BIO

Dr. Celestino Perez serves as the Chair of Executive and Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, PA.  He also directs the Carlisle Scholars Program, for which he designs and teaches a seminar of select national-security professionals in political science, strategy, war, and military ethics.  Finally, he serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.  His research interests include political judgment, strategy, military ethics, and the relationship between the American military and democracy.  He is especially interested in “bridging the gap” between the illuminating work that political scientists do and the real-world challenges that political and military actors confront.

Perez hold a BS in American Politics from West Point (1992) and an MA (2002) and PhD (2008) in political science (political theory) from Indiana University at Bloomington. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Army War College with a Master in Strategic Studies.  His scholarly work appears in Perspectives on Politics, Peace Review, Armed Forces & Society, and the Journal of Military Ethics. His public and professional essays have appeared in Joint Forces Quarterly, Military Review, War on the Rocks, and Strategy Bridge.  He has also published an edited volume entitled Addressing the Fog of Cog: Perspectives on the Center of Gravity in U.S. Military Doctrine with Combat Studies Institute Press (2012).

On October 31^st, 2021, Dr. Perez retired as a colonel after 30 years of service in the U.S. Army.

GOALS

Integrate cutting-edge, scholarly perspectives on coercion, interstate war, intrastate war, and conflict termination into strategy formulation, military planning, and professional education in national security and military affairs.

Help national-security and military professionals cultivate political and causal literacy as it relates to military interventions.  Such literacy entails understanding how causal dynamics in the policy and strategic environments might unfold as well as the potential consequences of our interventions.  

Advocate for an approach to strategic education centered on the ethos of “strategy is performance.”  This approach means that we cannot become better strategists by merely reading and talking about strategy.  We become better strategists only by doing strategy.

Integrate a heightened appreciation for ethics as a routine practice in policy and strategy formulation…particularly when noncombatants’ lives are at risk.

DOWNLOAD CV

contact

celestino.perez@armywarcollege.edu

651 Wright Ave, Room 3072
Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013

• Twitter
• WordPress
• LinkedIn