"...do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

"For the good of the Air Force, for the good of the armed services and for the good of our country, I urge you to reject convention and careerism..."
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Maxwell AFB, April 21, 2008

"You will need to challenge conventional wisdom and call things like you see them to subordinates and superiors alike."
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, United States Air Force Academy, March 4, 2011

Monday, December 14, 2009

Reinforcing Academic Freedom in ACSC

The ACSC program has taken a step to remind all of the importance of, and policies concerning, academic freedom. I'm glad to see this and hope the video message helps encourage airmen to utilize PME to participate candidly in honest and healthy debate over the challenges we face. Without such dialogue I fear it will be much more difficult for our senior leadership to bring about the cultural changes desired.

It appears the video is available for public consumption here: https://ausis.maxwell.af.mil/AcademicFree/index.htm

Thesis Work Continues!

I haven't been blogging much lately due to work on my thesis and also because of some Air Force extracurricular activities I'm not yet at liberty to discuss. The thesis is shaping up nicely, however, and I think will actually contain some useful recommendations. What has resulted so far (thanks to an idea presented by one of this blog's readers) is a pretty exciting vision that I think could dramatically strengthen Air Force culture. I hope my thesis conveys it well. Fingers crossed.

To ensure my research analysis is as useful as possible, I'm continuing to solicit any works on modern fighter pilot culture by modern fighter pilots. If anybody knows of recently published works I may have missed or documentaries or studies, if you could drop me a note I'd be much obliged. Thanks as always for the constructive criticisms and feedback.