Angry Planet - Talking With the Military Ethics Professor Who Resigned in Protest

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comPauline Shanks Kaurin PhD. was, until recently, the Stockdale Chair for Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. She’d been there since 2018, teaching philosophy and ethics to U.S. military officers and the occasional civilian. Then came Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and marching orders she said stifled academic freedom.So she resigned.On this episode of Angry Planet, Pauline talks us through her decision and tells us what she saw from the inside of one of the U.S. military’s most lauded academic institutions as the new administration seeks to restrict what’s taught in the classroom.Disclosures and caveats“A moral dilemma I couldn’t resolve”On ObedienceAdmiral James Stockdale“We’re all in vacation mode.”“The snitch line”Purging books, telling professors what not to talk about“I don’t want to be on Fox News”It happened fastSuggestions of pulling manuscripts at the editorWhat happens to a military that isn’t taught honor and ethics?Compliance versus deferenceAvoiding discomfort as a policy positionDisagreements as combatA heavy metal argumentThe cost of taking a moral stand“Everyday is ethics day”A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in ProtestDisgraceful Pardons: Dishonoring Our HonorableSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hey there, Angry Planet listeners, Matthew here. Did you know that Angry Planet is almost entirely listener fund? It's true. Go to Angry PlanetPod.com, get us $9 a month, and you will get early commercial-free versions

of all the mainline episodes. There's one up right now that is kind of a brief history of a wrong. on's nuclear weapons and energy program. Again, that's at angry planetpod.com. Thank you so much. Here's the show. Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. I am Matthew Galt.

And surprise, I'm Jason Fields. Not dead. Here he is. But Jason, do you want to tell the people where you've been? What's going on? Just really quickly, I have left Newsweek and gone into the think tank world. And the think tank I'm at is called. foundation for defensive democracies. You can look at their work at FDD.org. And the most important

thing I can say today, actually, even more important than the conversation itself is what I say today and what we talk about today is does not represent or imply in any way the approval of FDD.org. Thank you very much. And we're excited to have a guest that is not going to have to make that caveat anymore. Yes. And in previous appearance, is on the show has had to say something similar, but no longer. Pauline, will you please introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Dr. Pauline-Shank's Corinne. I am now the former Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the U.S.

New War College. I'm a senior research associate at the NMRI Center for Ethics and Excellence at Case Western Reserve University and taking a sabbatical and some time off after leaving. the Naval War College and the Navy. So how long you were at the Naval War College for seven years? Seven years, yeah. So, and you were, can you kind of describe what your role was there and what this chair was and how, and like kind of the history behind it?

Yeah, so the Stockdale chair was established by the Stockdale family to honor Admiral James Stockdale, who, I think people. People know the name. He was a POW in Vietnam, but he was also president of the Naval War College. And so it's a named chair that focuses on professional military ethics. So my portfolio was everything ethics. So my job was to integrate ethics into curriculum,

to do scholarship around ethics, to do, you know, college service. So whether that's speaking or being on communication. committees. I'm a full professor and had come from Pacific Lutheran University where I'd been for 20 years and had been department chair there. So also brought some academic experience to the role. And I was one of the few senior full professors. That was also a woman. Also, it's very rare that there's a female Stockdale Chair. So, but my job was really to do ethics.

I did a lot of faculty development, but also integration of ethics across, not just the college for leadership and ethics, but the other colleges, the other units at the war college. So most recently, this last semester, I was, I guess you could say TDIY in a way, I was tasked with teaching in the joint military operations department, helping to teach their joint maritime operations course, which was a great learning experience since when I started, I knew absolutely nothing about that topic except for maybe the strategic leadership module. So, yeah, that was essentially kind of my job. And so I kind of knew that something was amiss over there just based on like some of your social media output that something was was bubbling. Yeah. But you have, you've resigned.

You've left. Yes. And can you tell us about, and there's a good piece that everyone should read that we'll link in the show notes. Tom Nichols over at the Atlantic interviewed you about kind of what went down. but I want to have you on the show to hear it firsthand because, you know, I've talked to you many times, and I think that this is a really interesting topic. You've got your, you've got your head around ethics. Like it's been your entire professional life, right? And especially ethics in the military.

So I think it's telling that you resigned. Why? essentially because I got to the point of, you know, a moral dilemma that I couldn't resolve. So I got to the point where I could not continue to do the work that I had been doing for the last seven years, a Stockdale Chair, given some of the executive orders that have come down from the administration, and given how the leadership of the Naval War College had decided to engage particularly questions of academic freedom. That wasn't the only issue.

I had differences with the leadership, but also just fundamentally the kinds of things I teach in the history of philosophy and the writing that I do, I have a book in the work on honor, which engages a lot of kind of gender issues. And so I just wouldn't have been able to teach to the level of excellence on the way in which I want to engage my students and still be consistent with how our leadership at the Naval War College was engaging academic freedom, you know, questions of obedience. I wrote a book on obedience relative to the change in administration. And to be clear, when I came to the Naval War College, I had a very clear conversation with the dean at the time, who has since retired, that I needed a certain level of academic freedom in order to do my work.

And I understood that was within the constraints of the Hatch Act, which for your audience members, every, you know, civilian employee of the DOD is subject to certain speech constraints, mostly having to do with not advocating for part of it. and, you know, points of view and that kind of thing. But I understood that I would be given and was given a fair amount of academic freedom within those constraints. I wrote things that were critical of the Trump pardons in the first administration and was accorded academic freedom and had higher level support. So the change in the administration, as the article, taught for a long time at the Naval War College, who is on the faculty there.

You know, there was a market change when the new administration came in. And it was clear early on, you know, December, even January, I was concerned that there was going to be a problem and tried to do what I argue should be done in the obedience book, which is you run it up the chain of command, you engage in with Brits call reasonable challenge, you see if it can be worked out. Are there, what were the options? And it became pretty clear that there weren't really any good options for me. And the fact that I was stock deal chair also weighed on me because that's a particular role.

I'm the one person at the college that's really sort of tasked with not legal ethics, but professional military ethics. And so I just decided, you know, I wanted to stay, and I tried to stay for a while to support my more junior colleagues to do the work with the students. I love the students. The students are great. Really critical thinkers. They're not freaked out by ideas about race or gender or whatever strange thing I would throw at them. But it just became clear that actually, and I'm not.

the kind of person that can decide not, I was not going to not defend academic freedom. And so I became concerned I would draw fire to my colleagues and that I just wouldn't be able to be effective as stock deal chair. And in the end, decided probably the best thing I could do as stock deal chair was to resign and to register what I call an ethical no was to be the want to say, here's what's going on. It's not okay. I'm protesting this. I'm resigning in protest. I opted not to take the deferred resignation, which I could have done. It's a good choice for lots of people. But I thought it was really important that I just resigned straight out and saying, no, I can't. I can't continue as chair. I can't continue to do this. And the conversation with Tom was part of that.

I chose to talk to him earlier rather than later because Graham Parsons, he was a friend of mine, resigned at West Point, and he's more junior to me in the field, and I believe you owe, you know, your junior people top cover. And so came out earlier than I had intended. But at the end of the day, it was a good decision to be able, part of being ethical leaders to our team. your reasons for what you're doing and why you're doing it. So that article was an important sort of part of that journey to convey to people what have been going on. I know were other colleagues, especially in my department, who were affected. One colleague had her book pulled. Other colleagues have been told they can't do the research they do or they have to

fundamentally change it. So there's some serious, you know, ethical issues and academic freedom issues. So, so, just because not everyone will have read the article nor really be familiar with what's going on, what was it that the administration at the top level and then the administration of the Naval War College, what did they not want people doing? What changed? What specifically were they looking to stop? So there's been several executive orders, But the one that was triggering, by triggering, I mean triggered a series of events that I had to deal with and my colleagues had to deal with around academic freedom was called gender ideology. So some of this is trans questions, but it's more broadly anything having to do with gender. And I had a colleague whose book is on, you know, LBTQ alphabet soup, which I'm getting wrong.

I know my brain is just right. LGBQ. I should, I should note we're, it's like, it's basically July 4th as we're having this conversation. Right. We're all in vacation mode. So sorry about that. It's important. but leadership in those spaces written with a former student of ours who was trans.

And so when that executive order came out, along with that executive order, there was an email from our administration saying, and by the way, if you become, and this went out to all the faculty, all the students, if you become aware of anyone who is doing any of this work talking about, any of this in classes, you need to call this number. I call it the snitch line, because that's what it is. So it became clear that, and that was very broad. It wasn't just about trans issues. It was about gender, which includes, like I teach the history of philosophy. So I teach not just liberal feminism, but I teach ethics of care, which is not feminist, strictly speaking. And there are other

people who teach feminist, I are. So there's a whole host of things that I teach and engage that are part of the responsible teaching of the history of philosophy. Like I said, my book, it became pretty clear that this was going to be an issue. And initially, I went to my immediate leadership and said I was concerned and people said, it's fine, it's going to be fine, it's not going to be a big deal. And then as the article details, there was an all-hands call where the president and the provost both made clear that we would comply with this and any other executive order that was going to come down. And that academic freedom, as we had understood it, did not, either did not exist or did not exist in the same way that we understood it. It sounds like complete capitulation. From my perspective, it was.

And my understanding, and I'll try to be fair here, is that people had, didn't want lose their jobs, had no interest in fighting the administration, did not want the faculty up on the barricades, was the phrase that was used. And anyone who would say that to me, like, doesn't actually know me. So that's not a helpful thing to say. because, of course, I'm going to be on the barricades. But it was pretty clear that, and these EEOs, there had been already stories coming out of the Naval Academy, out of West Point in particular, where there was already conflict. It was in this period that books were starting to be pulled from the Naval Academy libraries.

So there were already, so there was churn in the media mostly around the Naval Academies. right. And so I think the decision was made. We don't want to be on Fox News like the academies are. We're just going to try to lay low. But it was made very clear to the faculty that they were not going to advocate. They were not going to, you know, support us on this. And it was our job to comply. And there was a subsequent visit by us called a validation visit to check all of our syllabi to see that we're in compliance. with these executive orders. And I actually, I tendered my resignation a few days before that visit happens. So, and that was in April, but even by February or March, it was pretty clear where things were going. I was kind of looking to see if, as things emerged, people would maybe moderate their positions, as the faculty made clear their concerns. I was not the only faculty member who was upset who had meetings who,

raised objections. So I was sort of waiting to see if anything would change it all. Would people moderate once they understood what the issues were? It was pretty clear that the position was not going to be moderated. So that left me not a lot of great choices. So I decided the best thing to do as Stockdale Chair. And for my colleagues was to resign. You were there during the first Trump administration.

Yeah, I came in 2018, so sort of halfway through. This is different, right? It feels different. Yeah, I mean, in the first Trump administration, I wrote a war on the rocks piece, criticizing the Trump administration's pardon of Eddie Gallagher for war crimes. And there were people high up in the Navy who were not happy with that piece. but my dean and the provost at the time, you know, like they knew the article was coming.

It was co-written with an ethics colleague from the Naval Postgraduate School who versus her schools in Monterey, California. Like, they supported us, you know, and there was lots of, like, hate mail and a few death threats and stuff. But, you know, we were still able to operate in that space. I was teaching, I came to teach the things I taught,

which include gender, race, post-colonial theory as a part of moral philosophy. These are discussions that are a part of talking about ethics, whether you're in the military or not. These are things I taught at PLU, where we had ROTC students in my classes. So, yes, there were some of the same issues, but that space for academic freedom, you didn't have all these executive orders sort of reaching down and sort of telling people what you could teach and not teach. I think people made clear what their preferences were, but it wasn't intrusive in the same way it is. Now, and just to be clear, those executive orders, that's not just directed at military education. Those are executive orders that are directed

at civilian education as well. So my colleagues who are in the civilian side of higher ed and people working with AAP, which is the American Association of University Professors, like, they're all dealing with the same kinds of issues. And you've seen this with Harvard and Columbia, losing funding and fighting over, you know, what's going to be in the curriculum. So yes, it's professional military education is being impacted, but so is civilian education. I've been wondering since all of this starts. I mean, you know, I have a feeling in my gut what it's really going to on, but what are they so afraid of? What were they so afraid that you'd say that anybody in your position might say? And what harm were you going to do that you had to be stepped on so hard

and so fast? I think so I think there's a couple of things. I think our leadership, as I said, was afraid of getting fired by the administration. I was pretty sure that eventually the Secretary of fence would probably get around to firing me since he had fired other, you know, senior women. And being a Stockdale chair, I didn't want that associating with the Stockdale Chair name. So I think that's part of it. I think maybe for some people in these spaces, these are good changes. Like they thought PME has been teaching things they shouldn't be teaching. So it's a justified like course correction, I guess you would call it.

I think for other people, it just was this. I don't want to be on Fox News. I don't want to get a phone call from Heathson or the president or whoever in the administration is saying, hey, Polly, we heard you. We're talking about philosophy of race yesterday, which is not the same thing as critical race theory, by the way. We heard you were talking about liberal feminism and Mary Wollstonecraft, right? And we don't like that. And so I think rather than fight the fight, they just decided to tell the faculty, you know, if you're teaching this stuff, don't.

If you're doing scholarship on this stuff, don't or, you know, change what you're doing. Or, I mean, the communication was very clear that we were to keep our heads down, not make waves. And I think in part, they didn't want the bad press, if you will, that the Naval Academy West Point were getting in their view, right? So I think that's part of it. I think there was also this question about what would be the response of the students. There was a market, there was a change in the classroom environment after inauguration day. So, you know, I think there was, there was also.

of this concern about, you know, are students in a different space now with these changes and would be, say, less tolerant to learning the things that I would be teaching. This was one of my questions. Can you talk more about the change in the classroom after at the inauguration day? I think it's just like, you know, it's just sort of in our culture more broadly. In fact, the president had to send out an email to the entire community, just reminding people that we're all professionals here, including went to the students, reminding that we're all military professionals here and that there's a level of civility and decorum that is expected. Because I think after the inauguration, it changed the permission structure, right?

So there were certain kind of comments that, you know, you might see in civilian academia because you're dealing with you know, 18 and 19 year olds that we just never, you know, experienced on a regular basis where there would just be like microaggressions or thrown out, you know, sexist or anti-disability or, you know, racist, soft racist comments. And it wasn't like anything catastrophic, but it was just enough of an erosion that it affects the classroom and bioccurrence. And we have Chatham House rules in our classrooms, and we try to cultivate. There are small seminars of like 16 students, generally 14 to 16 students, sometimes less in the electives. And so it's an intimate atmosphere in the sense of we get to know the students, they get to know us.

And there's a lot of trust built up. And the students are building relationships. We have civilians who are part of our student body. we have international partners from 50, 16 nations who also attend. So there was just a bit of a shift, and I think maybe more in some areas than other areas, depending on the topics that people are teaching. I teach leadership and ethics. So, you know, there weren't a lot of, I didn't see anything in my joint maritime operations class.

We were talking about, like, sea control stuff. But, yeah, there was a shift. And I think there was, and there was also more fear. I think that all the things the faculty were experiencing, I think the students were experiencing to a lesser degree, right? They're watching the news. They're aware of things. So there was a, you know, I think the same kind of shift we've seen in our media and society,

just generally in the last six months, all of that, you know, we're not, the ivory tower is not really a thing. We're affected by what happens in the world, right? Because we're all human beings, right? We're all living mostly in the same world. I don't know about that. Yeah, okay. We could argue about that.

Were you surprised how fast it happened? Yes. And I think as someone who's been in higher ed for 31 years, like the stuff that was in Project 2025, no one who's been in higher ed for any amount of time, is it all shocked at any of that? So I think, and I think, you know, it's been clear that conservatives have a lot of different stripes have not been happy with higher ed for a long time. So I think that wasn't a surprise. I think it was a surprise, the sort of shock in all, which was intentional, right? That was a spread of strategy of how quickly things happened.

And I think the way in which our leadership, I think, was surprised. I mean, something I hear a lot from people in the military, especially in senior leadership positions, is this is just the every four or eight-year churn that we see with every single administration. So I think that's their view and how they sort of approached it. So they were expecting changes, but I don't think they expected the scope, the intensity, the reaction to those changes and just fundamentally didn't see them as the kind of existential threat that I see them, right, and some of the other civilian faculty, especially those of us who have been in civilian higher ed and other places. So there was also, I think, a difference in, I mean, initially, my leadership was like, it's not going to be a big deal, you're going to be fine,

and I looked at them and said, no, I'm not. Like, you don't understand what's happening. And then I think once people started to understand what was happening, that's when the fear and I don't want to get fired. Understandably, they're trying to protect the institution, right? Trying not to be on Fox News or whatever, try not to make waves. And so they were very interested in, okay, we're just going to do our job. And everyone sort of, you know, do your job, keep as quiet as you can. If you need to rethink your scholarship, maybe you need to do that. it had been suggested to me that my book on honor, which deals with some gender issues,

maybe I should pull that, even though it's at the editor, manuscript complete, that kind of thing. So I think there was also some, I don't know if it's lack of vision or just, I mean, maybe people heard people saying things and just really didn't believe they were going to do it and didn't think was going to happen that fast. I mean, that's the only thing. I'm trying to be charitable here. Because from my point of view, like, it was blatantly obvious what was coming. And that it was going to be fast. And that anyone who's been a civilian higher ed for any amount of time in leadership,

like, knew this was coming. Like, they've been wanting to do this for years. They weren't shy about it. No. It is not as if they didn't tell you exactly what they were going to do. No. And I think, and it wasn't just me. It's not like I'm some great Cassandra and I was a visionary.

And cue that, like, Taylor Swift's song. there were quite a few of us. And these issues disproportionately impact some of the faculty, and they don't impact other. My friends largely in the Joint Military Operations Department, not necessarily dealing with this. We teach in College of Leadership and Ethics. There are people who do various kind of work

that is directly impacted by these executive orders. So I think that's the other piece. too is that it affects some people, excuse me, more than it affects other people. So there's a sort of like, some of our colleagues are like, initially we're like, I don't understand what the big deal is. And I think some of the leadership was, I don't understand what the big deal is. So you just pull a few things out of your syllabus. And I was like, no, that's, no, that's, that's not how it works. Not going to like, not teach Plato or not teach whatever.

I'm just wondering about like, okay, so what are the knock on effects of this? What does, what's going to happen to the military without its leadership being taught some of these things, being taught about honor and how to understand honor, to not get a real education on obedience, your other book? I mean, what, what is the military? look like when Hegseth and Trump succeed, when the Heritage Foundation succeeds. Does it really change? American Bushido, baby.

Yeah, well, that's. Well, yeah. I mean, I think the, listen, there'll always be a certain amount, and not just the officer core. I've advocated for ethics, education for the enlisted for a long time. Two, my father was a senior NGO. There's always going to be people who are. and sort of good critical thinkers and honorable people and who will ask the hard questions and who will display moral courage.

And, you know, there are people who are seriously committed as a matter of principle to the profession of arms, as a moral community of practice, which is the language I use in my work. That said, this is an institution that is, you know, this is what I argued in my book. It's not just built on obedience. And by the way, obedience is now we're talking about here. We're talking about compliance. That's a completely different thing. And that's different than deference. And what you have going on here for some people is deference.

For some people, they're curing favor. Right. So that creates a culture of perhaps fear, of perhaps deference, of saying, you know, I think there's always a culture in the military of we want our boss to succeed,

right? Which that's always, I'll just say as a philosopher, that's always irritated me because sometimes you have a crappy boss, they shouldn't succeed, right? But that's kind of the team mentality, right? We've got to help our boss succeed. So I think the knockoff, the knockoff effects are you're just not going to have,

you know, I taught a class in a moral and ethical failure where we talked about Fat Leonard, which, by the way, the Navy does not like to talk about, which is why I had to develop that class. So I could teach Fat Leonard. You know, I think there just aren't going to be those kinds of conversations. in a quote-unquote safe space of the schoolhouse so people can think about those things where people aren't shooting at you because like when people are shooting at you, that's a bad time to engage in moral deliberation. It's good to have thought about things beforehand. So I do, I mean, I do think

military education is a national security issue. The students I taught are mid-career, so 05s, O-6s, they've either had command or they're going to command or the civilian equivalent. These are people, some of them may be flag officers or general officers, because it's a joint, it's joint education, it's not just the Navy, it's Air Force Army, Marines, Coast Guard, Space Force. I hope I didn't forget anybody. You know, it's a chance to really wrestle with these hard, hard moral dilemmas that are part of service in the military. in a place where you can learn from each other, where you can be challenged by someone like me. And I know that the stereotype is like I'm in the classroom like brainwashing my students.

And I used to joke about my undergraduate students. I can't even get them to read the syllabus, much less take marks seriously, right? And these are fully formed adults. Like, I'm not indoctrinating anyone. I'm like, okay, we're going to read the stuff. And my question to them is always, okay, what do you think of this? And if they asked me, I might tell them, but I also tell them, you can Google my scholarship. That's not why I'm here.

I'm here to guide you through a conversation. And that conversation is about what you think. And that's why we're here, right? And so I think there's this sort of assumption. And I know there's been a couple pieces going around about leftist woke faculty at the lower colleges and military PME. and I would say with all due respect, but just truthfully, most of the people who write that stuff have not been in a classroom in years. And so what they think is going on and what actually happens in our classrooms is just,

this is completely different. These are grownups, right? And I have very, you know, I have a range of views. We don't talk about politics per se, right? We talk about, you know, issues of the profession, but I have students coming from all kinds of different perspectives and they're not shy about telling you what you think and when they think that you're wrong. And that's absolutely fine. It's great. It's awesome.

That's the point of, yeah, that's the point of the classroom setting is to have those discussions and work through them, right? Right. And to be exposed to people, this is an environment for them that they may never. ever have ever again, where they are in a room with people from different countries, different civilian agencies, and different parts of the joint force. And in a classroom, many of our classrooms have both a civilian and a military faculty, co-teaching, especially for the core courses. Right.

So they're in an environment where there's lots of different views. And there is like, there's there is spirited give and take, generally in a respect. manner. That has, that I think, has become more challenging last six months, but, you know, I think students come committed to that project and understanding what it is. There's always some students who, for whatever reason, would rather not be there or struggling, don't like X, Y, or Z. And to be clear, some of the stuff I teach is stuff in electives. So the students don't actually have to take my class. If they don't want to read the history of moral philosophy, they can go take John Mowers, very excellent, like Churchill class, which is not from class, right? So some of

this stuff happens in electives and certificate programs that students have a choice not to be in. Right. So that's the, that's the other piece of things. And they're adults. Something that I've been thinking about is we have this conversation is that you teach a class that is or teaching morals and ethics in a military context in general, I think it must be a difficult

subject, difficult in a good way. Like it is complicated issues that you have to grapple with and there are many different sides and many different considerations. And there is something that I see both in this administration and in the way that the college

handled the EOs that there's a lot of people that are attempting to avoid discomfort and attempting to avoid, like, any kind of hard thinking about morals and ethics right now. And I'm just wondering, like, if you see that and if you feel like maybe the culture is shifting into a do-what-you-feel era. I think that there's always this ebb and flow. Human beings are evolutionarily constructed to avoid discomfort.

We just are. And especially when it comes to our ideas. So I tell my students, like, your ideas are like your furniture. They're your epistemological furniture, Pistomology's theory of knowledge. Like, how do you know the stuff you know? Right. So your ideas are your epistemological furniture.

And most of us do not rearrange. the furniture in our house on a regular basis. Right? Now, there's some, like, obsessive people like me who like to do it, like, once a week because I get bored. But most people do not want to rearrange the furniture because then you get up in the middle and I go to the bathroom and you smack your leg because the chair is in a different place than you thought it was.

And we just tend to avoid that kind of discomfort. And I think that's part of an attraction of a political view that says, first of all your problems are the results of other people. people. None of it's your fault. It's not your responsibility. You don't have to think about things. And I think for many people, especially in the current technological environment, like you're inundated with information, with views, with visual images. I have two older teenagers, 20 and 18. And we talk about this all the time. The world that they inhabit, the epistemological world they inhabit, is just much more complex than the one I grew up in in the 1980s, right?

So I think there is this sort of desire for maybe more simplicity, right? And a sense that back in the day, and I hear this a lot as military ethicist, sent in ethos, back in the day, we all agreed about what was right and wrong and whatever. That is bullshit. I'm sorry, you're going to have to bleep that. It's bonk. That was never the case from the. very beginning of any philosophers, or if you like the Bible, the beginning of the Bible.

Like, disagreement about moral and religious questions is a feature of human experience, not a bug, right? You are not going to get rid of that. And it's not just our culture. We spent a lot of times last year. I did a lot of Chinese philosophy in one of my electives. Like, this is part of what it means to be a human being, is to represent. with these things. And in military ethics, many of the choices suck. Like the problems are really messy and complex, right? And there aren't clear black and white answers. And that drives some people absolutely baddy and it's uncomfortable because, well, what does that mean for who I am? Because we all want to believe we're good people, right? We all want to think I'm a good person.

And then maybe if I question, as I make my students do, I ask them to think about moral dilemmas they've faced and to think about how they deliberated about them, what decisions they made. And if they made the wrong decision, we could, you know, let's talk about like, what do you see now that you didn't see then, right? Or in the Fat Leonard case, what did they see and how do we see it, right? What were the blind spots? What were the biases? What are the cultural frames that we use? what are the ways in which emotion affected what we do, right? All of those kinds of things.

But yes, is that uncomfortable? Sure. But if you think about our consumer culture, I taught business ethics for 15 years, like it's all geared towards our comfort, right? Like I can pick up my phone and like see a cute pair of shoes. I love my shoes on Amazon and like have it here tomorrow. Right? And if I don't like it, I can send it back.

So we have a consumer culture that's very much geared towards ease and comfort and, you know, making things so that I'm constantly comfortable. I don't, but I could curate my social media and other kind of feeds and inputs so that I never have to run across a view that I disagree with. Like, that's a thing I could do. And if I want to not do that, I actually have to go out of my way, right? the algorithms will kind of do that for you. So if I'm watching Reels on Instagram, I like one Taylor Swift video, and that's all I'm going to get for the next two weeks, right?

It's a really aggressive algorithm, right? And so that breeds like, it's comfortable for us. And then we also don't have good role models for how to engage in disagreement. that isn't just like screaming insults at each other. And the War College and academia generally is one place where you can, it's structured and you have these opportunities to have these disagreements and these discussions in a way that you just don't have normally in popular culture unless you have a very cool, like, friend group or interesting family.

I have an interesting family life. I have a brother who's an academic too. And so, like, I think growing up, these kinds of discussions were things that were part of my life, but I think most people avoid them like plague. Well, you think about the way that it's framed as combat. Right. Disagreements are framed as combat. So, well, like, what is the YouTube compilation you see? Ben Shapiro destroys X, Y, or Z.

It's all, like, it's all war language, like, obliterates. Mm-hmm. It's like. And if he's not. And if I disagree with you about whatever it is, then it must be the case that you're evil. Like, it can't be the case that there could be. Now, there are some things that we might disagree about that have really serious stakes, right? Like, if I don't think you are a human being deserving of rights, that's a different kind of disagreement than which heavy metal band is from the 80s is the right one to listen to, right?

There's different stakes. But it's... The answer is none of them. Yeah. Seriously? Dude, no. No. Just not white snake.

Let's make sure we know what heavy metal actually is. Well, that's true. Yes, there's debate about that. But the point is, like, there's some, we don't have good models for how we can navigate disagreement in a way that's not aggressive, violent, and totalistic. And I think that's, I've noticed that's becoming, that's becoming hard. harder and harder, you know, in the last 10 years. And because I think we all are sort of retreating to our tribes as things get more and more stressful.

And I don't, I mean, one of the things I'm hoping to explore in whatever my next chapter is is, I know it's trite, but I do believe in a particular version of what some people call civility, meaning civil discourse and the ability to have conversations. and learn from each other because I don't know everything. And I think starting with humility, which is the place we always start at the War College, of just saying, okay, you're brilliant. You wouldn't be here if you, you know, you wouldn't be here if you,

if you didn't know some stuff if you weren't a good leader, but what got you here won't get you there. Like you have to understand that you're here to learn some stuff and that means starting from a position of humility and acknowledging that in a vulnerable way that you could be wrong. that's very threatening for many people, right? Because their identity is so, maybe so tight up with I have to be right or it means I've lived my life incorrectly by thinking deaf leopard and white snake actually are heavy metal. Maybe I've oriented my whole existence, including my hair,

around that belief. And so it feels threatening to have someone disagree. But I think we have to democracy won't survive if we can't find a way. Not that we're all going to know long, but is there a way that we can have some conversations and maybe not come away agreeing, but maybe come away saying, I can see where that point of view might be coming from, even if I still be in a little disagree with it, right?

I could still articulate what it is, and that that's a view that for that person makes some kind of sense. but I think that's a hard thing to do and that's what we try to do with the war college, just give them 10 months of immersion in that so that they can go back to a very complex, messy operating environment and try to plan, try to make some decisions

that literally are life and death. And so for me, the stakes of things like academic freedom, they're a national security issue because the stakes are very high. If my students go to India Paycom, they can't see their biases and they plan things badly, like millions of people could die. Like, that's really, really serious stuff. This isn't just about you being comfortable.

It's about you're responsible for the security of our country and American citizens and other people on this planet, too. So to me, the stakes, and that's part of why I was willing to resign because the stakes are so high. Like, this is a really serious issue. This isn't just about, well, now I can't teach, you know, Mary Willstonecraft. It's about that my students now won't be exposed to that view and can't think outside of their own experiences. And in combat, that is fatal. That is a really dangerous thing. What do you make of the argument?

when you talked about this a little bit earlier, that just keep your head down for the next four years. This guy's not going to be around forever. You know, it'll change again. The wind's going to blow the other way. Do you hold, I guess, I think you've made clear that, like, you can't do that and good on you for that. Do you hold it against anyone that is doing that?

Well, here's what I would say. First of all, part of what I talk about. how to appeal you as genocide and they have a genocide in Holocaust studies minor. And so that's part of the lens through which I see things. So first of all, just not a personal level, I'm actually, and as a mother of a black man and a brown man, like, I just looking around, I just don't. Like, I don't see the facts that would support that case, right? So that's the first thing I would say.

The second thing is I absolutely understand people who are in. in that position, right? And for whom either they recognize some broader reality and that's something for them to cling to or they really just do think this is just in three years and how many some people have to count down clocks, right? This is going to go away. It's going to change. And even if I disagree with that, like I can understand that and I could be wrong, right? I would love to be wrong here. So I don't necessarily hold it against people. I mean, one of the things I tried to convey with the article is, you know, so part of what I do is, is ethics of care. And in ethics of care, there's three salient, you didn't know you were going to give an ethics lecture,

three salient considerations, relationality, what are your relationships, context, and power relationships, right? And so I made that decision in a highly specific context as ethics chair, as a mother, as a military ethicist with all kinds of inputs and considerations and the article tries to get to at least some of those. Different people are in different circumstances. I've talked to a lot of people in PME, ethics people in PME who are very conflicted, very much struggling. Some people have kids in college, have little kids, have parents there, take care, care of can't afford to to resign in the way in which I have don't want to. They still feel like they can still do the work, right, and that that work is still valuable and that they haven't been

compromised in the way that I have been. In other words, they think they can still make a difference. Or they're in their positions of authority where they feel like they can protect their people. I was in a position where I couldn't protect the faculty for my colleagues, right? So I think each of us is in a different situation, looking at a different set of facts. So I'm not out there judging other people thinking, oh, you all are cowards because you didn't do what I did, right? I also had a very unique set of circumstances where I could do what I did, right? Which isn't to say there aren't costs. I mean, my academic career, I understand, is effectively over. Right? That's just a reality that I knew sort of going into this situation.

But I do think people should think about to what degree are you being honest with yourself and to what degree is that a rationalization so you don't have to confront the moral reality because the concern I have is one of moral injury, right? Which is when we have a betrayal of what we think is right. Like that has, you know, profound impacts. That's something normally I write about and that's something I normally experience. So that's a different place to be in. But I would just ask people, not to talk them out of their position, but from a position of self-care, make sure you're being honest with yourself.

And if, you know, I had a senior mentor who said to me, listen, Pauline, if you can keep your head down, still do the work with integrity, do that. And of course, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't, right? But if you can, like if you're the kind of, a person that can, you know, I'm not, I'm not in the business of judging other people. I'll leave that to the Lord, right? That's, as I say in the military, that's above my pay grade. It's not my job to judge you. It is my job to say, are you being real with yourself? Because it could

hurt you. Like, I think there's going to be a lot of, just as we saw after the pandemic, a lot of moral injury, because people are forced into these choices that are morally problematic, and that they have to carry a burden that maybe they shouldn't have to carry or that's going to harm them. So I guess in good academic style, I didn't actually answer your question, Matthew. I think you answered it pretty well. I thought I was I was pretty engaged. Yeah, it's funny. You know, everything you've said, it kind of makes me think that you're like a canary in the coal mine.

Right. I mean, you're the, you're one of the early people to respond this way. and maybe other academics should look towards you and decide whether they want to stay in the mind. But I guess we'll see. I think people are in a, I think a lot of people, especially in the state of the economy and the job market right now, like I think people, I think there would be a lot more people doing what I'm doing, what I'm doing, if the circumstances were different and they could financially afford to do so. Right?

because I don't think the conclusions I have come to ethically, these are not unique conclusions that I have come to, right? Like people are having these conversations behind closed doors. I've had them with my colleagues. People are struggling, right? People are feeling conflicted. People are feeling compromised. And they're trying to figure out what to do about that.

I was more senior. Most of my career is effectively done, and that's fine. Other people are in different places. My children are largely grown and can function. And like, I'm just in a different place. I have different options than other people do. But I guess if there's one takeaway, I don't want you to think that I'm the only person that's thinking about these things. People are thinking about and talking about these things and really struggling with what is the right thing to do. You know, many of us are committed to the project of professional military education. And I told my colleagues, I'll still be fighting the fight.

It's just going to be from outside the wire now, right? Which may be given the constraints of the hatch act, that may be actually better for everyone concerned. But, you know, there are people of good conscience who are really, they're trying to think about these questions, but there's a lot of external constraints, which I think is intentional, right? I mean, there are people who come out and said,

we want you to be miserable, so you resign. Right? So that's a feature, not a bug. Was it surreal? I mean, I'm sure you've had other ethical and moral dilemmas in your life, I'm sure. Every human does. But it seems like this is almost something that you would teach in a classroom. Oh, yeah.

Was it a little surreal to be kind of caught in, of these situations? In a way, yeah, especially the moral injury part of it. What I was going through watching my colleagues suffer and then my own responses. This is something I normally write academic articles about and talk to my students as their processing coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and whatnot. But yeah, it was very surreal. It was also just surreal because sort of my framework, work of 31 years in academia and how important academic freedom was to me and have normally having been surrounded by people who held the same view all the sudden I mean as I detail and Tom details in the article just sitting at that first all hands in February and I just I just remember sitting there

I remember which cowboy boots I was wearing because I was looking at my boots um trying not to like scream and yell at people it just was all so surreal. everything that I had worked for in my career, there were people up on stage saying, yeah, we hear you, but that's not a thing anymore. And I was just like, it's like watching your entire world

just implode in 30 seconds in a very sort of matter-of-fact way. And so, yeah, it's been a very sort of surreal experience. I do believe in moral courage. I always talk to my students about moral courage. I did not intend to be the poster child for that. that. I don't want to be the poster child for that. But at the end of the day, you know, as I said in my resignation letter, like if every day is Ethics Day, that's my motto at the War

College. It's going to mean anything. It's got to mean something for the ethics chair. So if somebody's going to take a hit, it should be me. Because otherwise, I can't stand in that classroom and say the things to my students that I've said for 31 years about ethics and the things that I think are important for them to think about. At least I couldn't do that with integrity. I just feel like a complete and utter hypocrite. And I just can't. Yeah. I don't, I don't have the fortitude necessary to do. Fortitude is a word for it. What do you have any idea when this next book is going to come out? I don't. It was, is due to be out in November. So I don't see that happening right now. So maybe in the spring.

But that's kind of, I would say that's in flux right now. So. Who's the publisher? The publisher is political animal. So their sign contract. It's with the editors. You know, so it's

a process. And I'm kind of after this taking a little bit of, I gave up a sabbatical to go to the war college. So I'm taking that sabbatical, albeit unpaid, just to like chill out and watch football and figure out what I want to be when I grew up. And not think about political animals at all for a little bit at least.

Yeah, yeah, just take a breath. Okay. Well, usually this is where I ask people to plug something or ask them where I can find their work. But you just plug your poor. Yeah, I guess you're just going to be, you're going to unplug for a little bit. I'm going to unplug for a bit, but I will, you know, I'm not, I'm not capable of, like, being quiet. So it's not, you know, I mean, I will be doing things. But the question is what and some of that will depend on what happens in our environment in the next few months.

I mean, so much just happened in six months. I can't imagine what the next six is going to be like. Yeah. And it is a, it's a moral moment. It's a different kind of moment. And so as an ethicist, I have to think about what that means for what I'm willing to do and not willing to do in the larger context. I figured out I couldn't stay at the war college, but there's lots of other decisions to make about what to do. Well, Pauline, when you figure out what the next thing is, and when the book comes out, we would love to have you on again.

I would love that. Thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and talking to us about all this. Thanks. Thanks for having me. That's all for this time. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, Angry Planet Pod.com,

where you get commercial-free, early access to all the mainline episodes, and some bonus episodes and written content. We will be back again soon with another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet. Stay safe until then.