Description
While Democrats and Thomas Massie push to impeach him, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth went to the Naval War College on Monday and announced 33 directives, effective immediately, to overhaul senior service college education. “There’ll be no more 80-page theoretical written thesis as the primary capstone of War College achievement. In its place, we are establishing competitive, SI-assisted wargaming and high-stress decision-forcing scenarios as the centerpiece of senior officer evaluation.”
What’s in the eight-page memo: standardized wargames and exams replace subjective seminar grading; “warfighter chairs” filled by commanders fresh from operational deployments; three-year performance-based contracts and no lifetime tenure for newly hired civilian faculty; a faculty mix where most full-time instructors have direct military or defense experience; and more SCIFs on every campus. Hegseth said the words “win” and “defeat” are absent from the colleges’ mission statements and “victory” appears once. He also said the Pentagon ended the Naval War College’s 12-year partnership with Brown University. The college’s spokesman said a few of the items aren’t in conflict with what it’s doing now; critics, including former faculty, say the tenure changes threaten academic freedom.
Should our war colleges be graded on victory? Tell me in the comments — and if you read this far, comment 80 PAGES.
Like and subscribe if you want more of these. It genuinely helps.