Reforming the Military Schoolhouse

THE old joke about military intelligence being an oxymoron reveals a common societal bias about the role of independent thought in military operations. Indeed, so deep is this societal prejudice that the military often embraces it itself. The culture of military “professionalism” is often a strongly anti- intellectual one, conditioned on an ethic of practice as opposed to one of intellectual reflection. Many an officer’s career has been terminated early by the assessment that he “styles himself an academic”