Yvonne Chiu
This anti-academic campaign taps into long-simmering tensions between career military and career academics across the range of military education institutions. During the COVID pandemic, a military professor and I found ourselves yelling at each other from 6 feet apart in an empty hallway at the Naval War College—where neither of us were supposed to be during the lockdown—about how to teach the course now that seminars had moved online and we could not cover as much material as we had in person. Some of the military professors who questioned the value of civilian professors saw an opportunity to stage a coup: to have each of the 15-or-so seminars teach the same three things from each case that they thought the students (also active-duty mid-career military) should learn, so that each student had a narrower but uniform education.
“We’re the ones who know what the students need—you should listen to us about what to teach!” the military professor shouted.
“Then why did you hire us?” I yelled back. “If you already know, then you don’t need academics to teach or develop the curriculum! You should just fire us!”
As he weighed saying, “What a great idea,” I continued: “You hired us because we have knowledge and skills that you don’t—so use it! Otherwise, why am I here? And not everyone in the military should be learning the same thing!”
With even more limited civilian academic input, the military academies and PME’s would deliver not education, but rather training—which certainly enhances lethality and wins battles, but lacks the broad knowledge and critical thinking necessary to win wars that genuine education provides.
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