Amid the barrage of scary news, some Americans are trying to think through what might be possible in a post-Trump era. One idea favored by both parties is a fresh version of expanded national service. The Carnegie Corporation, and the indefatigable Alan Khazei, gathered a bipartisan group in New York last week to explore how to move national service from “nice” to “necessary”—from activities that help the poor to workforce readiness and a lifeline for the Anxious (and soon-to-be-unemployed) Generation, a way to get young people out from behind their phones to meet face-to-face, work together for decent pay on vital projects, and turn down the national temperature.
Most people don’t know that we already have national service. It’s called AmeriCorps, and more than 1.4 million Americans have served in it over the last three decades. AmeriCorps is so popular that when President Trump tried to defund it this year, many Republicans at the state and local level (where the decentralized programs are run) joined Democrats to save it.
Even so, the national service movement needs a shot in the arm. Students from elite colleges are no longer clamoring to join Teach For America, and exhortations to serve can sound musty, especially with so many poorly-designed mandatory community service projects in high schools.
Participants in last week’s Carnegie Summit on National Service—including high-ranking former military officers (e.g., former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin) and Republican governors (e.g., Utah Governor Spencer Cox)—gathered in New York to discuss how to perk up the movement. The preliminary goal is to establish one-year paid “Service Year Fellowships” with a certified non-profit, school, or public agency. Young people between the ages of 17 and 25 would experience a new rite of passage, with a “cultural expectation” that everyone serves.
Carnegie President Louise Richardson suggested that 2028 presidential candidates in both parties “compete creatively” with their national service ideas. That seems doable if the press can start pressing politicians about this with the same consistency they apply to, say, health care plans. Among potential candidates, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (who says “service can save us”) and Vice President J.D. Vance (a believer, at least in his Hillbilly Elegy days) could set the pace. One can envision a shapeshifting Vance using service to scale back his current nastiness and show, as Vice President George H.W. Bush did when running for president in 1988, that he was “kinder and gentler” than his predecessor. Opportunism in the service of service is no vice.
I’ve been attending “service summits” since the 20th century, and this one was a mix of movement veterans from the 1990s and inspiring young activists, united by a belief that a year of service could help unite—or at least de-polarize—the country. And there’s another agenda now, with a welcome unsentimental edge. Much of the focus this time was on national service as an economic pathway. With Gen X, Gen Z, and Generation Alpha (born after 2010) likely to face searing double-digit unemployment by the end of the decade, thanks to AI, national service might return to its roots as a jobs program in the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt brought the military and government agencies together to put three million young men to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
The politics of national service were daunting then, and they’re more so now. Spencer Cox, a good man and important supporter of the movement, warned that service cannot be “left-coded,” noting that Climate Corps, a small AmeriCorps project, wouldn’t fly in conservative Utah. Mandatory service, unfortunately, won’t fly anywhere.
But the broader economic and cultural context is well-suited to a revival of the service movement. The most sobering statistic I heard at the summit was that AI might soon cost the economy five million entry-level jobs. Employers will find that young people who have had a service year are a step ahead in sharpening their emotional intelligence and learning the good work habits and people skills they will need in the workplace. With only 2 percent of Gen Z possessing the values that employers want, according to a recent survey published to great consternation in the Wall Street Journal, Service Year Fellowships could play an important role in bridging the gap between what young people want (pleasure, helping others) and what companies need (hard work, achievement).
The good news is that national service is powerfully connected to today’s national conversation, even if it’s not yet part of it. Jonathan Reckford, who runs Habitat for Humanity, recalls Protestants and Catholics building houses together during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland:
“When people work together, they focus on shared values and create the space for conversation.”
It seems as if the only thing both parties can agree on these days is banning cell phone in schools. Jonathan Haidt, author of the bestseller The Anxious Generation, says in speeches that he doesn’t even have to convince parents that their kids need more IRL human connections that ease loneliness and the burgeoning national mental health crisis: “It’s like pushing on an open door.” A year of service might be just what the doctor ordered.
To get there, colleges have to play a more active role, as John King, leading the way as president of SUNY (which has 370,000 students in New York), explained. Papia Debroy of Opportunity@Work introduced me to the concept of “the paper ceiling,” where applicants lose opportunities because they don’t have the right credentials. I was surprised to learn that only 12 percent of today’s college students live on campus; the rest—mostly at state and community colleges—are juggling work and other responsibilities and could use a paid service year as a bridge from school to work.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, described a “false dichotomy between skills training and academic learning,” and explained that Brandeis now has two transcripts—one for academics and one for skills. Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America and Teach for All, said that corporate recruiters on campus must be compelled to compete on a more level playing field with those offering service jobs.
Secretary Austin, who sees service in a small-d democratic context (“What strengthens our democracy strengthens our national security”), argued that military recruiters should also present civilian options for those who don’t meet their physical and test-score standards, a much larger group than one might imagine. And the faith community has a natural connection to service. Cox, who says his Mormon mission changed his life, suggested that Charlie Kirk’s assassination “could be a tipping point. People are desperate for something different.”
To get to Khazei’s goal, a million Service Year Fellowships a year by 2030, the non-profit sector needs some re-structuring. Community foundations, many of them extraordinarily well-endowed, should move toward a Rotary Club International model, where thousands of young people are sent abroad on traveling fellowships. These foundations could start underwriting Service Year Fellowships for work at home. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, in outlining his surprisingly successful efforts to confront homelessness, says he has many job openings (with decent pay) in city support services. Bringing organized labor aboard, especially in heavily-unionized states, will be a challenge, as it was to FDR in establishing the CCC, but not an insurmountable one. And the marketing of national service needs an overhaul, with new strategies for tapping influencers. This, too, would be a good project for a foundation.
Retired Col. Robert Gordon, a former aide to Colin Powell and movement pioneer, laid out the challenges of scaling from the roughly 75,000 AmeriCorps service members to the millions necessary to change the country. But scale we must.
Khazei ended the summit with a quote from Margaret Mead that sounds Pollyannish in these grim times, but is indisputably true if one studies the history of social movements:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has.”
