Event Date: November 30, 2016 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: FSS 5028, 120 University Private

Presented by CIPS and the National Security Policy Network

Conflicts in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya have provided grounds for a paradoxical development in armed forces. While the military is often portrayed as a hostile space for critique and even dissent, these voices have also become more valorized and even institutionalized. But what does critique mean in the military profession? How does it work? What are the limits? And what difference, if any, does it make on the ground? This presentation engages these questions by comparing “ordinary” forms of critique with those enabled by the recent popularization of design thinking, a methodology inspired by system theory, complexity theory, and postmodernism. This presentation is based on 66 interviews with commanders, planners, defense scientists, and instructors, and participant observation at the School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth and the Canadian Forces College in Toronto.

Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. He is currently a University of Ottawa SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and is writing two books. The first covers the academic biases used in trying to make sense of the Iranian nuclear crisis between 1998 and 2016; the second outlines the new sociology of military design in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the US army, US Special Operations Forces, and the Canadian Forces.

*Please note: Photos and/or video recordings of this event may be posted on the CIPS website, newsletter and/or social media accounts. This event is free and in English.