The Value of Values

“Any society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” — Thucydides (4th Century BCE)

When thanked for my service, I respond saying that my 34 years in the Air Force were an honor. My service included extraordinary opportunities: a bachelor’s from the Air Force Academy, a master’s from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and a doctorate from Oxford University. Trained as a rescue helicopter pilot and chief functional check flight pilot, I spent nearly a decade boring holes in the sky in Hawaii and the United Kingdom. I was also involved in several harrowing life-saving missions.

Additionally, I earned qualifications as a behavioral scientist, aircraft maintenance officer, race relations instructor, and equal opportunity and treatment officer. In 1996, the U.S. Senate confirmed my selection as the Academy’s 63^rd Permanent Professor. I led the Academy’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership for nearly a decade.

Military academies have a unique role in American higher education. Many of the skills necessary to be an effective classroom teacher apply to effective leadership. Thus, each year, nearly a thousand newly commissioned 2nd lieutenants entering service are joined by about a hundred field grade officers who complete brief tours of the Academy faculty. The academic departments at the Academy are teams of inspired amateurs rather than seasoned academics—what we lacked in credentials and publications was offset by our work ethic and team orientation.

As one of the lucky few officers selected to complete doctoral studies, upon returning to the Academy in 1986 I led my department’s faculty development program. I used my research skills to explore teaching and learning. I helped develop our first classroom instructor critique and led a comprehensive interdisciplinary project assessing the contributions of each core course to the Academy’s educational outcomes: basic knowledge, critical thinking, and positive attitudes.

Contrary to stereotypes of military leaders, General Bradley Hosmer, Rhodes Scholar and first Academy graduate to serve as the Academy Superintendent (viz., president), was a brilliant scholar and impeccable commander. Noting West Point’s succinct statement of values—McArthur’s “duty, honor, country”—General Hosmer wanted to identify and express the Academy’s core values. I was one of several junior officers who facilitated the process. We conducted many focus groups with Academy constituencies—including the dining hall waiters.

Consensus emerged that integrity, service, and excellence were our three core values: “Integrity First; Service before Self; Excellence in All We Do.” The Secretary of the Air Force was so impressed that she adopted these as the Air Force Core Values.

Having recently been required to admit female cadets, General Hosmer replaced the anachronistic “Bring Me Men” at the entrance to the cadet area with our core values. I didn’t realize then how much these words meant. Like any educational institution, we had our share of petty disputes and disagreements. With the end of the draft, the officer core was becoming more politically conservative. It was not always easy being one of the few liberal faculty members, but swimming against the current builds character—and endurance. I never doubted that those who disagreed with my politics were decent, honest, professional officers and competent educators.

I worked hard for the faculty members who worked for me, garnering many doctoral sponsorships for capable officers—both male and female. My department embraced the opportunity to hire more female faculty members and, in compliance with a congressional mandate, more permanent civilian faculty members. Together, we achieved many successes; we were proud of our accomplishments.

The Academy’s development of innovative student-centered pedagogies, a comprehensive educational assessment program, and the application of many “total quality” tenets gained national attention. I was invited to present programs, conduct workshops, and participate in educational innovations such as Western Governors University, the Urban University Portfolio Project, Regional Accreditation Reform, and the annual American Association of Higher Education conferences. At a national assessment conference, a mentor and friend suggested I retire and move to higher education administration.

She told me my skills were needed at a small liberal arts college in Kentucky. It had wonderful students and a truly extraordinary mission. However, its president had alienated many of the faculty, the school had performed poorly on its last accreditation site visit, and its graduation rate had declined steadily. She did not know it was where I was born.

I applied to become Berea College’s academic vice president. My visit to campus the following month went well, and 85 percent of the faculty voted to offer me the position. However, it did not take long for the differences in leadership style between the president and me to emerge.

My approach to leadership involved decentralization, intellectual diversity, and development; the President’s was just the opposite: centralized authority, viewpoint alignment, and continuous competitive selection. Despite these differences, our efforts were often complementary. During my first four years, the graduation rate increased from 45 percent to over 60 percent, a program of providing each student with their own laptop was successfully implemented, the Entrepreneurship for the Public Good program was established, and a comprehensive academic assessment program was developed. Despite having faced probation after its previous accreditation visit, the college passed its 2005 re-accreditation visit with no adverse findings and many laudatory comments.

The tension between the president and me led him to ask me to step down as provost and join the psychology department as a tenured faculty member once the accreditation team departed. Having continued teaching mostly evening classes during my time as provost, I welcomed the chance to return full-time to the classroom and pursue research—well worth a pay cut.

After six years of teaching, my post-tenure review reflected my success. My first-year composition and critical thinking students were retained at higher rates and achieved better subsequent grades, while my cognitive psychology and industrial/organizational psychology labs were among the most popular on campus. My students received multiple state and regional research awards, and I earned both the academic advisor of the year and the labor supervisor of the year awards.

Unfortunately, this was not to last. When the president retired, just three of us senior faculty remained to cover our twenty psychology courses and other general studies while advising close to 100 students. We managed overloads and summer classes to keep up with demand. In gratitude for finally receiving approval to hire, we welcomed three new female junior faculty members over the next three years, two of whom were openly lesbian.

In 2017, with the encouragement of the newly appointed campus Title IX coordinator, these junior faculty members filed a grievance against the department chair, alleging discrimination in hiring and promotion, retaliation, and creating a hostile work environment. I believed these accusations were baseless and expected a swift investigation to clear my colleague. I was wrong. Though a months-long investigation found no evidence of any discrimination or retaliation, a campus conduct board concluded that a few of the alleged incidents had contributed to a hostile work environment. Notably, the Title IX standard of “severe and pervasive” was ignored.

The department chair was demoted, and his office relocated from a second-floor corner to a basement near the college herpetarium. Despite evidence of false testimony and issues like anxiety and depression affecting the grievants’ testimony, their claims were accepted, including exaggerated injuries. Having served as an Air Force Equal Opportunity and Treatment Officer, I recognized the lack of proper investigative procedures. The administration also disregarded the ex-chair’s subsequent ADHD diagnosis as irrelevant to the case.

I asked the president to release an official account of the proceedings, as unchecked social media rumors had inflated the department chair’s alleged offenses to outlandish levels. The situation resembled a Mean Girls scenario more than professional faculty conduct. I urged the president to affirm the importance of academic freedom, but he declined, citing the “fraught times.”

Additionally, I confronted the dean for fostering hostility within the department. He had quietly approved regular outside employment for one grievant, who worked every Friday as a therapist in a nearby town under the pretense of a “special project.” He apologized privately to me via email. I documented the discrepancies in the Title IX process and sent it to senior administrators. I opted not to make it public, but neither the president nor other senior administrators responded—later claiming the president had not read it because it was “an attachment.”

My Industrial/Organizational Psychology course covered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and protections against hostile work environments, sparking lively discussions on the balance between these protections and academic freedom. Students eagerly shared incidents in which they had felt suppressed, making the issue timely and relevant. The topic was already approved as part of the course syllabus by the department, division chairs, and the dean.

For the capstone project, we developed a survey to explore campus members’ perceptions of hostile environments and academic freedom. The survey incorporated scenarios inspired by my experiences during the Title IX proceedings, alongside student-reported incidents and a case at another institution. After a pilot test with the class, we finalized the survey and posted it with the help of the IRB chair, a colleague from the psychology department, who translated it into Qualtrics and offered support despite his about potential backlash.

The survey launched smoothly, gathering 120 responses in the first day. However, this progress was abruptly derailed when one of the initial grievants used social media to falsely claim the survey was vindictive retaliation, prompting a public outcry. The dean, who had been away and hadn’t yet reviewed the survey draft sent the previous week, initially promised to send me specifics on complaints or problematic scenarios. Instead, he issued a public condemnation, demanding the survey’s immediate removal and an apology. He never provided the promised complaints or detailed issues with the survey content.

Summoned to the dean’s office with my academic division chair, I was informed that charges would be filed against me for failing in my professional duties, given my refusal to retract the survey immediately. Discussion was refused, and the administration acted swiftly, barring me from campus, suspending my teaching duties, and prohibiting me from communicating with students. The president directed the IRB chair to conduct a quick telephone poll condemning the survey, allowing the administration to bar me from using or sharing the survey results, even during my hearing.

Over the next ten weeks, my situation deteriorated. The AAUP chapter chair privately assured the president I wouldn’t receive AAUP support, and she canceled a scheduled faculty forum on academic freedom. Neighbors expressed fears of personal harassment if I returned to campus, and the president labeled me a threat to the “well-being” of the community, denying my request to lift the suspension. Students who supported me by placing “#FreeDave” stickers around campus were threatened with expulsion for retaliation, and when the SGA voted to award me their annual student support award, an advisor connected to a grievant intervened with defamatory messages, leading to the withdrawal of the award.

My hearing was a fiasco. Since none of the grievants signed a complaint against me and refused to testify, the dean assumed the role of proxy grievant, as well as witness, investigator, and prosecutor. He also was the direct supervisor of all members of my faculty panel and all faculty witnesses. The survey itself was the only evidence against me.

Although many of the charges against me alleged harm to students, no students testified against me. Two sobbing sociologists falsely claimed that it was unethical to include real events in surveys. A parade of weeping women with little or no research experience claimed the survey was a “dismissible offense,” and urged the panel to dismiss me from the college. The panel agreed with the dean and his witnesses, and the president acted on the panel’s recommendation. A review by the Board of Trustees noted that they would have handled the situation differently than the dean but supported the president’s decision to fire me.

My case has been in federal court ever since, with a recent partial reversal of a lower court’s summary judgment in favor of the college.

Conclusion: Today’s military is in good shape. It continues to be the most effective fighting force in the world. It is being led by officers who are well-qualified, well aware of their obligation to protect and defend the Constitution, and of consistently good character. I wish it were the same for higher education.

Image of the fountain on a fall day at Berea College by IMCBerea College on Wikimedia Commons