c. 1997 Religion News Service

ANNAPOLIS, Md. _ In a third-floor classroom of Luce Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy, Professor Nancy Sherman reviews the philosophy of Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant with five senior Naval officers.”If you’re being a Kantian,”one captain volunteers,”then you have a duty to `be all that you can be.'” Sherman laughs heartily at the pun, which refers to Kant’s notion of considering each person an”end-in-itself”and the popular military recruiting slogan.

For Sherman, however, the slogan means even more in the contradictory environment of the academy, where her classroom window looks directly into an adjacent building of midshipmen engaged in physical training in a boxing ring.

Such juxtaposition of warrior and academic is typical of the Naval Academy, the demanding 152-year-old institution that is regarded as the premier training ground for junior Naval and Marine Corps officers.

But a more unsettling contradiction has beset the elite institution in recent years as it found itself the center of a series of scandals involving cheating, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, drug use and hazing, leaving its senior officers wondering if they are raising up a generation of officers without a moral compass.

That’s where Sherman, a 46-year-old philosopher, ethicist and tenured professor at Georgetown University, comes in.

Sherman is the inaugural holder of a privately endowed distinguished chair in ethics, instituted just this semester. The officers she instructs are part of a course called”Moral Reasoning for Naval Leaders,”required of all second-year students.

The course includes a Monday lecture by Sherman followed by Wednesday and Friday sessions with senior officers who lead debates on case studies and clarify the practical application of the lectures on morality and ethics. Sherman’s course is part of a larger Character Development Program initiated in 1994 in response to a cheating scandal in which 125 midshipmen were implicated. In addition to teaching, Sherman also serves as an adviser to Adm. Charles R. Larson, the Naval Academy’s superintendent who was appointed in 1994 and who says repeatedly that character development is his top priority at the school.

The character development program seeks to use an”ethics across the curriculum”focus to create military leaders accustomed to making ethical decisions in complex situations as well as to prevent future incidents of harassment, discrimination, and hazing.”The idea is to make ethics not just something that’s discussed in one class three times a week, but is an aspect of every class,”Sherman said in an interview.

Sherman’s students say they understand.

John Currie, a 21-year-old Ocean Engineering major who aspires to a career in the Marine Corps, says the”daily routine”of an midshipman is one full of”ethical decisions.” Currie, for example, is the”point of contact”for his company, which means that when an upperclassman or instructor has a task for a second-year student to complete, Currie is charged with making sure it’s completed efficiently and accurately.”A lot of times I try to make the best decision for the biggest amount of people,”said Currie, citing an example of what Sherman would call utility in decision-making. He said Sherman’s course has helped him put labels on ethics he already holds.”I’ve always had the knowledge (about utilitarian decisions or the categorical imperative), now I know what to call it,”he said.

The chair was funded by a $1.5 million endowment from William K. Brehm and Ernst Volgenau, who head SRA International, Inc., a private information technology corporation in Arlington, Va.

Brehm said that the ethics chair is intended”to plug a gap”that exists in society and allow the academy to instill in midshipmen values and ethics that are increasingly absent in families, neighborhoods, and schools.”Many of them (midshipmen) have to be taught the difference between right and wrong, how to make difficult judgments,”Brehm said.

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Sherman’s specialty in the philosophies of Aristotle and Kant allow her to relate classical philosophy to the ethical life of a junior officer.”I can’t do everything, but we’re trying to put out the message that moral conduct isn’t enough _ moral character is what counts,”she said.

According to Cmdr. Pat Walsh, chair of the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law, under which Sherman’s course falls,”The key point is relevance _ to bring the classical writers alive at the academy. It’s a good opportunity to blend academic resources.” Other academy officials said Sherman’s expertise complements the on-the-job experience of other teachers and thus heightens the relevance of learning how to make ethical decisions.”A senior officer with 20 or 22 years in the service has been exposed to that kind of situation where it forces you to make (ethical) decisions,”said Capt. Harold Flamming, one of the 32 military instructors for the course and a member of the Character Development Board.”I certainly have a vested interest in seeing that these folks (the midshipmen) get that ethical education, because they’re going to be working for me.” Col. David A. Vetter, a Marine senior officer who graduated from the academy in 1967 and now serves as director of the Character Development program, agreed.”Dr. Sherman is expertly capable,”said Vetter. He said her course gives midshipmen”a solid foundation in both theoretical and applied areas of ethics.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Drawing from actual incidents in recent military history, the course relies heavily on case studies that challenge students _ the Iran-Contra affair, sexual harassment at Mitsubishi Motors, and the academy’s own cheating case.

There is even a case study called”A Christian Soldier in a Secular City,”which explores the issues of relating values to religious faith.

However, there is no case study or lecture specifically devoted to hazing, a highly charged issue in the military these days.

In recent weeks videotapes of a Marine ritual called”bloodwinging,”in which a military pin is repeatedly jammed into its recipient’s chest, were released. Parents of Navy Fireman Dennis O’Brien Jr. have alleged their son’s 1995 shooting death on a submarine was either a suicide or a silencing when Navy officers heavily pressured O’Brien to reveal the names of colleagues who had engaged in a similar hazing ritual.

Sherman called bloodwinging”deplorable,”and although hazing is not the subject of any particular case study, she said related issues often come up in class.”A general issue we raise in class, repeatedly, is that loyalty is one value among many. It has to be compatible with honesty,”she said.”The hardest thing for people to understand is that values conflict with other good values.”

MJP END LEBOWITZ