Sally Paine ’75
At the War College Empowering career military officers to analyze and defend—while being open to others
“O
ur students have been the movers and shakers,” Sally Paine ’75 says, “and now they’re going to be the thinkers.” Sally’s students from the U.S. Naval War College (in Newport, Rhode Island) are all over the world. When they come to the War College, they are in their 30s and 40s, mid-career men and women of the armed forces—many of whom have held command. The Naval War College is a misnomer: it’s not a college, rather a graduate school offering a master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies.
Since a major revision of the program in 1972 led by then president Admiral Stansfield Turner, the War College has used the Oxford/Cambridge tutorial
method of teaching. In individual meetings, students present their thesis, argument, counter-argument and rebuttal to their tutors, who raise additional counterarguments. Students must communicate, defend, analyze and critique the ideas of others, as well as their own. “To think, you have to know,” Sally quotes her older brother. “You have to have a database, but you also have to know how to use it. You can be Rain Man and memorize everything that comes your way, but if you don’t have a means of analyzing it, what good does it do you?” This is where the argument/counterargument/rebuttal method comes in. “Our students are forced to think, ‘I have
© 2008 Onne van der Wal Photography, Inc./vanderwal.com
In Sally’s department—Strategy and Policy—half the teachers are active military officers and the other half are
Ph.D.’s in history, political science or government, all with expertise in different topics. (Members of the department always team-teach—a civilian teaches with a military officer.) Sally is an Asianist. Her colleagues are classicists, American historians, experts in international relations, terrorism, counterinsurgency, intelligence. “Ours is a hybrid program,” she explains. “We use both seminars and case studies, because while our students’ purpose is contemporary, their data is historical.”
The U.S. Naval War College was established in 1884; its complex is situated on Coasters Harbor Island in Newport, Rhode Island. 18
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