Starfleet Academy, After the Burn: Youth Civic Disillusionment Without Disengagement

Abstract This paper examines institutional trust and civic engagement of young people in the contemporary United States through the lens of the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (SA), arguing that the TV series offers a compelling model for how young people might navigate societal trauma and institutional failure during a moment of possible democratic renewal and institutional change and (re)building. It examines the real-world empirical landscape and political context, most notably the paradox of sustained declines in youth institutional trust, occurring alongside higher rates of civic participation and voting among these same youth cohorts than past generations. Theoretically, it draws on youth trust in post-crisis democratic contexts to assess the plausibility and limits of the civic optimism SA models. Moreover, popular science fiction of this kind warrants attention from political scientists concerned with forming durable civic orientations among young people amid destabilizing shocks and events. It discusses the SA model within its 32nd-century political context established by Star Trek: Discovery (Seasons 3–5), and the conditions and costs of provisional institutional investment as models of effective social change, pointing to recent real-life examples. Finally, it concludes that SA advances a distinctive and unsentimental civic argument: that engagement with flawed or failing institutions is not contingent on having demonstrated trustworthiness or responsiveness, but on accountability and the recognition that disengagement shuts down the possibility of institutional repair and rebuilding altogether; and importantly, that youth are especially necessary to strive for social change in precarious moments for democracy.