was losing its institutional characteristics and moving toward an occupational or marketplace oriented model.
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Charles Moskos wrote many influential articles and books on the subject.
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Charles Moskos met his German wife Ilca, a foreign language teacher, while studying at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Charles Moskos retired from full-time teaching in 2003 and moved to Santa Monica, returning to Northwestern each fall to teach an introductory sociology course.
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Charles Moskos's wife taught foreign languages at New Trier High School.
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Charles Moskos was a recipient of the American Hellenic Institute's Hellenic Heritage Achievement Award and was a life-long member of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association.
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Charles Moskos died on May 31,2008, at his home in Santa Monica, California.