Dear Colleagues:

Greetings, and I hope that you and yours are healthy and safe in this socially-distanced time.

As part of that distancing, we’re continuing the “Friday Lunch” as an online event. After over thirty-years of in-person discussions it’s a bit of an adjustment; but it has been good to see colleagues who have moved away and now can take advantage of the new format.

It may seem a memory of the distant past, but it was less than a year ago, on January 3, 2020, that the U.S. military, pursuant to an order from President Trump, killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, in an airstrike at Baghdad International Airport. His killing was followed by a firestorm of controversy over whether this action was (a) more likely to increase or decrease the security of Americans and others in the region, and (b) more fundamentally something the U.S. should not do, crossing a “red line” that had been recognized in part because U.S. policymakers should discourage other countries from taking similar steps against American leaders and allies.

Much of the controversy was in the context of stated U.S. policy, dating from Executive Order 11905 by President Ford which declared that, “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” Ford was responding to proposals for a legislated restriction in response to the 1975 Church Committee revelations about CIA activities in the 1960s and early 1970s. Many legalistic arguments could be made about this Order’s meaning. They begin with the definition of “political assassination” (does a general of a hostile military qualify? What degree of hostile action counts?). They continue with the fact that, though the E.O. has never been explicitly withdrawn, there could be other, secret, E.O.s that made exceptions. Then there are questions like: is there something about Soleimani that can look like a matter of principle for making an exception in his case?

The more general question is what restraints should be applied to U.S. government military action. This is a core question of military ethics, and so for Shannon French, who came to CWRU from the U.S. Naval Academy, has written extensively on the topic, and founded and directs CWRU’s M.A. program in Military Ethics. It should be a fascinating presentation and discussion about an issue that confronts American policy-makers no matter who is president.

Signing In

This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.

If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:

https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvduuupjwqG9GCLL6oAPQEeo1hfQDc4e4O

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.

Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,

Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies

About Our Guest

Shannon E. French is the Inamori Professor in Ethics, Director of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, and a tenured member of the Philosophy Department with a secondary appointment in the law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She is also a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. Dr. French received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University in 1997. Prior to starting at CWRU in 2008, she taught for eleven years as an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the United States Naval Academy and served as Associate Chair of the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law. She is the author of many scholarly publications, including The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values, Past and Present, editor-in-chief for the International Journal of Ethical Leadership, and an associate editor for the Journal of Military Ethics.

Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

November 20: What’s the Beef? The Controversy Over the Health Effects of Red Meat. With Hope Barkoukis, Ph.D., Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor in Wellness and Preventive Care and Chair, Department of Nutrition.

December 4: The Economics of Sports After (?) COVID-19. With Jonathan Ernest, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics.