{"id":66092,"date":"2016-06-01T12:51:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T16:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=66092"},"modified":"2016-06-01T13:46:19","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T17:46:19","slug":"eikenberry-denied-academic-post-by-pointy-headed-academia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=66092","title":{"rendered":"Eikenberry denied academic post by pointy-headed academia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of you who have been around here for a few years know that Karl Eikenberry, retired three-star general and ambassador to Afghanistan during the Obama Administration was once my platoon leader decades ago. I never liked him much, but now I’m forced to defend him. He was appointed to Northwestern University to become the first executive director of a new global studies institute at the college. But then academia got on it’s high horse and opposed his appointment. Why? Well, here, a grad student explains as reported by the Washington Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n

\u201cAn ex-U.S. general will likely think about international politics in terms of war and from the perspective of the U.S.\u2019s interests, and the research agenda will be negatively skewed as a result,\u201d wrote Charles Clarke, a Northwestern graduate student and one of the petition\u2019s backers. \u201cInstead, why not appoint someone who will encourage research that is less belligerent and tainted by U.S. bias?\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the worst stereotyping I can imagine and an affront to any veteran,\u201d Eikenberry wrote in an email. \u201cWhat is it about a military officer\u2019s career that makes her or him unqualified to serve as the executive director for an institute of global studies? Their familiarity with leading large organizations, securing resources, directing strategic planning, and implementing institutional change? Their experience of living in diverse cultures abroad (in my case Korea \u2013 twice; China \u2013 three times; Hong Kong \u2013 twice; Italy; Belgium; and Afghanistan \u2013 three times)? Or their experience in the field of national security decision-making and international security issues?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most of the classes that I took in regards to international politics included a lot of instances of war – it is “politics by other means”, according to Clauswitz. Most of the world has engaged in war at some point in it’s history, and if you want to avoid war, no one is more accommodating than a soldier, you know, someone who hates war most because they pay the ultimate price for that endeavor. But, hey, if Northwestern and their grad students want to pretend that war doesn’t exist, I don’t see much of a market for their ideas in the future.<\/p>\n

To be fair, many of the people who opposed Eikenberry’s appointment to the post spoke publicly about his lack of academic credentials – that he didn’t have a PhD. I guess someone should care that a PhD. is important for something. While the pointy-head class cloisters itself even further from the real world, the rest of us will look to people with real world experience for expert opinions.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango and Bobo for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of you who have been around here for a few years know that Karl Eikenberry, … Eikenberry denied academic post by pointy-headed academia<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[478],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-none"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}