Year Ahead guest, Shawn Skelly, Co-founder of Out in National Security and Commissioner, National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, 2017-2020.

Shawn Skelly Ms. Shawn Skelly is the Co-Founder of Out in National Security and served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a Naval Flight Officer, retiring with the rank of Commander. After a period in industry with ITT Exelis, she joined the Obama Administration in 2013, as the first transgender veteran to be appointed by a President of the United States. She first served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics at the U.S. Department of Defense, and ultimately as the Director of the Office of the Executive Secretariat at the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2017, President Obama appointed Shawn to serve as a Commissioner on the newly established National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. Shawn was recognized as one of a group of transgender veterans in the 2017 OUT100.

Our Capstone Preview features Emerging Scholar Victoria Tait, a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at Carleton University, who presented her paper at the last inter-university Seminar on Armed Forces and Society-Canada.

Victoria Tait is currently a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at Carleton University in Ottawa, ON. Her research focuses broadly on feminist security studies, and her dissertation examines how Women, Peace and Security policy has been framed and implemented within the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). She enjoys working directly with Canadian soldiers to identify challenges in the military’s gender culture(s) while creating space for female-identifying soldiers to shape the academic and political narrative of their experience. Additional areas of research interest include gendered analysis of Canadian policy on veterans, feminist research methods and women in terrorist and insurgency organizations. Victoria’s work on gender and security has appeared in publications by the Canadian Defence Academy, Springer Publishing, Sage Research Methods Cases, and the Royal Canadian Military Institute.

Episode 18: Diversity & Inclusion

In the 18th episode of Battle Rhythm, Stef and our guest co-host this week, Jean-Christophe Boucher, fellow co-director of the CDSN and lead of the Civil – Military Relations theme, discuss NATO in the Middle East, the Munich Security Conference and Macron’s vision for a European nuclear defense strategy. Our Capstone Preview features Emerging Scholar Victoria Tait [24:30], a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at Carleton University, who presented her paper at the last inter-university Seminar on Armed Forces and Society-Canada.  Our Feature Interview this week is with Year Ahead guest, Shawn Skelly [33:35] Co-founder of Out in National Security and Commissioner, National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, 2017-2020. This week’s Peeve is on hiatus as Steve is in Japan this week. Mentioned: Jean-Christophe Boucher and Kim Richard Nossal’s The Politics of War: Canada’s Afghanistan Mission, 2001–14; David Pugliese’s Ottawa Citizen piece, Canadian Forces nixes post about military "bling” but moves ahead with other initiatives to recruit women.

Year Ahead guest, Ayesha Ray discusses her research including escalating tensions in Kashmir and the inclusion of women in the Indian armed forces.

Ayesha Ray is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at King’s College, Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and her M.Phil and M.A. in International Relations from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests focus on civil-military relations, conflict, and security issues in South Asia. She is the author of The Soldier and the State in India: Nuclear Weapons, Counterinsurgency, and the Transformation of Indian Civil-Military Relations, published by SAGE, in 2013; and a monograph, Culture, Context, and Capability: Comparing the American and Indian Counterinsurgency Experience, published by the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, in 2016. She also has several book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed international publications.

Emerging Scholar Ali Wyne, a researcher at RAND, who presented at KCIS last summer, on Great Power Competition.

Ali Wyne is a Washington, DC-based policy analyst in the RAND Corporation’s Defense and Political Sciences Department. He serves as a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a non-resident fellow with the Modern War Institute.

Episode 17: Global Hotspots (5 February 2020)

In the 17th episode of Battle Rhythm, Steve and Stef discuss highlights from the CGAI conference in Ottawa this past week, the makings of a good conference, Canadian ISIS fighters captured in Afghanistan, NATO in Iraq, the NATO Policy on Preventing and Responding to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and the CAF falling short of its target of a 25% female force. Our Capstone Preview features Emerging Scholar Ali Wyne [33:30], a researcher at RAND, who presented at KCIS last summer, on Great Power Competition. Our Feature Interview this week is with Year Ahead guest, Ayesha Ray [44:45] where we discuss her research including escalating tensions in Kashmir and the inclusion of women in the Indian armed forces. This week’s Peeve [1:03:00] is about the American electoral process. Mentioned: Stéfanie von Hlatky’s Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism; Heidi Hardt & Stéfanie von Hlatky’s NATO's About-Face: Adaptation to Gender Mainstreaming in an Alliance Setting; Susan Bartels’ ‘Even peacekeepers expect something in return’: A qualitative analysis of sexual interactions between UN peacekeepers and female Haitians