The University of San Diego proposes the creation and endowment of the James Bond Stockdale Chair in Leadership and Ethics to honor and celebrate the contributions of Admiral Stockdale to the application of ethics to leadership and to professional life. Through its sponsorship of a workshop and public lecture, the symposium seeks to provide a focal point for developing and sustaining a concern with moral issues in leadership in our society. The symposium and public lecture provides a forum within which members of the University community, the local Naval community, and the local corporate community can come together for the thoughtful discussion of morally challenging issues faced by those in leadership roles in our society.

Admiral Stockdale has borne witness with his entire life to the importance of studying, understanding, and applying ethical principles to one's profession and the conduct of one's life. His efforts in his early military career and in his first graduate studies to learn the basic premises of philosophical ethics served him well during the terrible hardships and deprivations he suffered while a prisoner of war from 1965-1973. His knowledge of the tenets of Stoicism, especially as taught by Epictetus, provided him not only a framework within which to bear with his own ordeal, but also a model for his role as senior officer and leader of all the prisoners confined in the notorious Hoa Lo prison. Admiral Stockdale led by example, as well as by precept, and his comrades recognized and admired the strength of will and consistency of purpose which he demonstrated to them on a daily basis.

After the war, Admiral Stockdale expanded and deepened his knowledge of philosophy. He was appointed President of the Naval War College in Newport Rhode Island, and immediately persuaded his old friend, Dr. Joseph G. Brennan, emeritus professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, to join him in team teaching a classroom course they entitled, Foundations of Moral Obligation. Dr. Brennan later published a book under the course title, subtitled: The Stockdale Course, describing its contents and popularity on a campus occupied by future leaders of the American armed forces.

After military retirement, Stockdale became a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and immediately became immersed, with his wife Sybil, in the writing of their memoirs of the Vietnam War period. They alternated chapters, Sybil telling how she threw off the shackles of the Johnson Administration's "keep quiet" policy for families and founded The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, all the while single handedly bringing up the Stockdales' four sons; Jim explaining the prison system and how he and his comrades learned to "beat it," fighting for his honor and often for his life in the dungeons of Vietnam. The Stockdales entitled their book In Love and War; Harper and Row was the initial publisher and it came out in 1984 to good reviews. In 1987 it was made into an NBC Monday Night Movie starring Jane Alexander and James Woods. It is now in its second revised and updated edition with the Naval Institute Press, still selling well in its 15th year.

Admiral Stockdale wrote two more books at Hoover: A Vietnam Experience, Ten Years of Reflection, 1984, and Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, in 1995. Each, in the year they were published, won the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge?\'s George Washington Honor Medal for literature.

Admiral Stockdale?s writings have been identified by others as works which can be counted on to describe "how man can rise in dignity to prevail in the face of adversity."

By honoring Admiral Stockdale with the creation of an endowed chair, the University of San Diego is commending to its students, its community, and to the entire nation the integrity of life, the love of wisdom, and the strength of character which Admiral Stockdale's life so clearly illustrates.

The Stockdale Chair will begin as a lecture series on a topic related to the relationship between leadership and ethics. The lecture will be delivered by a prominent scholar or civic leader who has embodied the application of ethical principles to professional life either in his or her research or professional practice. The lecture will be supplemented by one or more seminars delivered to appropriate classes at the University and by other activities designed to honor Admiral Stockdale, the lecturer, or both. The lectures will be published by the University and distributed to faculty, students, donors, and others who stand to profit from reading and reflecting on them.

As the University is able to accumulate an endowment of sufficient size to support the appointment of a full-time scholar to the chair, it will have the option to appoint a distinguished visiting scholar to the chair for a semester or a year or to seek a permanent appointment to the faculty. The first appointment might well be a current member of the University faculty who has distinguished himself or herself in the study and teaching of ethics or leadership, and, should that be the case, the endowment will supplement the salary of the chairholder and provide for an additional appointment to the faculty of a junior scholar, who will complement the work of the chairholder. Regardless of the nature of the appointment, the chairholder will have the responsibility to organize and conduct an annual event (a public lecture, conference, exhibit, or other suitable activity) which highlights the application of ethical principle to professional life and practice.