 Okay, let's go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, I am Dr. Pauline Schenck's Corinne, and I am the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics in the College of Leadership and Ethics. And welcome to the final leadership in ethics, Lou, for this academic year. And thank you for joining us. We have a talk that's perfectly timed since it's Pride Month, and this may be a topic that maybe people don't know as much about, and so I invite you to enter the conversation in a spirit of curiosity and learning as we all are learning. With us is one of our Stockdale Leader Group certificate group students. Lieutenant Colonel Brie Fram is the President of SPARTA, an organization that advocates and educates about transgender military service and is dedicated to the support and professional development of transgender service members. I'm going to let Brie tell you whatever she chooses about her transition, her process. I feel really strongly that I shouldn't be speaking about that, so hopefully that's okay with Brie. But she is an active duty astronomical engineer in the US Air Force, finishing up her year at the Naval War College. She'll be transferring to the Space Force. And for 16 years to Peg Fram and they have two girls, and her writing has been featured in the Washington Post Military Times, Inc. Stick, and the LBGBTQ Nation. She's the co-author of a forthcoming book with one of our faculty members. Oh, so that's not with our faculty members. So a new book coming out in November of 2021 and she is also going to be working on a book with one of our faculty members on leadership and these kinds of issues. So welcome, Brie. Thank you so much for the introduction and thanks to everyone who's taken the time out of their day to learn a little bit more. This is obviously a topic near and dear to my heart. And I'd like to jump right into it, because I know the most important and most valuable piece of this is going to be the questions. But I'm going to share some slides, go through a little presentation, and then look forward to speaking with all of you. So here's the the topic is basically transgender military service and why it matters. And I'm going to run you back through about the last 10 years of our history and what's happened. And then what does it mean for us going forward. But just here, even though this picture is a couple years old. These are just a few of the transgender service members currently on duty today. And they do everything that any of you might do or have done in your military careers deployed all around the world on duty here at home as well. And they joined for all the same myriad reasons that any of you might have joined. And I'd love to get into some more of their stories as we go on. And if you have questions I'm happy to talk to them and take about it but I want to take you back to about 10 years ago in 2011. And this roller coaster is the analogy for those past 10 years of history, the twists the turns the highs and lows of what it's meant to be a transgender service member serving in the military. And it has been a wild ride, because if we look back 10 years to the fall of 2011. That's when Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed. And there had been this big push for decades of how do we get to this point where lesbian gay and bisexual service members can serve openly and honorably. And then there had been a number of advocacy groups form court cases, all sorts of effort to get to this point. And then all of a sudden it's here and there's this incredible celebration. And like mission accomplished that's that's taken care of that's done, and more victories would follow for the LGBT community, as the Defense Against Marriage Act was ruled on constitutional and marriage equality became the law of the land. And this euphoric environment in most of these advocacy groups and most people like, we got it, we're there. Yeah, there's small things we need to continue doing but the big victory has been one. But for transgender service members, that wasn't the case. There were a few people still sitting on the sideline saying but, but what about us. And though many people thought it was covered. It wasn't. Transgender people were prevented from serving by DoD medical policy and had been for almost 60 years. So there's a whole long history there but this was the first moment where like, well, okay now who's going to fight for us. Where is this momentum going to come from? Because similar to what happened during Don't Ask, Don't Tell, people who are currently serving couldn't be their own best advocate because coming out and telling anyone would risk their career for something that had absolutely nothing to do with their ability to serve. And if Harry Potter taught us anything, it's that no one deserves to live in the closet. That closet is an inherent limiter of potential. So for the folks that were celebrating success and others left behind, it was, how do we make this happen. And for those of us in the military, you know, leaving anyone behind, that's against our ethos. We can't have that happen. So thankfully, a number of trans service members, word of mouth kind of came together with a couple other advocates that were like, yeah, this is important. We can't forget about these folks. And they formed the group Sparta that I am now the president of as a vehicle to push for open trans service. But the public facing folks in that organization had to be non transgender people. They had to fight for something that didn't affect them it wouldn't benefit them but they realized what so many of us have that it's about all of us. And if you take something away from from pride and this month pride is really about all of us. None of us would be here without the work done by so many people in the past, and it's our job to continue lifting one another up so we can move forward. But back to that closet analogy and how it is a limiter of potential. What anyone who served under don't ask don't tell will certainly tell you about and same with transgender service members is that when you're serving under those conditions, you have to put a filter in your brain that sits in between your thoughts and the words that come out of your mouth, or the actions that you take. And that filter has to make sure you're not inadvertently giving yourself away because the slightest slip to the wrong ear the wrong eyes means all of a sudden, it's over. And you lose your entire career your livelihood why you joined why you serve that's all gone in a moment, even though again it has nothing to do with your potential to serve. And you can be good, you can even be great serving under these conditions, but when that filters there, even if it's that split second delay, you're not able to reach your potential. And in addition to that, you're using this mental energy to hide yourself to hide who you are, and the purposely limit yourself. It's a mental energy that could otherwise be directed to accomplishing the mission, and love to talk later in your questions about the power of authenticity, and how much more effective we can be both as individuals, and as members of a team, when we're able to bring our full cells to work. Thankfully, this organization Spartans the help of many other advocacy organizations started to prove that transgender service members weren't the boogeyman, we all believed, or many of us believe they might be. We were able to get people in front of senior leaders in the Pentagon, you know, and say, look, they're not growing another head out of their shoulders they look like any other service member in uniform. They want to do a job and they want to continue to serve this country. So it's kind of that two pronged approach what could we quietly do within the Department of Defense to show the capability of transgender service members, and that outside fight of how do we influence policy. How do we speak with Congress speak with others in the executive branch, and make sure we have this confluence of factors that said, Yeah, this can happen. In 2014 and through 15 as you started to hear Secretaries of Defense say, Well, let's look at this let's study it. Maybe we shouldn't discharge people solely on the basis of their gender identity. You started to get this sense of hope. And we were once again, riding up towards that high, but we weren't there yet. By the time 2016 rolled around, we kind of thought, Okay, now's the moment. I think this is going to happen. And it was we got to pride month. More and more signs were on the wall, saying, Yeah, open service might be a reality based on all this work we've done there'd been a study done by the Rand Corporation that showed how there just wouldn't be issues. And, you know, talked about the cost that might be associated with it, but really that it was a good idea for the Defense Department to put in open transgender service. So in June of 2016, I was working in the Pentagon, and we knew Ash Carter was about to make an announcement. And I was so on on edge on for a number of things I thought about going down to that breathing room and being a fly in the wall. And I thought better of it, probably wasn't my place to be in the wall and, you know, screaming at the end. Yes. So I stayed in my office I watched on close circuit TV as Secretary Carter announced that there would no longer be a ban on transgender troops in the military. And it was euphoric. It was so incredible to have that weight lifted. But for me, it wasn't just the day that, Okay, now there's policy. It was also my day to come out. And as the secretary finished speaking, I had two things ready to go. One was an email to my colleagues that I worked with there in the Pentagon. And the other was a Facebook post that would go out to friends and family, telling them that I'm trans, why I'm coming out now, what it means to me, and what we can all gain from this. But when he finished speaking, still I hesitated. And like so many others, it's, what's the reaction going to be? What are people going to think of me? How is this going to affect my relationships? And for me knowing it's not just going to affect me, it's going to affect my family too. How is this going to affect the world around us? And that's all that closet mentality too of, you know, you're living with that burden. So this was my chance to be free, but I hesitated, not knowing what it was going to be. But finally, I got up the courage, you know, I reached over, I clicked send, I clicked post, then I ran away. I went down into the bowels of the Pentagon, topped on the elliptical machine and I swear I went nowhere faster than I had ever gone anywhere in my life, with all the nervous energy I had, wondering about what the reaction was going to be. And eventually I had to get back to work. I went back to the office, sat down, one by one, my colleagues walked over to my desk, shook my hand and said, It's an honor to serve with you. I was floored, because I felt the reserve reverse that it was my honor to serve with them and how thankful I was to get this outpouring of love and support. And the same thing on Facebook as all sorts of messages of love came in, and it was truly incredible. It was so good. My wife lost friends and family over me coming out, and not again for anything she did, but for simply who she chose to love. It was years before her parents would speak with her again, and there are many friends that today never have remade that connection. It was a tough moment and it's a challenging time for anyone to try and get through these events. But I also have to point out that for me, how much privilege I had in making that announcement in receiving that reflected love. Someone who's white, someone who is a relatively senior officer at the time, someone who's a nerd working in the Air Force in the Pentagon with a bunch of other nerds. Maybe that's not the same reaction that someone who's a person of color working in as an E3 in the infantry in the Marines or the Army might receive. Thankfully, as these anecdotes of people coming in started to, you know, reach a level of we have enough anecdotes to probably call it data. The vast majority had those positive reactions because one of the best things about us as the military is that element of meritocracy. It is, are you contributing to the mission. If so, great. I want you by my side. And that's what these transgender service members were showing all around the world that home and deployed was their competence, their capability, despite the limitations that have been placed on them. And that's why they were so valued. So and I in fact, may have been the first transgender person in the military to be hired for a job because I was trans because shortly after this event we got a new two star in charge of the organization and wanted to know more about the policy about what was going on. And I got the chance to go sit down with him before he even met his oh sixes at the time and spend an hour just talking about trans policy and what this means what it might look like. And a week later I got a call saying hey, you want to be my exec like, yeah, what an opportunity to again be able to, you know, just have that conversation and talk about why it matters. You know, shed a little light on a topic that not many people knew about, you have to jump at that kind of opportunity. Sadly this this high point though for us, it didn't last long. Even though in the next intervening months all the service chiefs testified to Congress that there are no issues with transgender service, you know similar to and don't ask don't tell was repealed the day before. And the matter was basically the same as the day after we went on doing our mission and getting the job done. But we did have a change of administration coming in. And President Trump had promised to be a friend to the LGBTQ community. And there was no expectation of, you know, going after trans service members that just doesn't seem to be something on the horizon. We advanced forward to the summer of 2017 and we think everything's going fine. And here I am on my last day of leave. I had gone back to northern Minnesota, up to a cabin with my high school friends. And I wake up, you know, having a donut looking out over this serene morning just like this is great, you know, life is good right now we're able to do all these amazing things and I'm going to go back to work and get get back to do in the business of this nation. And my world blew up that day. And at first I wonder why am I getting all these texts, what's going on all these messages are all of a sudden popping popping into my phone I don't know what's going on. Now if you think back to this time summer of 2017. This is when we were at high tensions with North Korea it was the comparison of whose button is bigger and you know where we're going to go to war for the first time in 70 years on the Korean peninsula. We sent out three tweets. The first one wasn't followed by anything for eight minutes, and you read this and you're like, Are we going to war. Are we not accepting or allowing the the North Koreans to perform nuclear missile tests. So, is this happening. Well, no. He was just saying the transgender individuals are a burden on on the US military and cannot be accepted or allowed. So, what a shock for this to come, seemingly out of the blue to this day. I don't think there's a good answer of why did this happen what created the conditions that this would be the tweet that the president sent out that morning. So my phone was all these messages of what are you going to do now what's what's going on are you okay. What's going to happen, and we had to kind of reorient ourselves to. Oh my God, what now, and not just us as individuals but for me and several others as leaders within this organization that was devoted to trying to take care of transgender of the message that we're going to give to them. And what we settled on what it kind of had to be was, well a tweet is not policy, and everyone needs to lace up their boots, go to work and continue accomplishing the mission, because until policy changes, and unless you are told your services are no longer your job is to go and get the job done just as well or better than you ever have before, because your competence is now under a spotlight that is shining brighter than anything that's ever been done before. Okay, I thank the president for that for shining that spotlight on our service. And it's kind of a strange feeling to be in that this fishbowl effect where everyone's looking at you and it's just magnified. All of a sudden, that spotlight created good things there was a transgender drill sergeant in the center of people magazine, a transgender couple, one Air Force one army was on Ellen. People weren't everywhere on the local media I did about nine or 10 interviews that day driving home to my parents house and doing local TV and national phone calls. And this went out everywhere. And it mattered, because sharing stories of competence and making those individual connections makes a difference. About 20 years ago, only a handful of people, you know you would say five about 5% of Americans would say they knew a transgender person 10 years ago, 15%. Now 30%. It's making a difference. And more importantly, when this came out, the public and the US military was evenly split at about 5050 in terms of should transgender service be allowed in the military. Two months after these tweets, it was 70% in favor, both inside the military and in the American public. The recent data that we have from a poll showed upwards of 85% support for transgender service. So getting those stories out there showing their ability to do what the military demands of them made a huge difference. But for us as leaders as advocates, how do we walk this line of pushing back against this policy. How do we show off these stories. How do we take the constraints that are placed on us by our uniform and still be effective both at our job, respect the right to be J and be an advocate for policy. And that's a tough ask for anyone. But we took took heart in in the words of Senator Carl Scherz who in 1872 and fighting against efforts to deny African Americans, their rights as part of reconstruction. The country right or wrong, right to be kept right, and if wrong to be set right. And that's the tack we had to take to do it respectfully to challenge ideas to show what the opportunity cost of this might be, and always relentlessly attack it with a positive spin, as to say, look at all these amazing service members and what they're doing for this country. I did say a tweet isn't policy, but eventually the Department of Defense did publish policy. And immediately there were lawsuits against the policy for different district courts put injunctions on that policy going into place, because they simply couldn't find merit with the policy and I'll read you the, the argument put forth by one of those district court judges. Mr. Collar Cattelli said on the record before the court. There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all. In fact, there is considerable evidence that is the discharge and banning of such individuals that have such an effect. And that in the service chief's testimony, everything was kind of on hold. And we thought things, well might be okay maybe these court cases over the next couple years will work their way up to the Supreme Court might be found unconstitutional or discriminatory, and there might be the opportunity to serve again. And the reason we had that hope is that the same recycled fallacies about service by transgender individuals were being used again and again, and they were the same ones that have been thrown against the service of African Americans against the integration of women against the integration of lesbians gays and bisexuals point to cost point to unit cohesion and all sorts of other issues that have been proven again wrong. And we had this time and up till the this picture on the on the screen, we had three years of open and honorable service by transgender people with none of these issues surfacing. In fact, that ran report that I mentioned earlier on the cost issue, assumed a cost for the Department of Defense's health budget of about $3 million a year, which is budget dust. Yet, in that data that we that the department gathered, it came in at under $1 million a year so you could even claim that transgender people are one of the few Pentagon projects coming on time and under budget. And so we had hope, but in here in January of 2019. The Supreme Court took it up and said, you know, while the lower courts go through these cases, we're going to let the administration put this policy into place. And so all of a sudden, there was this window where, okay, do these going to issue a revised policy and that's going to be it, the band's going to be into place. An endangered species. And because when they came up with that policy, it did allow those of us that had come out in the three years between Obama and Carter putting the policy in place in January of 16. And this ban that would go into place in April of 19, we could continue serving. However, there was a clause in the policy that should any of the courts find the example of our service as a reason to declare the policy discriminatory or unconstitutional. That clause would be severed, and we would be removed from the military. So no one knew could come out. No one knew could get in. And those of us still serving had that axe hovering somewhere behind our necks to say, we could lose this at any point, yet we had to continue serving and continue operating with that burden. Really, here's what I felt the impact was, and as an astronautical engineer that worked on missile warning satellites designed to detect these missiles, and just to be told. No, you know what your trans sorry that that can't work for the military. Thank you for your service will continue without. And with the estimate of up to 15,000 transgender individuals across all components. You can't replace that easily. We don't, you know, put someone in these positions without years and years of training and experience. So to think about what this might cost us is an interesting way to frame this what are we losing out on. And we met I'm going to get back to the band going into place when I, when I wrap up and tell you a little story but I want to advance closer to, to today because we did again get a new administration. And this is President Biden in January of this year, signing an executive order directing a secretary Austin to reimplement open trans service. And that policy went into place of April this year. Currently, the Air Force and the Navy have instituted service policies again. We are still waiting on the army and the Marines to come up with their policies, but those should be out shortly. And really again, taking that weight off of all of our shoulders. But still, it's an executive order. This is something that could flip back and forth. How do we deal with that. I would like to think that it will be unconscionable in four years to look back and, and imagine our military without transgender service members just as it would be to think of the military without African Americans without women without lesbians gays and But still, it points to, there's more work that can be done in this area to protect the opportunity to serve because the secretary Austin said, if you are otherwise qualified, we need and want every American who's capable of serving in the military to do so. So I do want to switch gears because now that we're at now and if any of you are fans of my favorite movie of all time spaceballs where it now now. And we can talk about why this matters to our military and what we get out of diversity and inclusion. So in the first instance, please tell me which of these pilots is trans. Please tell me from whose perspective that matters. Does it matter for the person on the ground who's under fire. Does it matter to the other pilot, who's trained for years with their wingman and knows they have their back in every situation. It's similar to under don't ask don't tell when again I'll tell a story from the general that I worked for, who was the f 16 squadron commander. And he said back in those days, everyone knew in the unit, who was a lesbian who was gay, who was different in some way. But it did not matter, because they knew when they were on the mission, they had each other's back, and it is absolutely the same with transgender service. And I mentioned it's about opportunity it's about thinking differently. And so of course it's worth the Navy War College maybe some of you will will recognize these pictures, but this is an event from 100 years ago, next month. And this is the sinking of the German battleship Ost Friesland, which was a proof of concept exercise for, can we actually think battleships from the air, how do we revolutionize the way we fight in the air. And you don't do this by just, you know, designing a new piece of equipment or it's about thinking how to use what we have differently, how to fight in new ways. What if the person who might revolutionize the way we fight in cyber or the way we fight in space has that brain to do it, but happens to be in a trans body. Are we going to pass on having the Billy Mitchell of cyberspace in our military, just because society has for some part of their life perceived them as a different gender than who they actually are. That's the kind of opportunity cost, we might miss out on. So what we can't do as a military regardless of who it is, is to deny ourselves our future heroes. This is not the military of 100 years ago where you put a rifle in someone's hand give them a few weeks of training and say go take that hill. We've got to nurture and develop the brain power that it's going to give us different perspectives the ability to integrate multiple perspectives, and to think about doing things differently to stay ahead of our adversaries. I'm going to go from here. And I'm going to talk briefly to these two stories, these anecdotes that I have up here and one is what we want to avoid. The other is what we need to do. So for this first example, Sergeant Dana Walker served more than 20 years in the army did not come out as trans until after her service was over it's now an army civilian. She describes her service as saying that her shields were up through the entirety of her career, and it limited her ability to connect. It limited her ability to make good decisions, because she was always in that protective mode of I can't let anyone find out about this. I have to protect myself first. And even though I'm doing well and being promoted I'm in leadership positions. Again, I'm not where I can be. But instead, if we can do things like it's happened with this first lieutenant in the Air Force, who was able to come out, because she knows there are others future leaders, and again this is a first lieutenant saying this. She knows there are others out there behind her that are going to see her example and take heart in that and be themselves and reach their full potential. We as leaders and particularly for those of you out there that are going to be commanders or are in senior leadership positions where someone might come out to you as trans. Here's my advice to you. Treat it as an opportunity. If you had a service member come to you with an educational opportunity, you'd be all for it because it's something that's going to allow them to reach higher to reach their potential. That's exactly what this is for a trans person for you to help set that culture to enable them to be their best. Not only are you going to get a better soldier sailor airman marine guardian coast guardsman. It's a mouthful to say all of that now, but you're going to have a better individual and you're going to have a better unit for it. And that's really what we're looking for is that opportunity for all of us to reach our full potential to set those closets aside, and to be a better, more capable, more lethal military. I'm going to close with with one story as I said I would go back to that time when the band was going into place. It was announced in March, and it went into effect April of 2019. A couple days prior to that I was down in Washington DC, speaking with legislators gave a speech on the on the National Mall. And, you know, with the hope maybe there's some last minute intervention, we changed some hearts and minds wasn't to be the case. So I wrapped up, and I headed back to New York to pick up my family because we had to drive back to Minnesota for what was to be my grandmother's 90th and my grandfather's 95th birthday party. And my grandfather who you see here in the upper left was a German Jew who escaped in the 1930s from Germany, but as soon as he could he enlisted in the army, and was sent back to Europe, and in a tank company. He was supposed to become the youngest first sergeant in the European Theater of Operations, got personally yelled at by pattern to rip that goddamn armor off the tank so they could move faster and reach their objectives. And he went on to liberate multiple concentration camps, and turned down several battlefield commission opportunities so that he could stay with his unit. It was an incredible story of someone, you know, reaching for for the good and fighting for a country that they believed in. And he was such a supporter of mine. Every time I was promoted or I went back home and I got to see him it was just that a huge smile. Wow, a captain, whoa, a major that's incredible. And you see here him his last time he ever traveled was to my commissioning to give me my first salute and, and what an honor that was. But as I drove home. I was doing interviews in the car my wife was driving and fielding phone calls. And we got there, got off the phone with with another interview and my mom came in and said I think you need to go see your grandfather right now he's, he's in the hospice and he's not doing well. So I was always get choked up telling the story. But I went in to his room, and he was out of it, a lot of drugs, managing the pain, but I grabbed his hands and I said, Hello Granddad, and he came out of it just a little bit he opened and I got that his eyes open I got that same smile. But that was all I got before he just faded back into semi consciousness. I sat there for a while with the family just just talking and eventually became time to leave. And I grabbed his hand again. And he came out of it again briefly and he looks at me and this time he spoke. And he knew all about me and what I was doing and he just said, Keep doing what you're doing. For me to hear that from someone who had faced down evil. I mean, real evil to know about the struggles we've been through to take care of people to lift each other up and create a better world for those that would come after us. It meant a lot. And if his generation can get it. So can we, we all can take advantage of the talents of all of us and how we can be a better military because of it. I shudder to think what our military in the 30s and 40s had been like if we'd said no sorry no Jews, no African Americans. What would we have lost out on as a nation, and we still have to avoid that today we have to set that culture, where we can all be better. And I'll leave you with one final thought that it's, it's not just the future, or not just the past. It's also the future. So if a Klingon can get it, when they meet someone who's basically a trans person. I hope you all can too. And please be embrace this for what it is for that opportunity for an individual and for all of us to be better. So with that, I would love to take your questions.