Admiral Gary Roughead, Former Chief Of Naval Operations, to Deliver Lecture on the Role of Navies in the 21st Century

Admiral Gary Roughead, a four-star admiral who recently retired as the United States' Chief of Naval Operations, will deliver a lecture entitled "Sea Power and National Security in the 21st Century: Why Navies Matter" at Yale Law School on Thursday, April 17. The lecture, which will take place from 4:10-5:30 p.m. in Room 128, is open to the public.

As Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Roughead was the chief military officer of the U.S. Navy from 2007-2011. He has led the U.S. Navy as it has become the backbone of U.S. and international responses to ongoing crises around the world, including the multiple tensions in the Asia-Pacific; addressing threats from Iran and protecting the Persian Gulf; and, most recently, operations in the Black Sea in response to the Ukrainian crisis. The U.S. Navy was also instrumental in the U.N. intervention in Libya, the execution of U.S. Special Operations raids against Al Qaeda and pirates, developing an Arctic roadmap, and providing worldwide humanitarian relief.

Admiral Roughead’s lecture will address the many challenges that the U.S. Navy faces as part of the United States’ global national security strategy.

Since his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, Roughead has held six operational commands, and he is one of only two officers in the navy’s history to have commanded both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. In addition to his operational commands, Roughead served as the commandant at the U.S. Naval Academy and also as the navy’s chief of legislative affairs, which is responsible for the Department of the Navy’s interaction with Congress.

In his role as Chief of Naval Operations from 2007-2011, he led the U.S. Navy through two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific, crises in the Mediterranean, humanitarian relief operations around the world, budgetary crises, and fundamental reviews of U.S. military and foreign policy. He accelerated the Navy’s ballistic missile defense capabilities and its use of air and undersea drones, directed the service’s investigation of climate change and alternative energy, and pushed the navy toward a future based on the primacy of information, technology, and cyber in warfare.

Most recently, Admiral Roughead was an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University from 2011 to 2013.

"Admiral Roughead is a great exemplar of the U.S. military today,” said Paul Gewirtz, Potter Stewart Professor of Constitutional Law and Director, The China Center. “He has vast experience in every aspect of naval operations, a capacity to think far ahead into the future, and a wise understanding of the complex relationships between military, diplomatic, and political elements in the planning and execution of national security policy. We’re very lucky indeed that he will be visiting Yale to share with us this experience and insight."