 The US Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Well good afternoon, I'm Professor John Jackson and I'm pleased to welcome you to the 13th issues in national security lecture for this academic year. I will turn over to Admiral Chatfield, our president, to have her welcoming remarks. Hello, good afternoon in your company and to share this time with you. This is a wonderful series that we have that allows us to share our rich academic lectures in a broader audience and I want to extend among all of our listeners today. You know, we are always grateful for the participation of members of the community, our spouses network, our Naval War College Foundation members, but today we're joined by the Rhode Island National Guard Joint Diversity Council and it really is an honor to welcome you into this space and I want to thank you for expressing your interest and being here present with us for an important lecture and so we'll sit back and we'll oh and here's my husband David who's joining and we would just love to welcome you to this event today. Thank you. Thank you, Admiral David. This series was originally established as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past four years it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport and participants from around the nation. We will be offering five additional lectures between now and May of 2021 and announcement detailing the dates, topics, and speakers of each lecture will be posted by our public affairs office. Looking ahead on Tuesday 23 March 2021 we will hear from Professor Jessica Blankshane and Professor Lindsey Cohn who will speak about civil military relations. Today a family discussion group meeting will follow the formal lecture in order to provide information to the community on specific programs and services available here in Newport. Our special guest for this week is Fran Sokol from the Fleet and Family Support Center who will talk about the spousal hiring assistance program so that'll be coming after the formal presentation and the questions and answers. Okay let's move on to the main event. During the presentation that follows please feel free to ask questions using the chat function of zoom and we will get to them at the conclusion of the presentation. Discussions about racial and gender inequities are now a common part of our public discourse and addressing such inequities are very much on the agenda of the leaders of the military services. Today's presentation will give us a chance to reflect and engage these issues as our students do in the College of Leadership and Ethics. Our speaker will help us consider the issues from the standpoint of ethics and leadership as informed by both academic insights and practical perspectives. Professor Pauline Shanks Curran holds a PhD in philosophy from Temple University specializing in military ethics just war theory and applied ethics. She serves as the Stockdale Chair and Professor of Military Ethics here at the Naval War College. She holds a BA degree in philosophy and international relations from Concordia College in Minnesota and an MA degree in philosophy from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg Canada. Her most recent book is the widely praised on obedience contrasting philosophies for military citizenry and community which was published by the U.S. Naval Institute in 2020. Her work has been published in Newsweek, War on the Rocks, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, and a variety of academic journals. I'm pleased to pass the digital baton to Dr. Pauline Shanks Curran. Thank you John and thank you for such a lovely introduction and thank you all for coming. I'm a little surprised there's so many of you here because at least in Rhode Island it is a lovely sunny day, the kind of day when one might ask if we can have class outside. But thank you for coming. We're in my dining room and we're going to have a discussion about race and gender through the lens of my discipline of philosophy and ethics and also through the lens of some of the practical things that we do in the College of Leadership and Ethics. So towards the end there will be a practical exercise. So if you have pad and paper you will be needing that later. You won't have to share but I am going to ask you to write some things down and to do some reflective processing. So first of all kudos to you for being willing to enter this space. I know these are challenging conversations for many of us and so I want to give you credit for at least being willing to enter the space and listen and engage on this topic. That's often the biggest hurdle. The introduction laid out who I am. I'm a philosophy professor and I come to this topic both personally and professionally. Personally I am the mother of two children of color. One of my sons is Latino of Mexican descent and my other son is African American and Asian. And so I came to I'm an adoptive mother and so I came to have to think about a lot of these kinds of issues because this is what is in my household. And so this summer was as we say in my family festive thinking about George Floyd especially since my African American son was really he's 13 now so he's old enough to understand that. But I also came to thinking about questions of race through ethics through philosophy of law and through social and political philosophy. When I taught undergraduate philosophy I taught a course in philosophy and race and also taught a significant portion of a course on philosophy of law in critical legal theory which is the source or one of the sources for the critical race tradition. So we're going to have a conversation but occasionally I'm going to share screens I'm hoping that won't be too clunky so you'll just have to forgive me a little bit of grace with the back and forth on that but I wanted this to be a conversation. So this is not going to be a lecture about the empirical facts of issues of race and gender inequity in this country. There is a wide wide and very deep body of literature establishing historical and structural inequities with different racial groups and different gender groups. That is the domain of the social sciences. I have many wonderful colleagues here at the Navy War College who do social science work. It would be unethical of me to pretend that I do that kind of work so I am not going to engage in that if that's why you're here I apologize. That's not what this conversation is going to be about. So this is going to be a conversation about about race and gender through the lens of ethics and leader development and it is really important at this point that I acknowledge something in my discipline that's called positionality. I need to own my position. I am a white woman so I may have some authority to speak about gender. My authority to speak about race is complicated. I am not going to report to represent any other racial perspective except as I understand it through my scholarly lens or through my personal experiences with my children. I also want to honor that I am in my dining room. The land I sit on is native land. The land I was born on in Cheyenne, Wyoming is native land. The land I grew up in near Great Falls, Montana is native land. One of my sons is descended from enslaved persons. My other son is his family is from Mexico and he was born in California which was part of Mexico. So all of these are part of the identity that I hold and the way in which I have to approach this topic which is with some empathy but also a great deal of humility. So I'm not here to preach. Because a narrative approach is part of the methodology we use, I may tell stories about my children. I have asked permission to do so. I don't show pictures of my children because they're teenagers and they have elected that I'm no longer allowed to do that which is completely and utterly fair. But I want you to know anything I say about my children. I have asked them if I can if I can share. So I'm more of a guide on a journey and maybe I've been on the journey perhaps a little longer in different ways than other people have but I'm merely a guide. I'm not here to preach. We're here to have a conversation and to really ask the question how do we have conversations about these very difficult issues? And I will just say that I do have a quote from the Duchess of Sussex for later if you've been watching CNN or anything on TV the last couple days. You know what I'm talking about. If you don't you should check that out. Okay so what are we going to do today? I'm going to try to not talk too long so we can have lots of time for conversation. First of all, number one, we need to leave moral judgment at the door which has an emphasis really hard for me because I love moral judgment. It's so awesome especially when I get to judge other people because it makes me feel so much better but we're going to need to bracket we need to leave our moral judgment at the door. So I want you to think about wherever you are and notice where you are. I practice yoga so my yoga instructor who is Adrienne from yoga with Adrienne with the dog says often to notice where you are but not to judge it right you just you come as you are. Also we want to leave our baggage at the door our assumptions our biases our experiences we all have them they're there but I wanted I want you to try to bracket them and the analogy I use with my students is that we're going to try on some shoots behind me is one of three shoe closets that I have in my house and it has been observed that I have a little bit of a shoe problem. I like to think of it as a hobby but other people tell me that it's a problem. We're going to try on shoes. You got to I want you to put them on I want you to walk around I want you to look at them in the mirror think about how they go with your outfits do you like them do you not like them but I really want you to feel them even if you're trying the shoes you're trying on our wedges which I typically do not like but I'm going to try them on anyway because maybe this is the pair that I'm going to like and even if it isn't it's important for me to have that experience of walking around in them at the end of the day you can take them off I'm not taking your own shoes away I'm not asking you to sell your shoes right I'm not saying you have to take these shoes but we want to have that experience of walking around and really trying them on so try to leave your baggage leave your shoes assigned for a moment you get them back but for now in this space let's try on some shoes we need to get clarity on what the issues are and what they aren't and try to clear out some of these perceptions and then we're also going to do an exercise to practice some modes of engagement just as we would in the class so that we can reflect on our so this reflection is an important part of what philosophers do it's also an important part of what we do in our leadership practice in the College of Leadership and Ethics okay so I'm going to I'm going to try to share a screen hopefully this is going to work one never knows about these things okay so I'm hoping that you can see a slide that says you may have heard you may have heard of these terms and once again notice the terms without judgment you might think these are pc terms you might think they're woke you might think all kinds of things about them but forget how you are judging them and just notice these terms these are terms related to the topics of race and gender and equity um in this country and in other places um and some of these may seem buzzwordy and they're subject to misuse quite a bit as a philosopher I care about definitions and using words properly and they all have specific definitions within academic discourse and within academic literature and a specific context whether it's in philosophy in law or so on now don't worry I am not going to define all of these for you okay so that's our first four slides if you want to keep track that helps you sort of keep away so what is the issue what is it that all of those terms on the slide sort of point to the issue is systemic and cult or structural disadvantages in racial and gender categories these structural and systemic disadvantages are also intentional and they're historical one does not accidentally enslave millions of people that's not an accident that's intentional like you have to set out to do that so these are systemic and structural disadvantages on in terms of racial and gender categories that are imposed by one group and disadvantaged other groups right so I'm going to yes thank you for the spelling my spell check can never get privileged so it's always spelled wrong and so I completely own that thank you for the correction I have two analogies for you to think about because the the systemic structural piece I think is hard for American audiences to wrap our brains around because we're informed by a political a tradition called political liberalism and political liberalism is the view rooted in John Locke and John Stuart Mill who are both enlightenment philosophers that the individual is the basic unit of society that the political rights and moral responsibility are to be understood in terms of the individual and it's the job of the state to protect basic rights and including property to secure those rights but to be neutral on all questions of value and that is the whether you are politically liberal or politically conservative that that is a shared American tradition of how we think about how we think about politics so I'm going to give you two analogies that sort of help you think about the systemic nature of racial and gender inequities the first is a free wi-fi raise your hand if you'd like free wi-fi does that sound like a good deal that's a good deal right so let's imagine that you get free wi-fi you're not really sure how one day you're up talking to your neighbor um and you're blonde and he's blonde and you're like do you get free wi-fi he's like yeah I get free wi-fi do you know why we get free wi-fi I have no idea a few days later you're out talking to your neighbor who's a redhead and you're like dude do you get free wi-fi no I don't get free wi-fi well how much do you have to pay for wi-fi well I have to actually pay twice the going rate so not only do I have to pay for it I have to pay twice what everyone else has to pay right so this is an example as a privilege I'm getting free wi-fi I didn't ask for it if I could figure out how to give it back as a good ethics professor I might do that but I don't know how to do that but I'm getting a benefit at the expense of my redhead and neighbor who had not only has to pay for it but he has to pay twice as much so that's one way to think about these kinds of things another way to think about it is the dinner party I love dinner parties hope it has been really hard on me because I can't have dinner parties because I love to cook and I love to have people over who are not my teenage sons to eat my food and tell me how wonderful it is right because they just want to have dominoes all the time so I'm having a dinner party and I buy which people and and the admiral comes to the dinner party and she looks around and she says did you notice that the only people here are blondes I said oh I didn't notice that oh gee I must have read left the red heads off the off the guest list and she says oh don't you think she should invite some red heads I'm like yeah okay I should invite some red heads so the typical image of of how you deal with with racial and gender inequities it's just some people that left off the the guest list right some matter inviting the people who who were not invited but what if it turns out that the problem isn't the guest list the problem is the dinner party itself how the notion of a dinner party is constructed and then who ought to be invited to a dinner party so even if you invite these other people to the dinner party we haven't really questioned the basic assumption of the dinner party and we might ask why wearing the dinner party I mean would it be better have a barbecue or a potluck or or some other kind of social event right so those are two sort of images to help us wrestle with sort of the nature the the systemic and structural nature of these inequities it's not the case that african-americans were just left off the guest list and then we can just fix it by adding them to the guest list that doesn't if there are structural inequities that does nothing to address those structural inequities right and the same with wi-fi so this is not a case of a few bad apples this is as the duchess of sussex said she said racism racist is not rude they're different things that's a paraphrase I don't have her exact quote right this is not a matter of people who are being mean or rude or ignorant individuals we tend to think of racism or sexism as this is a problem with individuals it's not a problem with individuals only right it's problem with of individuals within a structure within a society within a system it's also not generational I've taught undergraduates for 25 years and it's not as simple as saying well that was okay back in the day back when my grandparents were alive and it's not okay now so we're less racist than they were back then it's not that's not clear empirically or in any other way especially narratively right and it's also not the case that this is accidental right it wasn't it wasn't an accident that members of certain racial categories or certain gender categories were excluded or put at systemic disadvantage I mean you have to really be a robust conspiracy theorist to think that it just we just all decided to enslave you know African Americans at the same time we all decided women should own property at the same time right these are structural things this is also not a matter of oversensitivity or hurt feelings that's not what this is about this is about systems and structures that disadvantage some people and advantage other people but remember moral judgment at the door at this point we're not saying whether this is good whether this is bad whether you should feel bad when you should feel good whether you're a bad person or a good person that's not the conversation this is a conversation about systemic and structural disadvantages right that have a history and that are intentional and in some ways are rooted in this tradition of political liberalism where we focus on the individual right which then is very nice because it gets us out of having these conversations about systems so if we were all in the room together many of us would be dressed in a similar fashion and I'm not talking about military uniform I'm talking about just fashion right or if we walked out to the parking lot and looked at everybody's cars there's a lot of similar kinds of cars is that an accident we all just happened to pick the same kind of part no we didn't you're subject to advertisement right in your entire life you've been pitched at about you need to have this kind of house you need to have this kind of car you need to have this kind of thing and I know we all like to think that we're all radical individualists and we all make up our own minds but we swim in this soup it's this and it influences us and that's not to judge us right it would be really weird if we grew up in this society and we weren't influenced by these constant messages and racism and sexism are the same way there's a soup that we swim okay so time to share screen again this is slide number two so we've seen number one this is number two so these are some things I won't read them that I hear a lot and you probably recognize some of these and maybe you've said some of these so just take a moment to take these in for a moment and think about what do these comments reveal to you no judgment not whether they're right or wrong or good or bad or these are horrible people who said these things to you but what do these reveal do these comments reveal to you just just take a moment to kind of sit with it some things that we might see our fear discomfort marginalization externalizing a problem that's someone else's problem and I want you to think about if these if any of these comments resonate for you and they reveal feelings of fear discomfort marginalization I want you to think about that those feelings would also apply if you are a member of a marginalized community hearing these words right that to my son you will he will feel discomfort at being profiled when he walks to the dollar store every single time right that he will feel discomfort that he will feel marginalization so one things we do in in in thinking about leadership is try to flip the script try to imagine something from someone else's point of view that's our seconds so we're halfway through slides anyway so how do we approach this through a leadership and ethics lens in leadership and ethics we we focus on four things that I'm going to talk briefly about first of all it's perspective taking which is trying to enter into the experience at least mentally from someone else's perspective literally to take someone else's perspective without judgment just just take their perspective we also try to articulate someone else's views from their point of view to say I might say to my friend Michael this is what I heard you say is this what is this did I get that right we call that in psychology they call it mirroring often use it in marriage counseling right very useful with your partners if you want to use that so articulating someone else's views which can involve empathy you have to understand someone else's view from their point of view we also reflect on and do critical analysis of our own views and experiences so now I need to step back and say what does this say about my own position and then how can I use what I've learned as an ethical but not just a moral leader moral leader someone who knows what's right and wrong an ethical leader can reflect on and articulate and think about what's right and wrong and convey that to someone else so what do we do in leadership and ethics well part of what we do we might use narrative and narrative is very common in in discussions about race and gender as a way to capture lived experience that the majority doesn't have right so if there's time in the discussion and you want to hear my story about buying a hair product for my African American son we can talk about that it's a story I use to illustrate my own white female privilege we also use empathy which is entering into someone else's experience both cognitively and emotionally from their point of view trying to understand what it feels like for them not judging it that doesn't mean we agree with it I can enter I can be empathetic with with someone who's a Nazi or neo-nazi that doesn't mean I agree with their point of view it means I can try to to enter into it from their point of view right we also interrogate our own experiences especially our emotional reactions which you're going to get to do in just a few minutes very often we don't pay attention to our emotional life and I know in the military very often you're told I was raised by a senior nco I've you know it's told you know you you keep emotions out of things like it's some contaminant that you have to be pure from right that's a deeply philosophically that's a deeply problematic view so we have to interrogate our own experiences including our own emotions and then we also have to do some critical thinking around the sources of our own ideas our commitments our beliefs you did not have those ideas beliefs commitments beamed into your head by aliens at least I don't think so they came from somewhere they came from a long process it's worth thinking about what that process is and trying to uncover that so those are some of the tools that we might use in order to to to think about these kinds of questions okay so it is now time for a very short exercise and I'm going to show you a slide and then I want you to work through each of these four points it's going to take about five minutes um if you're in the room with someone else and you want to talk for the extroverts among us that's fine um if you're an introvert and just don't really like talking to other people um has COVID been awesome or what um so I'm going to go ahead and share a slide so and we're going to walk through this together so I want you to note right now this second without judging one or two emotional reactions you are having just one or two words just jot those down don't judge it just like how are you feeling emotionally apathetic angry irritated whatever it is it's your emotional reaction now I want you to pick one of those and for that emotional reaction ask yourself what is the belief the idea of the experience the commitment or the value that's producing this reaction in other words where is this reaction coming from it's not coming from out there it's not because Professor Shank's friend said something that irritated me right um there's something in you there's some friction claus would say because we can't have a talk at the war college without mentioning either claus woods or or mahan and I can't do mahan I'm sorry um what's the friction right again you're not judging this what is it that's producing this reaction let's say of irritation but is it what what belief idea experience commitment that you have that's rubbing here okay then for maybe pick one or two of those things that you isolated and be and ask yourself where did those come from what's the source of that the source of that belief commitment or value is that maybe you're upbringing your religious perspective you have some experience you had um a book that you read the navy core values whatever but what's the source of this belief where did it come from okay now is the fun part we're on to D now you get to judge and analyze so now you can judge analyze and critique what's in C is this something I need to reassess do I need to reevaluate this belief idea commitment whatever or does this process just help me understand why I react the way I do or why I think the way I and how might that the answer in D how might that impact my ethical life or my role as a leader right so D is where the the judging okay so I call this a motive analysis I've done this for years with undergraduate students in classes on on war and also on classes about race and gender because these are these are all issues that create emotional reaction so I always end up teaching all the hot topic topics I'm not sure why that is although I'm sure my mother can tell you why that is but these are these are things that that produce churn right so this process is something that that is a good way to sort of analyze to name and analyze your emotions and your emotional reactions to things I went through this process this summer when my son said that in response to me asking him to do chores that I was making him feel like a slave and you can imagine that I probably did not have the best reaction to this this was about the time of George Floyd and of course flew off the handle in a way that I should not have right but then later had to go back and ask oneself okay why did I have that reaction right what was producing that reaction and what did I need to think about in terms of both race and gender um and my relationship with my son to understand why that reaction happened because I heard the same thing from my oldest son probably a few years before it hadn't had the same reaction okay um coming out of share for a moment so we just didn't exercise like you would do in one of our ethics and leadership classes and then we would in in seminar we would talk about it and talk about our takeaways and what we learned and how this might influence our leadership we might also go off and do our own journaling our own reflection or in a paper about about this process right um so so what next right and then I'm going to stop so that we can have some conversation where are we going what next what's important about these discussions is to recognize there is individual agency I'm not arguing there's no individual responsibility that'd be really weird for the stock deal chair and ethics to be arguing that not arguing that what I am arguing is that we need to understand our individual agency within a collective context and that we also have collective agency we do things in collaboration with other people right so we are not only individual agents and I hope that that line of argument is persuasive with people who are in the military because you all engage in collective agency all the time right um you can't wage a war without collective agency but there is this collective context that we operate in um and so another celebrity I want to quote at this point is Will Smith who says who makes a point about the difference between guilt and responsibility it might not be your fault but it may be your responsibility I did not personally enslave African Americans I'm not sure that any of my ancestors did they may have they may not have but the state of racism in our country and in my household is in fact my responsibility even if I don't bear guilt for it right we think of guilt as aligned with blame and causal agency but we might still be responsible for things I'm responsible to take care of the environment even if I didn't dump the trash so I think it's worth thinking about that the last thing I'd like us to think about and this is the last slide and so far the technology has worked thank you technology is that legacies of pain suffering and exploitation have daily implications these are not abstract academic issues that we only might only talk about in the university these are things that have daily legacies right now the vaccination rates for communities of color is much lower than for white communities and the incidence and severity of covid is much higher the reason for that is historic inequities in the medical system in the way in which the medical system used members of of communities of color as getting as medical getting rights right that's something that that is reverberating to this day right this second so I want to we need so there's kind of four points here that you can take a look at to think about and I want to I want to think about and this might sound a little panna annish like you know she's chipper and blonde and and cheerful and perky and my colleagues who work with me know that that's completely not me at all but I wanted to think about how we can build meaningful communities and and have meaningful engagements I had a class in the winter term where we talked about many of these issues in a virtual classroom on discussion boards and the students had really deep respectful discussions and we had a class that was especially for the war college was quite demographically diverse at least in terms of racial issues but they were able to engage these issues even though they didn't agree so we don't have to agree but we do have to find some way to to orient around shared projects or commitments and we should also think about what are we missing what what is american society missing because some people are paying twice as much for wi-fi or are not at the dinner table or at the dinner party or what are we missing because we should be having a good midwestern poplunk instead of a fancy schmancy dinner party where we all have to dress up and I have to cook six courses so what's being minimized what are we missing what's being left out what could we have in terms of progress in terms of collective enterprises in terms of security especially national security that we don't have because some people are are disadvantaged at the expense of other people and then what could we learn is there an opportunity here to learn something and I think there is um and I think about when I decided to start to teach philosophy of race and when I embarked on the journey to adopt children this talk today is not where I thought I would be um but I've learned a lot and a lot of times it's been really really really painful um that journey but what can we learn and how could we grow um and how could our shared lives be better by what we learn right I think I'm a I'm certainly a better mother but I'm also a better philosopher and I'm a better ethicist because I have been forced encouraged to think about these kinds of issues and I had to grapple with them which is not to preach to you all but it is an expression of my authentic reality now lest you think this sounds all like pie in the sky right now I can hear my 13 year old african-american son in his man cave downstairs screaming at his call of duty video game right so and the dog is outside the store going hey why am I not on this call I want to be on this call right so just to kind of break the third wall um that's the that's the reality but in my dining room um we could I'm putting up someone's asking for the last line um in my dining room we can still have these discussions even though it's not going to be perfect even though it's going to be messy um even though I might say things that are wrong but I'll learn from them okay so I think I'm going to stop there if that's all right john um and and have the rest of the time for questions absolutely Pauline thank you very much we'd like to do is uh we've got one interesting question here and uh do you see it there before you can scroll up um identifying as black but 51 scottish and west african ancestry then what if we all had our um yeah so this is interesting especially with the um I know that a few christmas is ago the the the dna testing the ancestry testing was super popular is like a gift to give your um friends and colleagues and family members and depending on with this would your view change based on what you found out about yourself right um so if I found out that I'm 49% let's say african-american would that change how I view myself I'm guessing for a lot of people it would um so there's a sort of question of how people identify then there's a question of their um sort of genetic makeup but they're in mind that both race and gender social constructions um the duchess of Sussex is is biracial right um so and is our our our vice president is multiracial but there are certain ways in which we we sort of think about or they think about for themselves how they're going to identify my 13 year old is african-american and korean um but he identifies more as african-american my oldest son is latino um but if you saw him on the street you might not know that because he has he has fairly light skin and and often uh as as they say passed um and in fact in legal circles um after after slavery was ended uh you could sue in court to be considered white whiteness was a property was something you could own something you could claim because along with whiteness came certain legal rights right so yeah so that's a really interesting question and I you know I I think some of this the moment I guess is about hatred I think some of I think a lot of it is just it's it's about not wanting to acknowledge that there are that you have free wi-fi and someone else is paying white on what it is or it might not even be willing to acknowledge that I have free wi-fi well that's just the way it is like everyone has free wi-fi right well no um so then what happens when you start to learn about these strategic disadvantages um it's easier to say well it's well they didn't work hard enough for you know their parents didn't save them it's easier it's we go the personal only the personal responsibility route because that that feels more comfortable so yeah so super interesting question um you know would that change how we how we view ourselves the reality is the United States is becoming much more multicultural um I taught my philosophy in race class for 10 years when I started I had very few students who came from multicultural families or were in multicultural relationships when I ended um I would say at least half of my students had that experience and it changed the discussion um because it was no longer black black white Asian Native American whatever now now we have much more complicated intersectional identities and then that complicates things even even further um yeah so we've got a question here from uh from the general what do you think is important to consider when measuring success for gender and racial diversity it's not just about a number but what is really success if you have a racially and gender balanced diverse organization so the place I taught undergraduate at Pacific Lutheran University which is in Tacoma, Washington right next to um joint base for Fort Lewis in fact my living room overlooked the the cord on the flight line um and when I first started there we had almost no students of color and I remember saying to the director of admissions you know about the time that I was adopting my children so I've been at Peel You for six or seven years and I said I would really like Peel You to be a place that my my children could come and feel welcomed and seen for who they are and feel comfortable that's my metric that's and that's my vision sorry to break it to the admiral in this context but this is my vision for the naval war college as well my son wants to be my youngest son wants to be a marine I would like the naval war college to be someplace he could come be sent as a marine and come here and get a good education and be seen and be valued and feel like he belongs truly belongs as a member of the community so I tend to think that now I understand that's much more intangible and that's more difficult to measure but I think that's more important than numbers do the members of the community feel as if they belong do they feel seen and heard for themselves because different african-americans have different experiences different women have different experiences my experiences are very different than my colleague alinda johnson right even though we're both women so so I think it's also about understanding the nuances and the differences between people's experiences without using that as an excuse to say um as the duchess has experienced as some of the clapback was well that's not really that's not really that's not a thing right you're just being oversensitive some of the comments out there right I think there's a reality to these experiences I have never been profiled when I go to the store my son is profiled nearly every single time he walks into a store my interactions with the police are very different than his he's never been in trouble with the police he's never had a what what I would think of as a negative interaction with them but his experience walking around in a black male 13 year old body is very different than my lived embodied experience as a 50-something white woman of scottish descent right so I think I think that is what what I would want us to move towards but I understand in the military we have to have in the next year we have to have metrics we like to have metrics but maybe we need to think about qualitative metrics I don't want to get political but the prior administration demanded that the department of defense cease any teaching about race and diversity the new administration has changed that what are your comments in that situation yeah that was going to be an interesting test of academic freedom because I teach critical race theory as part of what I do academically so that could have been really interesting first of all I think there's a difference between and that slide that I showed with all of those different words there's a difference between critical race theory critical legal theory and anti-racist trainings or movements those are different kinds of things so first of all I think there's a difference between education and training I don't advocate for critical race theory in the classroom anymore than I advocate for Kantian ethics I actually don't like these wrong about pretty much everything because I wrote my dissertation on David you right um who they're in in violent opposition to one another so I can teach something I can represent someone's viewpoint without agreeing with and I think it's important for our students to understand different viewpoints so I can teach critical race theory I can teach all kinds of different versions of feminist thought it doesn't mean I necessarily agree or disagree with them but our students are better for encountering them now some versions of certain kinds of training have a different kind of it's a it's a different kind of thing where what you're trying to get people to do is come to terms with racism that's a different thing than what we do here in the classroom I do think it is valuable to have conversations about race and especially for those of us who are members of those privileged groups that get free wifi and that have been invited to the dinner party and have taken it for granted that everyone's invited to the dinner party I do think that we have work to do thinking about those systems and those structures and how they've affected us and how they've affected other people and then what that means going forward and I would say that all of these traditions critical race critical theory um anti-racist there's a great deal of diversity within these movements and disagreement about how to move forward it's it's not the case that every anti-racist person is like okay um here's the memo on our group ideas about how to no it's like any political movement right um there's disagreements about things so so I guess for what we do I think of it more in education I think it'll be an interesting question for the Department of Defense what kind of trainings I know we have our extremism stand down here soon and I'm participating I've been asked to participate in some other ones as a guest speaker and I'm really looking forward to seeing how different people engage these kinds of things and what kind of training the Department of Defense wants people to do in the future in general I think clicking through PowerPoint slides is probably not the way one should engage racial and gender equity um training or education but that is my bias so you can like put bias under my picture and flashing like that's because I'm a philosopher I think we should have conversations Pauline uh if we have had generations decades centuries of inequity how do you address that without being charged with reverse discrimination I know there have been cases throughout academia that says I have been mistreated because I happen to be white and male how do you address those issues and how do you correct the problem without some kind of a process that allows the correction to be made yeah that's that's a really important question I guess um I'll give you all a little homework um which is to Daila Chris Rocks I think it was I want to say 2004 2006 he has a routine that he did on affirmative action it's on YouTube just go YouTube it and watch it because what he does is he articulates the nature of the problem really well which is that if you are in a disadvantaged group that means that you had certain structural disadvantages um and someone else has a head start over essentially so he compares with having a 400 year you know I have a hundred 400 year head start over um Chris Rock let's say um so the first question is is what are the disadvantages and what does correction look like um I I I'm the the notion of reverse discrimination seems that's something I want to unpack and think about a little bit um because discrimination is usually a systemic kind of thing right so if we're going to claim reverse discrimination we have to claim that there is some kind of systemic systematic um discrimination now that is happening let's say against me because I'm a white woman right um but I do think we we have to have conversations about what the end state looks like and also understand so let's go back to the free wi-fi what should we do should you should I have to start paying for wi-fi I'm going to think that's unfair why should I pay for wi-fi I've never had to pay for wi-fi that's unfair right you're discriminating against me because I haven't had to pay for wi-fi right so the the question there is is to think about that analogy maybe what would be equitable everyone gets free wi-fi okay well that's not really economically sustainable right up to this point some people have been subsidizing other people's free wi-fi right so what do you should they get their money back they've had to pay twice as much should they get their money back should the people who have had wi-fi have to pay the people who being being paid twice as much as this is called reparations right which is one considered one solution right um so so I think the question I mean it's a really tricky question and the question is you can't just start where we are and say well forget about the past um that was then this is now and you even though you are we're at this point in the race and even though you're like six laps behind because I got a head start we're just going to start here and run the race I think we can see that there's a problem with that right so then the question becomes how do we think about what what equity looks like um and in order to have equity like what does that mean both for the group that's had an advantage but also the group that's had a disadvantage right um seems like uh that there has to be some kind of compensation or some kind of adjustment made now the question of course is what does that look like one take on that is a firm inaction but that's only that's only one approach reparations are another way to think about it um and in terms of you know I think we are capable of a lot of innovative creative thought I think this is one area where we need some innovative and creative thought to think about what what would correcting these inequities look like if for generations African Americans or women were barred from holding property they're going to be at an economic disadvantage what do you do about that right there isn't intergenerational wealth so Prince Harry could do what he did moved to California because his mother left him money right without that intergenerational wealth he wouldn't have had the ability to do um what he wanted to do and what he needed to do so if we think about that and how that reverberates through society um I think that we need to start to think about then what would adjusting or acknowledging these inequities look like I think the first step is acknowledging that they exist for some people they're not even willing to go there right um but then once we acknowledge it okay I say to my son yes I've had free wifi on my on my life now what does that mean for our relationship or I have white privilege I'm not profiled in the store like you are what does that mean for for our relationship so that was a really unsatisfactory answer I'm sorry that was absolutely fine there are no easy answers we're getting towards the end of our period here but there's a question that uh says that the military always tries to measure inclusion as a measure of how we're doing can you talk about some measures of inclusion that could be used yeah I mean I guess I would go back to what I say before is you know I mean you could do I mean you could ask people like do you do feel like your concerns are taken seriously do you think like you are heard and seen in your in your all of your identities are your identities affirmed um or are they denigrated so I think there's questions we could ask about how we treat one another um and whether or not we feel like we are full members of of the of whatever community that we're in um and I don't think inclusion always means that we're completely comfortable um I think it is that I so when I encounter other people across the Navy War College so when I run into my colleague Tom Nichols or Dave Burbeck they're like hey how's it going philosopher like they acknowledge that I'm a philosopher and like they think sometimes things I say are weird maybe um but they they acknowledge that piece of my identity right I feel seen and heard as a philosopher as a woman who wears an excessive amount of leopard print right so I feel like my identities are are are affirmed right um if you don't feel included then you will feel marginalized or harmed or left out for your identity so that might be one place that we could that that we could start it's because I think you feel included if you think you're heard and you think you're seen for who you are and what you bring to the table um so that might be a start I don't know how you or answer great questions around that because I'm a philosopher so that's not my the social sciences can tell you how to do that thank you really good questions I know there were much more in chat than could be accommodated so thank you for your for your good thinking absolutely and Pauline thank you very much for uh teeing up a lot of the issues that we need to be considered I know the secretary of defense is uh very very interested in what's going on across the do d enterprise with regards to diversity racial equality and extremism all of these issues that we need to wrestle with so any last comments you'd like to leave with us before we uh uh secure for the day I would just say to hopefully this has maybe opened up a way to start to have some conversations and I understand those conversations are are uncomfortable so I'll just end with a story about my son um when George Floyd happened he came downstairs and he had his smartphone in his hands and he said do you know who George Floyd is and I said yeah and then I said did you see the video and he said yeah I saw the video and he looked at me and he said you realize mom that they're gonna kill me one day too right and I said no he's like yeah mom and so that was a really like slam my face into the brick wall right I'm someone who teaches and thinks about this and I had to sit down and then have a conversation a very difficult conversation with my son about that and what it meant and I couldn't just say to him as mother oh baby that's not what's gonna happen because I would have been lying to him right and not honoring his lived and body to experience as an African-American male um so I guess I would just hope and I know that's kind of a bummer to end on but I just hope that that that wall um that conversation we've had today will help you maybe overcome some discomfort to try to try on someone else's shoes and to start to have these conversations because I think it's in these conversations that we can we can have some progress thank you very much Admiral did you have anything you'd like to say before we take a break before our family discussion group yeah first of all um Dr. Shanks Kiran I want to thank you for your presentation today this is such a difficult topic and one that uh that I know that leaders in our military are struggling with uh leaders across America are struggling with uh citizens across America are struggling with and um we are uh frankly um this conversation that we're having in America is also being taken up in other countries uh finding a way to sit in the same room and hear another person's point of view on this topic uh is so essential to first understanding and then uh having a very deep dialogue about uh what can be done and so uh thank you for bringing that to our seminar series and uh I just appreciate your your courage to address this in our forum thank you thank you Admiral appreciate that