Crafting diverse, inclusive and decolonized military leaders: reflections on decolonizing professional military education

Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Lives Matter protests’ demand for a far-reaching engagement with the structural racism prevalent within society. Civil-military relations have not been untouched by this. While calls to decolonize higher education (HE) are not new (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu, 2018), such calls have not yet found resonance in the professional military education (PME) domain. This is an important gap as military education institutions, similar to western universities, are key sites where “colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized” (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu, 2018). In this paper we provide a rationale for the importance of decolonizing PME as well as the benefits for decolonizing teaching and learning in a PME setting by drawing on existing attempts developed to decolonize HE institutions. Though building on these, our decolonizing rationale links issues identified in relation to HE to the specific sensitivities of PME. Our argument unfolds as follows. First, we outline how we understand the process of decolonizing and how it relates to PME. Second, we explain how the armed forces benefit from decolonizing PME. Third, we look at two avenues in need of decolonizing: the curriculum and the educator. In our conclusions we reflect on the importance of decolonization for creating truly diverse and inclusive forces and its significance in crafting effective military leaders for the twenty-first century.