Not surprisingly in this era of intense scrutiny of public institutions, the ethics and leadership curriculum at the U.S. Naval Academy has attracted media interest. The majority of the recent coverage has been accurate, but a few editorials have missed the mark and misrepresented the program.
It also is interesting to note that while newspapers today highlight recruiting problems in all the services, the Naval Academy remains oversubscribed. The best of Generation Y, it appears, still want to come to the Naval Academy, and they're bringing mean Scholastic Aptitude Test scores above 1300.
When I came back to teach leadership and ethics, what I found surprised me: the Naval Academy is much better than when I entered almost 25 years ago. The midshipmen are in better physical condition, their collective grade point average is higher, and character development is taken much more seriously.
I believe that part of the Naval Academy's attraction to top-quality young men and women is its unambiguous mission:
To develop midshipmen morally, mentally, and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor, and loyalty in order to provide graduates who are dedicated to a career of naval service and have potential for future development in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship, and government.
In fact, the Naval Academy does produce leaders of character prepared to serve in the combat arms of the Navy and Marine Corps, and what follows is a factual account of the program as exists today. Leadership development is woven into virtually every aspect of a midshipman's four years here. Leadership emphasis permeates the institution—the classroom, in Bancroft Hall (their quarters), on the parade ground, during summer training cruises, and on the athletic "fields of friendly strife." It exists in places like Memorial Hall, John Paul Jones's Crypt, and the chapel—places that recall the sacrifices of those Americans who have gone before.
The journey to become a leader worthy of leading the sons and daughters of America begins the minute a new fourth classman walks through the gates to undergo "plebe summer," six weeks of challenging, stressful military indoctrination. While some have prior enlisted experience, the majority are scant weeks removed from their high school graduations. The training includes a rigorous physical conditioning program designed to get the new midshipmen in top physical condition, create an understanding that physical fitness is a necessary attribute of a warrior, and instill in them the desire to pursue a lifetime of physical fitness. We believe in the adage that "You have to learn how to follow, before you can learn how to lead," and the new midshipmen are exposed daily to hand-picked members of the second and first classes who serve as their leaders. Plebes get their first introduction to the Honor Concept, and hear the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps reinforce the core values of the naval service.
Leadership development is expanded and refined over the course of a midshipman's education and training. With each succeeding academic year, midshipmen are called upon to assume greater and more significant responsibilities. Of course, leadership development does not end with graduation. Rather, just as we prepare midshipmen for a lifetime of learning and fitness, we also prepare them for a lifetime of leadership development and achievement.
A lot needs to be said about the kind of education most appropriate for the professional soldiers you have chosen to be in these times of impending peril. You must aspire to a strength, a compassion, and a conviction several octaves above that of the man on the street. You can never settle for the lifestyle that Joseph Conrad characterized as '. . . skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror. . . .' The test of character is not 'hanging in there' when you expect a light at the end of the tunnel, but performance of duty and persistence of example when you know that no light is coming. Believe me, I've been there.
Vice Admiral James Stockdale addressing the Class of 1983 at the U.S. Military Academy
The Naval Academy leadership development program requires observation, education, reflection, and practice. It gives midshipmen a more sophisticated understanding of the fundamental principles and core values that should guide a leader, and provides an intellectual grounding in those principles and values without forgetting that we are preparing these young men and women to lead in combat.
Although leadership is embedded in nearly every activity at the Naval Academy from the positions held by the "stripers"—those who hold official leadership positions within the brigade—to extracurricular activities, my focus here is primarily on the formal leadership curriculum in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law.
The classroom experience blends leadership theory and practice to provide each midshipman a solid intellectual framework and an understanding of key leadership principles. Experience is a great teacher, but leaders must be able to think through situations they have never experienced. Midshipmen also learn the basics of human and group behavior. The study of these disciplines is fundamental, but it also is important to note that the Naval Academy presents this information in the context of leadership in the profession of arms.
To keep the focus on military leadership, many of the classroom case studies and examples that bring theory to life come from combat and the fleet. The military instructors who teach leadership have served successfully in the fleet or Fleet Marine Force and have current and varied operational experience—naval aviators with combat experience in Desert Storm, Navy and Marine Corps officers recently back from the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, or the western Pacific. Commanding officers or others recently in command frequently visit to talk with midshipmen in individual classrooms. These warrior role models bring insights from the real world to midshipmen consumed by the daily grind, helping them to remember why they came here in the first place.
After the initial plebe summer indoctrination, the new fourth classmen take a course titled Leadership and Human Behavior. A newly revised course taught by officers, it explores the effects of individual human behavior on leadership and being led. It enables our aspiring leaders to examine their own motivation and leadership skills, and covers a wide array of topics from personality to perspective; from how we learn to how we react and make decisions under stress. The seminar style of classroom discussion is peppered with case studies from the fleet to make the theory resonate with the students
In their second-class, or junior, year, the midshipmen take an advanced leadership course that examines the leadership process through the dynamic interaction between the "leader, the follower, and the situation." Elements of group dynamics and the skills required to motivate organized groups to accomplish a mission are the focus. Case studies include Battle of the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, Oliver Hazard Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie, the Iraqi missile attack on the USS Stark (FFG-31), and the mine strike of the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58).
These two academic courses complement the practical leadership lessons our young men and women learn in Bancroft Hall, on summer cruise, on yard patrol and sailing craft, and in athletic competition. In addition to interaction with leadership instructors in the classroom, an important part of our leadership development program are the day-to-day engagements midshipmen have with the top-quality Navy and Marine Corps officers and senior enlisted men and women assigned to the Naval Academy faculty and staff. Senior enlisted in each company have significantly enhanced the Bancroft Hall experience.
Why should a future combat leader study ethics? Doesn't morality come from our family and religious experience? We often hear these questions. Our profession is one of arms, and it is this awesome power—the power to take life—that makes it imperative that our graduates understand the gravity, responsibility, and nobility of this profession.
Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, U.S. Navy (Retired), who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, encouraged the teaching of ethics and philosophy to military professionals. The University of San Diego hosted a James Bond Stockdale Leadership and Ethics Symposium last winter, and hopes to establish a chair in his name. Here's how the university described him at the symposium:
Admiral Stockdale has borne witness with his entire life to the importance of studying, understanding, and applying ethical principles to one's profession and the conduct of one's life. His efforts in his early military career and in his first graduate studies to learn the basic premises of philosophical ethics served him well during the terrible hardships and deprivations he suffered while a prisoner of war from 1965-1973. His knowledge of the philosophy of Stoicism, especially as taught by the Roman philosopher, Epictetus, provided him not only a framework within which to bear with his own ordeal, but also a model for his role as senior officer and leader of all the prisoners confined in the notorious Hoa Lo prison. Admiral Stockdale led by example, as well as by precept. . . .
A course in professional military ethics at the Naval Academy concludes a semester-long exploration of military case studies and military applications of basic philosophical principles with consideration of Vice Admiral Stockdale's experience as a prisoner of war. The midshipmen read and discuss Epictetus, the philosopher he credited with providing him inner strength during his ordeal, alongside his own account of his military experiences. In November 1999, he spoke to the entire third class about his experiences over nearly four decades of service.
During their third class (sophomore) year, the midshipmen explore these ideas in a required course entitled Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader (NE 203), which emphasizes that one is responsible for the consequences of one's actions as well as one's intentions. We are not teaching situational ethics. Ethics and Leadership here is not a touchy-feely "I'm okay, you're okay" curriculum. Absolutes exist, and what is right, the truth, many times is known. For those situations, we expect compliance and demand accountability. As Dr. Nancy Sherman, the Naval Academy's first Distinguished Chair of Ethics, pointed out in these pages in "Ethics for Those Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships" (see Proceedings, April 1999, pages 87-88), the motivation behind why someone follows the rules, and the accompanying emotions, is what we are trying to tap in to. If the only reason someone avoids crime is fear of punishment, we need to lift their sense of moral responsibility; if the only reason they do something is to please somebody—that is not good enough. We want leaders who have internalized the values we cherish and promote. We fail if they view leadership and professional military ethics as merely legalistic or contractual.
But it is the need to prepare midshipmen to deal with those cases that are not so clear-cut also that is the basis for today's curriculum. We want them to graduate with a true understanding of timeless principles, so whenever they encounter situations where the rules have yet to be written, or where conflicts of duty are encountered, they can dig into their conscience and apply the critical thinking skills they learned during their four years at the Naval Academy and do the right thing—and for the right reasons. We want, in the words of John Paul Jones, someone with ". . . a liberal education, and the nicest sense of personal honor."
The Naval Academy's ethics course is unique precisely because it is not "just another academic course" taught by civilian faculty. It is taught by military officers. The requirement for serving as an ethics instructor in our course is, at minimum, having attained the rank of commander/lieutenant colonel. Civilian faculty, also, are involved in, and committed to, our leadership and ethics program. We are proud of the 150-year tradition at the Naval Academy of having a substantial cadre of distinguished and dedicated civilian faculty who teach alongside their military colleagues. Civilian faculty specializing in philosophical ethics provide insight into the history and meaning of the fundamental values of Western culture. They provide the theory in our ethics course that the military instructors translate into practice. The Naval Academy faculty has also been augmented by two endowed chairs: the visiting Distinguished Leadership Chair, Admiral Hank Chiles, U.S. Navy (Retired), and our visiting Distinguished Chair in Ethics, Dr. Douglas MacLean, from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Military officers provide the grounding in practical experience that puts those ideals to the test. Civilian faculty, especially those new to the Naval Academy and its rich traditions, describe this daily interaction with senior military officers as among the most challenging and rewarding experiences of their academic careers. We want our graduates to reason morally in peace and in war.
Our ethics course, therefore, is a critical survey of the major moral theories in the Western tradition, each of which has had something to say about what makes actions right and about the source of the authority of morality. Midshipmen study classical utilitarianism and duty ethics along with divine command theory, natural law theory, and virtue ethics. They read and discuss the original work of philosophers from Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas to John Stuart Mill and John Rawls.
The classical Greeks were interested in what sort of life is the best life for human beings. Later, St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated many elements of Aristotle's view into Christian natural law theory, which holds that the authority of moral precepts comes from God and is revealed in natural human dispositions. For a variety of reasons, 17th century philosophers took a different approach. They sought to articulate a moral theory expressed in terms of rules or principles and one that would resonate with people of a variety of faiths and with people who had no religious commitments. Bentham, and later, John Stuart Mill, developed classical utilitarianism. According to this view, human welfare is of prime moral importance, and the right thing to do is maximize this welfare; they urged us to focus on the consequences of our actions.
It is clear, however, that we care about more than the consequences of our actions. The intentions on which we act are also of moral significance, and Immanuel Kant developed his duty ethics with this in mind. As with any serious academic discipline, there is room for disagreement about which of these approaches to morality is complete and correct. But midshipmen can learn from each of them.
The ethics syllabus reflects a military case-study oriented approach to the presentation of the course material that parallels the standard approaches to teaching professional ethics in other professions such as medicine, law, and business. The extensive use of a variety of cases drawn from actual situations is intended to assist midshipmen in understanding the practical applications to military life of the moral principles and ethical theories examined during the course.
There are those who criticize the notion of learning leadership or ethics through the study of theory. We reject this. Practice without theory and reflection is, at best, risky, and at worst a shot in the dark. On the other hand, theory without practice is hollow. While the rate of change in mankind's knowledge of himself and the universe has increased, there remain timeless principles surrounding human behavior that we must try to understand. If Sun Tzu still makes sense after 2,500 years, we ignore theory and reflection at our peril.
We're proud of our program, and we believe that the quality of our graduates—our only measure of success—speaks for itself.
Captain Clemente, an F-14 radar intercept officer, is the Chairman of the Leadership, Ethics and Law Department at the Academy, and teaches ethics to midshipmen. He commanded Fighter Squadron (VF)- 213.