Cambridge, MA—Preparing leaders and organizations to meet the next-generation challenges facing the nation’s defense industry is the subject of a recent student-authored report underwritten by the Center for Public Leadership in collaboration with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Transforming the National Security Culture: A Report of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Defense Leadership Project grew out of a spring 2008 CPL study group founded by Major Fernando Lujan, MPP ’08, with assistance from cofounder Major Kent Park, MPP '09, and cochair Major (Res) Paula Broadwell, MPP '08. The study group’s membership was limited to Harvard Kennedy School students with experience in the armed services or in defense-related organizations. These junior- to mid-level leaders shared the conviction that the U.S. defense establishment is not adequately equipped "to understand, visualize, or respond effectively to the modern security environment."

Over the course of the spring semester, the study group brought senior-level defense leaders to campus for frank, off-the-record conversations about changing not only the national security culture, but also the way the U.S. trains and develops defense industry leaders. Speakers included General David Petraeus, Colonel John Tein of the National Security Council, James Locher III of the Project on National Security Reform, James Trainor of the FBI, as well as representatives from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of State, and more.

In the future, the group concluded, success will be far more dependent on individual leaders’ ability to operate with minimal guidance, to adapt and collaborate across traditional institutional “stovepipes,” and to innovate faster than by next-generation technologies. These and other conclusions are laid out in the 40-page report coauthored by study group members. A copy of the report has already made it into the hands of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Lt. General Benjamin Freakley, and Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, all of whom play vital roles in the operation of U.S. national security. Study group members are now working to ensure that other decision makers and thought leaders in the defense industry have an opportunity to read and consider the report’s recommendations.

Click here to download a copy of Transforming the National Security Culture.