Ever since Queen’s University’s Stéfanie von Hlatky and Tandy Thomas called for “a journey of culture change” within the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to stamp out sexual misconduct, I’ve been thinking a lot about specific steps available to the CAF to meet this challenge.
 
I claim no expertise in the area of gender and security, but as a faculty member at the Canadian Forces College (CFC), I have spent the last 15 years teaching and learning from over 100 senior officers (colonels and naval captains) and more than 1000 others at the mid-career level (majors and lieutenant-commanders), all of whom were selected to attend the CFC because of their leadership potential.
 
To be clear, then, I have no experience with non-commissioned members, nor have I worked with more junior officers.
 
With these caveats, and with the full academic freedom that I have been granted as a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, here are three anecdotes that might inspire tangible change.
 
A training development officer once explained to me that they never expected to come to the CFC because people in their trade never progressed much further than the rank of major.
 
In class, they demonstrated genuine potential, but the scars from being told implicitly (and perhaps also explicitly) that they would never be a real leader in the Canadian Armed Forces were obvious.
 
Another officer was a star on the mid-career program. They remained at the College the following year as defence staff (part-time professional mentor, part-time co-instructor), and excelled again.
 
The collective institutional feeling at the time, to the best of my understanding, was that they were already everything the CAF could ask for in a future leader.
 
And I think they do still want to lead, but they would like to make their difference as a military chaplain.
 
Qualifying as a chaplain means not only going back to school, but also accepting a two-rank demotion. So they are no longer on the leadership track.
 
Finally, a few years ago, we welcomed the first military doctor to our executive-level program.
 
At the time, the CAF as an institution had yet to grasp the traumatic impact of service in Afghanistan on so many of its members.
 
The doctor’s intervention in a spontaneous conversation about mental health marked the first time that I’d seen some of the officers who had still had doubts about the seriousness of non-physical injuries sit up and listen.
 
He spoke humbly, but also with just the right amount of authority to break through.
 
All three of these officers are the sorts of people who could make a real difference within the CAF’s senior leadership.
 
But none of them ever will. (The doctor has already left.)
 
Written and unwritten rules prevent training development officers, chaplains, doctors, lawyers, military police, reservists, and all sorts of others who form part of our military’s proverbial “tail” (a disproportionate number of whom are women) from ever reaching the most senior ranks.
 
When I first asked why such choke-points existed, I was told that those who fight on the “frontlines” wouldn’t serve under anyone who had worked primarily in “supporting” roles.
 
I am ashamed that, at the time, I thought it made sense. I was as much a product of that same cult of masculinity as those explaining it to me.
 
What I have come to realize, however, is that not only does such thinking prevent some incredible people from fulfilling their potential as officers in the service of our country, it also denies those who do reach such positions of authority access to the diversity of thinking and experience that might otherwise inform and enhance military advice to government (not to mention efforts to improve the CAF as a whole).
 
No matter your intent, it’s hard to be empathetic when you have so little exposure to how the other half lives.
 
Fortunately, a growing number of senior CAF leaders agree: the increasing appearance of medical practitioners and military police on our executive-level course is a measure of real progress.
 
But doubters remain, and that’s a problem.
 
I continue to witness too many exceptional individuals who have unfailingly put service before self in support of their country leave the Canadian Armed Forces too soon, all because the institution has deemed them unqualified to lead at the most senior levels.
 
In sum, to change the CAF’s culture, it might be time to reconsider how we choose our most senior general and flag officers.
 
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For a similar argument by feminists who study these issues academically, take a look at this recent article in the Ottawa Citizen. As the authors note, Mount Saint Vincent University’s Maya Eichler is also a critical source.

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This past week, Trent University’s Christopher Dummitt and Concordia’s Zachary Patterson published a commentary in the National Post provocatively titled, “The results are in – there is an ingrained bias in academia against conservatives.”
 
(Disclosure: I have known Chris for years and have great respect for his work and his professionalism.)
 
The article summarized the findings of a report by a new American think tank, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, called “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship.”
 
The report is hardly the first to suggest that a significant majority of university professors in the West situate their politics to the left of centre.
 
But it does appear to be the first to have included Canadian academics.
 
Dummitt and Patterson aren’t surprised by the results, nor am I, but we seem to see the implications of the study a little bit differently.
 
Dummitt and Patterson are most concerned that the relative homogeneity of theoretical and philosophical leanings among university faculty risks compromising the quality of peer-reviewed scholarship.
 
Like all human beings, scholars are naturally inclined to hold the arguments of others with similar beliefs to a lower standard of proof. So if left-leaning faculty dominate the academy, not only will left-leaning scholarship inevitably dominate the scholarly realm, it is also likely to get off easy during the peer review process.
 
“If universities continue to be dominated by only one part of the political spectrum,” they go on to write, “a large section of the population will have good reason to feel that their views are not being represented… leading to greater political polarization, diminished support for universities and distrust in the veracity of academic research.”
 
While there must be scholars who consciously give the benefit of the doubt to their like-minded colleagues, I apparently have more faith in the majority of my peers’ commitment to do their best to evaluate all scholarship objectively.
 
Personally, I not only make a deliberate effort to park my own views before serving as a reviewer, I have also refused to assess papers when I have had concerns about my ability, or willingness, to be impartial.
 
From a public policy perspective, then, I’m more interested in what the report's findings mean for conservative scholarship.
 
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Canadian faculty in the humanities and social sciences leans left doesn’t mean that there aren’t conservatives among us.
 
It just means that conservatives often end up working outside of the traditional academic setting. Indeed, a growing number can be found in think tanks that explicitly support scholarship with a conservative tilt.
 
(See, for example, my posts on the Macdonald-Laurier Institute here, here, and here.)
 
Since think tanks have strong incentives to publish findings that further their ideological agenda, it seems to me that conservative research fellows are even more likely than left-leaning university professors to arrive at conclusions that have not be subject to genuinely critical scrutiny.
 
At a time when Canadians are clamoring for new and better ways to deal with all sorts of pressing global challenges – from inequality, to climate change, to threats to the future of the liberal world order – we desperately need rigorous, innovative thinking from all sides of the political spectrum.
 
I regret that I don’t have any comprehensive solutions to offer. (Dummitt and Patterson’s suggestion that granting agencies should explicitly identify reviewers with particular political perspectives to basically “red team” research proposals with a political bent is neither feasible nor, I think, advisable.)
 
I do think, however, that those of us who write about contemporary public policy need to consciously subject our work to critics who are inclined to reject it more often, and we need to listen and respond thoughtfully to their objections. 
 
Doing so takes courage, but it is critical to the maintenance of the integrity of our profession.
 
As flawed as it can be, rigorous peer review remains the best means of assuring that Canadian strategic-decision makers are offered a diverse suite of policy solutions to navigate the challenges of the 21st century.
 
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Although I don’t always agree with either of them, I have found that Andrea Eidinger and Sean Speer can be relied upon to offer sincere and thoughtful commentary from the left and the right, respectively.

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Balkan Devlen of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) was back again last week with the third and final installment of the MLI’s investigation of the Canadian public’s thinking about foreign policy.
 
(For my takes on the previous releases, see here and here.)
 
As my RMC colleague Christian Leuprecht notes, “The results largely confirm what we already know.”
 
Only 14% of Canadians consider foreign policy to be very important, and less than a third expect foreign policy to play more of a role in their voting decision in the next election.
 
If there is so little that is new here, why write about it? Because the raw data are fascinating, particularly when it comes to age and gender.
 
Consider the following: “Canada should more often side with the alliance of democracies rather than always go along with what multilateral organizations like the UN want.”

A full 25% of men age 55 and over strongly agreed with this statement. Just 2% of women between 18 and 34 did.
 
Even more interesting, 54% of these women answered that they didn’t know, as did 40% of the women polled between the ages of 35 and 54. No more than 24% of men of any age group were similarly unsure.
 
When asked whether “Canada should build closer relationships with other democratic countries in the IndoPacific region,” 48% of women between ages 18 and 34 again had no opinion, while only 12% of men from the same age cohort answered the same way.
 
A similar gap was evident in a question about whether Canada should pursue a seat on the UN Security Council, and another about whether Canada should be more active in NATO.
 
On the other hand, the same female cohort was twice as likely to think that Canada should spend less on defence, and more supportive than any other cohort of a national commitment to global poverty eradication.
 
Part of the differences here are likely explained by men’s propensity to over-estimate their expertise and express strong opinions on issues that they might not actually know very much about.
 
But I suspect that there is more than that at play.
 
The majority of the foreign policy preferences examined in the survey lean conservative – and Conservative – and as Western Washington University’s Catherine Wineinger has noted, “The under-representation of women in right-wing parties is a global phenomenon.”
 
Devlen suggests that “the contours of a plausible consensus on Canadian foreign policy,” that includes “A resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder with democracies from around the world, proactively bolstering the Euro-Atlantic community, while strengthening Canada’s ties with fellow democracies in the Indo-Pacific and spending commensurate amounts on defence to assert Canada’s interests,” could be forthcoming.
 
Such a vision resonates among Canadian Conservatives already, but the MLI’s own data seem to indicate that it does not represent the predominant views of the next generation of Canadian women.
 
In that context, maybe doubling down on foreign policy isn’t the best way to expand the big blue tent.
 
Advisors to Erin O’Toole had best look at these numbers very carefully.
 
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I am nowhere near qualified to examine the role of gender in foreign policy in serious depth. For that, I would suggest turning to my colleague, Andrea Lane. On gender and international security more broadly, take a look at the work of the University of Florida’s Laura Sjoberg. Not only is she incredibly prolific, she is also one of the most professional scholars I had the privilege of dealing with when I co-edited International Journal.
 
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