Tackling tough issues

Academy graduate helps create annual Jannetta Lecture

Author Joseph Heller was a guest lecturer at the Air Force Academy in the 1970s when a young David Jannetta was a cadet studying international affairs.

The author “sat in our classroom and he spoke. He shared his outline for Catch 22; it was incredible,” Jannetta remembers. “For me, even then, I remember thinking the Academy must have a strong sense of itself to expose cadets to a thought process that may not necessarily be approved.”

More than 40 years later, the 1975 Academy graduate believes that cadets need even more exposure to a wide range of perspectives on issues. It’s one reason he chose to create the Jannetta Lecture with a focus on the humanities.

“Things are so different today. The challenges for the cadets and for society as a whole are greater,” he says. “It’s really important for cadets to be exposed to a broad range of opinions. Things aren’t necessarily black and white any more. There’s a lot of ambiguity out there.”

The 12^thannual Jannetta Lecture featuring playwright Suzan-Lori Parks was staged in September 2018. Jannetta introduced Parks, in part, by describing how the cadet wing of today has changed from the all-male wing he was a part of. Just as the Academy has adapted to changing times, cadets can learn new leadership approaches when they are exposed to new perspectives, he says.

That exposure was magnified in 2010 when the Department of English and Fine Arts staged the first War, Literature and the Arts Conference (WLA). It leaned heavily on the success of the Jannetta Lecture as well as the War, Literature and the ArtsJournal founded by Donald Anderson, professor of English at the Academy, in 1989.

Feedback for the conference was extremely positive and it drew participants from around the world. The second WLA conference, Representing and Remembering War, took place in September 2018, with a larger audience and two Pulitzer Prize winners as keynote speakers.

Jannetta has been instrumental in supporting the WLA conference and looks forward to building on the success of the first two.

“The study of humanities gives leaders a way to expand the way they approach issues,” Jannetta says. “When you can bring speakers who are challenging at times, it makes everybody think a little more.  Hopefully we’ll help cadets develop critical thinking skills to make great decisions in the future.”

Watch the keynote address by Robert Olen Butler from the 2018 WLA Conference: