The Mens Leadership Forum of Chicago will present Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Josiah Bunting III (Also here.) on December 9, 2011. He will be speaking on the topic of American Leadership, which in this context will mean leadership as personally exemplified by individual Americans over our history. He will address the question: how did certain earlier American generations produced cohorts of enormously capable leaders at the national level, and why we do not. One of the generations he will talk about is the generation that led the so-called Greatest Generation: Truman, FDR, Mac Arthur, Marshall, and Eisenhower. The meeting commences at 7:30 a.m., at the University Club of Chicago, 76 E. Monroe. The breakfast is always good there. Register here. I have read his book An Education for Our Time, which was interesting. (See this review of the book). I hope many of you will attend.
9 thoughts on “Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Josiah Bunting III speaking on “American Leadership,” December 9, 2011”
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Sounds cool, I hope someone videos and puts it up.
Interesting, but I know a lot of VMI alumni who aren’t enamoured with Sy Bunting’s stewardship at VMI. I wonder if any of those will show up at his lecture?
Morgan, you should go, to find out.
Lex, Idon’t relish having to travel from the Washington, DC area to Chicago to find out. And by the way, I’m not a VMI alumni but a few of my friends are and don’t much care for Sy.[I’m sure they wouldn’t fly to Chicago either.]
If they don’t like him, they are free not to come as you are.
Indeed, but enjoy his talk nevertheless.
I’m a VMI alum who graduated not long before LTG Bunting became the Superintendent. I don’t know your friends’ complaint Morgan with his tenure as the Supe, but I’m going to guess it was because he was in the job when women were admitted to the Institute. I was opposed then as I still am to their presence at VMI, but given the hand he was dealt, he did the best that could have been expected. The alumni plans to privatize VMI to avoid co-education weren’t realistic, particularly in the face of the Clinton Administration threat to withdraw all ROTC from VMI if the school didn’t knuckle under. No ROTC would have meant the end of VMI. There wasn’t much else to be done in the face of a hostile Federal Government and elite establishment. Given the unpleasant task of carrying out the decision, the Institute under LTG Bunting did as well as could be expected, particularly compared with the Citadel’s disastrous first attempt.
Steve K., thanks for the comment. Presiding over a change he probably did not want and which his alumni certainly did not want is not going to make him popular. It is damage control, at best. My only knowledge of him is the one book I read, which was good.
Steve K, you are right they were involved–one of them was a Board of Vistor’s member and another was very active in the VMI Alumnae. As you pointed out, they didn’t have much use for Sy.