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While covering the Olympics opening ceremony for NBC in 2012, journalist Bob Costas 74, H15 noted a tragic anniversary: During the 1972 Olympics in Munich, a Palestinian militant organization killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had declined a request to hold a moment of silence during the 2012 events to remember the late Israelis. As the athletes marched in, Costas told viewers that IOC President Jacques Rogge had led a moment of silence earlier in the week, before an audience of about 100 people at the athletes village.

Still, for many, tonight with the world watching is the true time and place to remember those who were lost and how and why they died, Costas said. After a brief pause, NBC cut to a commercial.

Talev (left), director of the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, helped moderate and participated in a panel discussion, The Intersection of Entertainment and Democracy: Are We the Problem or the Solution?

Costas shared the anecdote during a recent panel discussion held at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California, celebrating the launch of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship. Costas, who attended the S.I.Newhouse School of Public Communications before launching his storied career and was awarded an honorary degree in 2015, was among the special guests who took part in the discussion, titled, The Intersection of Entertainment and Democracy: Are We the Problem or the Solution?

The event was held in the Los Angeles area, where the University boasts a thriving alumni population and academic programming, including Newhouse LA. While it will be based roughly 2,700 miles awayin Washington, D.C.the institute will address issues of pressing national relevance such as threats to the media and democracy, and the fight against disinformation. Announced in the summer of 2022, it is a partnership of Newhouse and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

With the launch of the new institute and with the combined strength of the Maxwell and Newhouse schools, the University will play a vital role in leading dialogs that bring people together, helping to bridge the differences and divide seen and experienced in our country today, Newhouse Dean Mark J. Lodato told the panel audience of mostly alumni and friends of the University. And while the institute will be based in Washington, D.C., I hope you can see that its work and impact will have a national, broad reach involving faculty and students and research and teaching, convenings like this and experiential learning opportunities.

In addition to Costas, panelists included another alumDanielle Nottingham 99, co-host of NBCs California Live; CNN correspondent David Culver; and, from the University, Lodato, Margaret Talev and David M. Van Slyke. Talev is the institutes recently named Kramer Director, while Van Slyke is dean of the Maxwell School.

From left to right: Lodato, Talev, Costas, Nottingham, Culver, Jones and Van Slyke

Author, lawyer and CNN host Van Jones provided opening remarks focused on the virtues of listening, engaging others who have different perspectives and finding common ground.

The conversation explored the topics that give rise to the need for the institutepolitical polarization, mistrust in institutions including the media, and the role of entertainment news, disinformation and higher education.

Costas, who has been honored with 28 Emmy Awards, called 12 Olympics and covered multiple World Series, Super Bowls and NBA finals, explored the intersection of sports reporting and current events. In addition to his experience with the 2012 Olympics, he shared more recent occasions when he has taken time during his sports broadcasts to discuss current events and what some might view as thorny issues.

For instance, during a playoff game this past fall, he spent nearly a minute talking about the rationale behind the Cleveland Guardians name change from the Indians. And, during Sunday Night Football, Costas has spoken about the prevalence of brain trauma to athletes.

Of the latter, he said, When I used that two minutes a handful of times to talk about the fact that football is as directly connected to brain trauma as smoking is to lung cancer, that got me on the wrong side of a lot of people: The NFL, my own network and people that just dont want to hear it because they love football, you know?

Costas said that while people turn to sports for entertainmentto get awayit can also be the best place to make a good point to the largest possible audience if you do it concisely and at the right time.

Jones (left) and Costas

Talev, a veteran journalist who served as managing editor for politics at Axios and was a CNN political analyst before joining the University this past summer, talked about the erosion of trust in institutions such as the military, the supreme court and higher education. Adding to that, she said, Technology is giving us more opportunities to choose your own adventure and tune out the stuff you dont want to hear.

She asked Van Slyke to reflect on how that has impacted teaching at the University.

Van Slyke described a game he plays with students at the start of a semester: He asks them at first what they read in the morninga question that often draws furrowed brows since most admittedly are reading their cell phones. Then he asks innocuous questions such as, how many are first-generation students, how many are from military families, how many are Yankees fans.

When you go through this a little bit, all of a sudden you start to see people looking at one another, because what youve taken away is party identification, he said. In the absence of that, its easier to find common ground, to have discourse.

Van Slyke shared that he and colleagues are challenged by the notion of evidence, given the current polarized climate in which people cite the sources that share in their beliefs, often at the expense of factual, credible information.

Weve lost any confidence in what evidence actually means, he said, adding that he challenges students to consider things such as: What are the facts? How did you collect the facts? Where did the facts come from? What did the data look like?

During the hourlong conversation, panelists also talked about how to reach Gen Zthose born from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. Nottingham shared how she felt compelled to join social media channels like Instagram, where she didnt at first feel comfortable, to better connect with the demographic.

I think that when we talk about dialog and how we move forward, and all these things, we have to look to the younger generations, said Nottingham, a graduate of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. They dont see the world the way we see the world.

Van Slyke later told Nottingham that while she may have joined with some trepidation, the good news is other people are going to find you and theyre going to tag that with some legitimacy.

He added that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul 80a Maxwell alumnarecently shared a $1 billion plan to overhaul the states continuum of mental health care. He said he was pleased to see students take to Instagram on the issue, some sharing 40-year-old stories about the former network of institutions where the mentally ill were housed and often mistreated.

The process is very different for them getting the information, he added.

As the event came to a close, Costas noted the contrast in how NBC supported fellow Syracuse alumnus Mike Tirico 88 to cover the 2022 Olympics, a decade after him. Tiricoa graduate of the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences as well as Newhouseinfused his reports with well-researched background and guest experts who spoke about the intense global scrutiny to the host country, largely for the mistreatment of ethnic minorities.

You know, they laid it out. They did something credibly, he said. They did it at the beginning. And then they got out of the way for the most part and let the competition play out. They did a very journalistically responsible thing.

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By Mark Moore

April 18, 2023 | 11:00am

Former Rep. Liz Cheneys upcoming tell-all is being described by her publisher as a warning about the threat to American democracy posed by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Little, Brown and Company callsthe book by Cheney, one of two Republicans on the House select committee that investigated Trumps actions in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot a gripping first-hand account from inside the hall of Congress by the House Republican leader who dared to stand up to it.

Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, lost her Wyoming congressional seat last August after her role on the committee drew the ire of Trump and he backed a primary challenger against her.

The last two years have shown us once again that our constitutional republic is not self-sustaining, Cheney said in a statement to Axios.

It survives only because of the courage and honor of individual Americans. When history looks back on this time, each elected official will have to answer the questions: Did we do our duty? Were we faithful to our oath of office? added Cheney, who calls herself a constitutional conservative.

The book, Oath and Honor. A Memoir and a Warning, will hit bookshelves Nov. 14, ahead of a potential 2024 presidential run.

The publisher told Axios Cheneys tome will take readers inside the rooms where congressional leaders grappled with the threat posed by Trumps efforts to overturn the election.She will detail lessons learned stories of leadership, of cowardice, and of courage.

Cheney will explain why she decided to stand almost alone against her party; why she risked her career, her seat, and her position in leadership to do what she knew was right.

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A group of rich Americans marked Tax Day on Tuesday by calling on the U.S. Congress to aggressively tax wealthy people like themselves, warning that the U.S. will remain in a state of "perpetual chaos" until lawmakers boldly confront the worsening inequality crisis.

"Tax Day isn't just a filing deadlineit's also an annual reminder that the ultra-rich exist in an entirely separate world when it comes to taxes," said Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, an advocacy group that supports progressive taxation.

"For us, the loopholes are bigger, the rates are lower, and many rules are entirely optional," Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, continued. "The tax code has been contributing to growing inequality for decades, and we're reaching a point where the concentration of wealth is simply unsustainable. We need a change, or our economy and our democracy will not survive. For my future, my grandchildrens future, and our countrys future, we need to tax the rich."

Ahead of a Tuesday morning event on Capitol Hill, which will feature Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and other progressive lawmakers, Patriotic Millionaires released a tax reform agenda that calls for, among other changes, a 90% top marginal tax rate for people with annual incomes above $100 million and a federal tax exemption for people who earn less than a "cost-of-living wage."

The group also proposed legislation titled the Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth And Restore Civil Harmony (OLIGARCH) Act, which would create a progressive wealth tax structure aimed at countering the vast concentration of fortunes at the very top.

Patriotic Millionaires explained that the bill would establish "wealth tax bracket thresholds based on multiples of median American household wealth."

"The bracket thresholds are set at 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and 1,000,000 times median household wealth, with marginal rates at 2, 4, 6, and 8 percent respectively," the group said. "It will wax and wane with wealth concentration, intensifying during periods of extreme inequality when wealth at the top is increasing faster than wealth in the middle, and tapering off to near non-existence when median household wealth increases and inequality moderates."

Watch the group's Capitol Hill press conference, which is scheduled to begin at 10:30 am ET:

Erica Payne, founder and president of Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement Tuesday that the heavily skewed U.S. tax code contains "the seeds of our destruction."

A massive trove of Internal Revenue Service documents obtained by ProPublica last year showed that the 25 richest Americansincluding Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Muskpaid an average true tax rate of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018 in large part because unrealized capital gains from stock appreciation are not taxed.

Patriotic Millionaires on Tuesday called for a Billionaire Minimum Income Tax that would "impose a minimum tax on a wealthy household's true economic income, including unrealized capital gains, thereby eliminating the incentive for billionaires to hoard assets and avoid selling, and instead live on low-interest personal loans."

"Elites over decades have broken the social contract," said Payne. "The only way to restore stability to this nation, the only way to fix this country, is to tax this country appropriately. That includes 90% tax rates on centi-millionaires and an aggressive wealth tax designed to make billionaires less rich."

According to an Oxfam America analysis published last week, U.S. billionaires have gotten 86% richer over the past decade, with $37 of every $100 of wealth created between 2012 and 2021 going to the top 1%. The bottom 50% only received $2 for every $100 of wealth generated during that period, according to Oxfam.

"Tax Day is a reminder that the tax system isn't working for ordinary Americans. It's built to favor the richest in our society," said Nabil Ahmed, Oxfam Americas Director of Economic Justice. "The ultrawealthy are sitting on mountains of wealth that remain largely untouched by taxes, and their wild riches are in no small part a result of intentional public policy."

"We need to implement strategic wealth taxes if we want to stand any chance at reining in this kind of Gilded-Era wealth inequality that allows the super-rich to have a stranglehold over our economy," Ahmed added.

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LONDON: With at least 185 people killed during clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in recent days, the dreams of shift from military rule to civilian-led democracy have turned to dust, revealing that the transition planwas likely doomed from the start.

It is a far cry from the events of 2019, when the very forces now fighting one another worked together to oust the countrys autocratic ruler, Omar Al-Bashir. Analysts at that time described Sudans nascent transition to civilian-led democracy as a glimmer of hope.

Most people are ignoring the ways in which the constitutional declaration of August 2019 set in place an unsustainable tension between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, both of which were recognized as official armed forces of Sudan, Eric Reeves, an academic with more than 25 years of experience researching the country, told Arab News.

Now at loggerheads, Gen. Fattah Al-Burhan, head of the Armed Forces, leads the countrys transitional governing Sovereign Council, while his former deputy, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, leads the RSF.

The problem with this is you cant have two armies and two competing generals in one desperate country and expect this (peaceful transition), especially with so many unhappy civilians who experienced catastrophic decline in the economy, who are suffering from a great deal of malnutrition and unemployment, and the list goes on, said Reeves.

SUDAN UNREST:The Key Dates

April 11, 2019 Military coup ousts dictator Omar Al-Bashir following lengthy popular uprising.

Aug. 17, 2019 Ruling military council and civilian opposition alliance sign constitutional deal.

Oct. 3, 2020 Juba Peace Agreement signed between transitional government and alliance of armed groups.

Feb. 8, 2021 Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok announces new cabinet, including seven former rebel chiefs.

Oct. 25, 2021 Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan dissolves government, arrests Hamdok and seizes power.

Nov. 21, 2021 After months of pro-democracy mass rallies, Hamdok is reinstated but resigns within two months.

Oct. 25, 2022; Thousands take to the streets demanding civilian government.

Dec. 5, 2022 Political framework agreement signed by civilian leaders and military to launch two-year political transition.

April 15, 2023 Fighting breaks out between Al-Burhans forces and Rapid Support Forces led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

You have as the head of state the heads of the two military operating organizations sanctioned by the Constitutional Declaration. Sooner or later, this was going to happen.

The fighting in Sudan has aggravated an already dire humanitarian situation in the country. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about 15.8 million Sudanese are in need of humanitarian aid 10 million more than in 2017.

However, aid distribution has been disrupted in recent days after three World Food Programme employees were killed during the fighting, which caused the UN-backed body to halt operations, further exacerbating the effects of the severe malnutrition wreaking havoc on the country.

Were not talking about good and evil here, were talking about bad and worse, said Reeves. As long as there is rivalry between the two men, that rivalry will be at the expense of any chance of the Sudanese moving toward civilian governance or recovery from catastrophic economic collapse.

After Al-Bashir was toppled in 2019, an October 2021 military coup dismantled all civilian institutions and overturned a power-sharing agreement that had been put in place. After a massive public outcry, military and civilian actors signed a framework agreement in December 2022 with a view to returning to the path toward civilian-led democracy.

However, a power struggle between the two main military actors in Sudan continued despite the framework agreement, which had stipulated that the RSF would be integrated into the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Al-Burhans Armed Forces had called for the integration to be completed over a period of two years, while Hemedtis RSF was adamant it should take place over 10 years.

The transitional process had been moving slowly (even) before the outbreak of the clashes, Zouhir Shimale, head of research at Valent Projects, a media tech startup that specializes in addressing online manipulation, told Arab News.

Many people thought that agreement was going to be signed and end in a political struggle after the October 2021 coup, especially because both military actors showed relative collaboration.

Besides the military merger, civilians involved in the transition process also demanded the transfer of several key, and profitable, military holdings in agriculture and commerce to civilian control. These holdings represent a significant source of power and profit for the army. Reeves is therefore skeptical that any such transfer will take place.

There will be no civilian governance as long as Al-Burhan and Hemedti are fighting it out, he said. And there will be no transition to civilian governance if either were to prevail, unless they were so weakened that civilians were in position to exert more power than they are now. But theyre helpless. Theres nothing civilians can do at present.

Tensions intensified on Monday when the US embassy in Khartoum said the RSF had targeted one of its diplomatic convoys. This prompted Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, to call both Hemedti and Al-Burhan and appeal for a ceasefire to which both agreed.

Experts are confident the fighting will not escalate into a full-blown civil war, given that the Sudanese Armed Forces enjoy air superiority a crucial and strategic advantage over the RSF.

I have watched how the RSF has developed as a military force. It does not have an air force. It does not have any significant supply of heavy armor, said Reeves. It is not a militia force that is highly motivated, except by greed. They have no interest in civilian governance.

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)

Shimale agrees with Reeves view that the RSF is unlikely to have the drive or resources to mount a lasting campaign in an attempt to seize power.

The Sudanese Armed Forces have the upper hand in this struggle and will successfully trump the RSF forces, although it might take some time, said Shimale.

I think that while the fighting will probably end in the capital it will move geographically to the south, where protracted fighting will continue for a while, namely in Darfur, where Hemidtis main support base and his paramilitary HQ are located.

The international community has been keeping a close watch on the situation, with Saudi Arabias Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan speaking to both generals and calling for an end to hostilities.

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Why Sudan's transition from military rule to civilian-led democracy ... - Arab News

America is experiencing declining trust in democratic institutions and an erosion of the democratic norms essential to maintaining them. The U.S. military, which historically has enjoyed the status of being the most trusted national institution, has seen its trust levels decline in recent years. Some attribute this to the perceived politicization of the armed forces. Others question whether the militarys professional ethos has been compromised to the point where it has become a political actor that increasingly strays from its nonpartisan ethic. Still others point to the over-representation of veterans in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and conclude that the U.S. military may not be relied upon to uphold the rule of law. The status of the American military profession is declining and likely contributing to the armed-forces recruiting shortfalls. One piece of restoring public trust is to examine how we educate servicemembers in the professional norms related to military service in a democracy, starting with their oath to uphold the constitution.

Last fall, James Joyner and Butch Bracknell argued that this oath is central to maintaining healthy civil-military relations, but it is not enough. This doesnt do the oath justice. The oath remains an underutilized tool that, if properly leveraged, could strengthen the democratic ethos essential to preserving the republic. Where the military profession falls short is in its lack of emphasis on educating its members on the meaning of their oaths. We believe that further education can prepare servicemembers to tackle some of the difficult challenges that Joyner and Bracknell lay out in their article.

At the Air Force Academy, we have worked to incorporate oath education into crafting a renewed professional ethos that would keep servicemembers focused on the norms of behavior in a military accountable to elected civilian leaders. Through these efforts, we believe that the militarys current warrior ethos can be complemented with an equally important democracy ethos. The Air Force Academys Oath Project is a cadet-led initiative to improve understanding of the Oath of Office among military students at academies and professional development institutions. This program provides education focused on civil-military norms and the importance of upholding the values inherent in an apolitical military. We encourage military leadership to embrace expansion of the program at other institutions and encourage Congress to support these efforts through increased funding of civil-military education programs.

Creating a Foundational Education

Americas founders gave their citizens a tool to stay focused on preserving the democratic nature of their new republic. When writing the rulebook to govern the nation, the founders set the expectation that those in government and military service to the nation had a special trust to uphold the democratic institutions they had just established in the Constitution. Article 2 of the Constitution requires the president to take an oath of office, and Article 6 requires members of Congress, the federal judiciary, and officers of state legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government to take oaths. With regard to the military, oaths were required at the time of enlistment in the Continental Army. The first act of Congress in 1789 specified the text to be used, which is almost unchanged to this day. The founders were the products of a culture where taking oaths to the monarch was common. What wasnt common was taking an oath to uphold a document instead of swearing allegiance to a particular individual even if that individual had been duly elected under the Constitution.

But for the oath to work, the men and women who uphold it also need to understand it. Two years ago, the few cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy enrolled in a political science civil-military relations elective questioned the adequacy of what they learned about the oath in their pre-commissioning education. Even though they were within months of becoming commissioned as 2nd lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force, at the beginning of the course they could not articulate what it meant to support and defend the Constitution beyond understanding that military members must obey the lawful orders promulgated by the military and civilian authorities with command responsibility for them. These cadets expressed the need for more education to be integrated into the totality of the cadet experience to help them comprehend the professional norms required to support the constitutional principles inherent in their military oaths. Cadets solicited the help of distinguished professor Marybeth Ulrich, the instructor of their civil-military relations course visiting from the U.S. Army War College, to start a student-led program dedicated to furthering cadets understanding of the Oath of Office. This was the birth of the Academy Oath Project.

The experience of these original 13 cadets in their upper-level civil-military relations course informed their ideas for what should be included in a more comprehensive oath education effort available to all cadets, regardless of academic major. They took stock of what education was occurring and identified gaps. They found that the political science department at the Air Force Academy devotes five lessons to constitutional foundations and civilian control of the military in its Introduction to American Government and National Security course, which is a core class that all cadets take in their sophomore year. The course begins with an introduction to the framing of the Constitution and the oath through readings from George Washingtons Newburgh Address. This helps establish the constitutional origins of civilian control of the military and provides background to draw upon when analyzing contemporary political events where the roles of military members and civilian leaders is a stake. The class then continues with Samuel Huntington (excerpts from The Soldier and State), Don Snider (Dissent, Resignation, and Moral Agency), and David Barno and Nora Bensahel (The Increasingly Dangerous Politicization of the U.S. Military) among a host of other readings. Cadets must write a paper that analyzes a case study to glean lessons learned pertaining to civil-military relations.

The learning objectives for these lessons center on the importance of civilian control of the armed forces for a democracy, what it means to be member of the military profession, and the need for a nonpartisan armed forces. These lessons help the cadets understand that military officers are trusted in large part because of the non-politicized nature of the service. A strong background in civil-military relations helps officers understand why military leadership is subordinate to civilian leadership when faced with following orders and making decisions in morally complex situations. Cadets must write a paper that applies the civil-military principles learned in the course to a current civil-military relations issue such as the role of military advice in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, retired flag officers partisan behavior, and norms surrounding the seven-year waiting period for retired generals to serve as secretary of defense.

Going Further

However, a few lessons in one course are not enough to lay the foundation needed to develop the professional ethos needed to uphold their oath at difficult decision points in their career when civil-military relations norms will be challenged. A civil-military relations education that integrates themes across the political science, history, law, and leadership core curriculum is needed. Such curriculum reform, when supported and resourced, will take years to achieve. In the meantime, the Academy Oath Project Club provides hands-on experiences for cadets to learn more about the professional norms surrounding military service in a democracy by preparing programs for other cadets and faculty that explain various principles.

For example, the original Academy Oath Project cadets assessed their military training and noted a glaring gap in the lack of any education on the oath of office in basic cadet training. As one of the graduating seniors involved in founding the club noted, We took the oath of office on our first day at [the U.S. Air Force], but no one explained it to us. Almost four years from the time he first took the oath, he was lobbying with his fellow cadets from Academy Oath Project to include oath education in basic cadet training. After designing the training under the direction of Professor Ulrich, the cadets enabled their fellow cadets in the direct chain of command of the basic cadets to lead the sessions. The lesson explains the history of the Oath, its link to the preservation of American democratic institutions, its central role in American military professionalism, and the expectation that as members of the profession they will maintain their commitment to the Constitution for life. Cadets meet biweekly through the club to improve programs and plan future projects. In a recent panel, cadets assessed their basic cadet training oath education program and petitioned to move the session to the beginning of the summer training so that the training cadre could discuss the themes introduced throughout basic training. Academy Oath Project cadets are currently developing a workshop to educate upperclassmen responsible for training first year cadets on civil-military relations norms. The clubs faculty and cadets are also in the beginning stages of writing an oath education handbook that could serve as a foundational text for programs and courses seeking to foster a deeper commitment to democratic norms.

In addition, the Academy Oath Project cadets have focused on creating experiential learning opportunities concerning civil-military relations in a democracy. These include planning the Academys Constitution Day program; updating the cadet handbook Contrails to include segments and knowledge questions on the oath, Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence; and making a video focused on the Oath of Office to support the athletic departments National Collegiate Athletic Association civic-education requirement before election day. The hope is that cadets will take these lessons learned with them when the leave the academy and assume leadership roles within the Air Force. The Academy Oath Project Club is providing outreach education through active support of military reenlistments, promotions, and retirements by offering a few words on the importance of the oath during these ceremonies to remind service members that the focal point of military service is ones obligation to the Constitution.

The club has also reached out to the other academies and some Reserve Officers Training Corps units to share their products and ideas. Earlier this year, Professor Ulrich and several cadets from the club traveled to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to speak to all 1,000 seniors on the Oath of Office and the norms of military service in a democracy. They learned about West Points curriculum and visited the lesson on the oath in the core capstone Officership course taught out of the Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic. The Army War Colleges Civil-Military Relations Center is facilitating the cooperation between West Point and the Air Force Academy as part of its mission to promote civil-military relations education throughout the professional military education system.

While many oath-takers, civilian and military alike, understand the dos and donts of appropriate civil-military relations and norms of service, many do not understand the why. Members of the Academy Oath Project, through their participation in the program, are increasing their understanding of the meaning and significance of the oath as well as the responsibilities placed upon those who take an oath to uphold the Constitution. They are learning the nuances of civilian control by developing their own lessons, with faculty help, to explain the constitutional foundations of their professional obligations to obey civilians, while also fulfilling their professional responsibility to provide military expertise to inform political leaders decision-making. They researched the principle of nonpartisanship and developed a video that was shown to cadets near election day in which they explained to their peers why partisan behavior undermined support for the military profession. The goal of all these efforts it to provide a strong foundational education in civil-military relations so that if military members find themselves in politically charged situations, they will have the intellectual tools to critically assess the situation without partaking in partisan activities.

Crucial Clarity

Joyner and Bracknell argue that expecting military members to discern whether actions by a president or Congress are constitutional is beyond the scope of even the most educated of officers. We counter that a robust civil-military curriculum that extends from enlisting/commissioning through advanced military education would provide military members with the tools to critically think about the constitutionality of orders and requirements.

As Joyner and Bracknell assert, there is a great amount of ambiguity surrounding the lawfulness of following civilian orders of questionable constitutionality. Education and training will lend some clarity and inform the professional judgment essential to help military members think through their actions in politically fraught situations. Consider a handful of examples. Joyner and Bracknell discuss the tendency for military leaders to engage in political behavior to advance their services agendas before Congress. The Academy Oath Projects lessons stress the importance of limiting military engagement with political actors to the provision of expert military advice. Cadets learn that public advocacy for preferred policies may limit the decision space of political leaders, effectively undermining civilian control. Joyner and Bracknell argue that senior uniformed leaders are political actors involved in the struggle over who gets what, when, and how. Oath Project lessons distinguish between the providing input on political matters such as resource allocation, which is within the purview of sound military advice, and providing partisan input aligned with particular ideologies. Joyner and Bracknell point out that creating military policy is a complex process involving all three branches of government. In the face of uncertainty, they note that military leaders sometimes strike out on their own, creating policy. Oath Project training cautions against this, emphasizing the importance of adhering to policy created by democratically elected officials who represent the will of the people.

The vaulted status of the American military profession stems from the publics recognition of servicemembers professional expertise and years of education. A deeper understanding of the national purpose and the commitment to preserve the democratic character of the nation through their oath contributes to military effectiveness and will give U.S. military members an edge in future conflicts waged against autocracies. The Joint Staffs Officer Professional Military Education Policy, a tool that guides the curriculum of military education institutions, should more deliberately foster the development of a democracy ethos by requiring the teaching of democratic civil-military relations norms at every level. In their article, Joyner and Bracknell call upon Congress to enact stronger laws safeguarding civil-military relations. We suggest that the military profession also has the responsibility to provide a comprehensive civil-military relations education to prepare its members for military service in a democracy. Congress, in its oversight role, can require the services to report on how they are achieving this end. Congress could also prioritize funding of these programs and support initiatives such as Academy Oath Project that provide active learning experiences for service members to internalize democratic norms.

Through the Academy Oath Project, cadets learn that as members of the military profession, they are obligated to follow norms that are part of a professional ethos. This ethos includes the bedrock principles of non-partisanship and civilian control of the military. Cadets learn that when they took the oath for the first time, through every promotion and reenlistment, and even after their retirement or separation, they are members of the military profession with responsibilities to uphold those professional norms. Kudos to the 13 cadets from the Air Force Academy classes of 2021 and 2022, now 1st and 2nd lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force for demanding that more be done to prepare them to assume their constitutional responsibilities. Their successors are continuing to make strides to build an oath culture at Air Force Academy and beyond. More support is now needed to institutionalize this effort.

Dr. Marybeth Ulrich is professor of government at the U.S. Army War College, a Scowcroft National Security Senior Fellow at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a Senior Fellow at the Modern War Institute, and the faculty adviser for the Academy Oath Project.

Dr. Lynne Chandler Garcia is an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and a member of the faculty advisory board for the Academy Oath Project.

Cadet Sydney Fitch is a senior at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the cadet-in-charge of the Academy Oath Project.

The views represented in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the U.S. Air Force or the Department of the Defense.

Image: Ken Scar

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