Authorities
Title 10 U.S.C. § 2165 establishes NDU and its components. As a Chairman’s Controlled Activity (CCA), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI) 1801.01F, National Defense University Policy serves as NDU’s charter. NDU demands high standards and rigor, as inculcated in Title 10 U.S.C. § 2163, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education and Talent Management and Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) accreditation.
Mission
NDU educates for warfighting advantage to win in competition, crisis, and conflict.
Vision
The Nation’s warfighting intellectual center of gravity delivering education, research, industrial collaboration, and allied and partner engagement. Unlike many civilian universities, NDU provides mastery-focused education, requiring students to demonstrate the targeted level of competence before they may move on to new material. Admission confers opportunity, not entitlement. These practices preserve NDU as an environment where only sustained, demonstrated excellence merits graduation, making selectivity both an entry condition and an enduring expectation.
Values
These enduring values define NDU’s institutional character and guide how we decide and operate to maximize the cognitive advantage delivered to the Joint Force:
Warfighter-focus: NDU exists to generate warfighting advantage. Academic, research, and institutional focus and effort are prioritized by their contribution to warfighting effectiveness, reflecting our obligation to prepare future leaders to confront and overcome threats to the United States.
Academic Mastery: Admission confers opportunity, not entitlement. Graduation is earned through demonstrated excellence in critical thinking and strategic leadership. NDU develops the whole warfighter – intellectually, physically, and professionally – while holding students to the standards required to lead at the highest levels of the national security enterprise.
Collaborative Leadership: National security depends on collaboration across government, industry, the nation and with international partners. NDU personnel are collegial, respectful, and team-oriented, transforming individual capacity into unified institutional strength to solve national problems.
Radical Transparency: Transparency enables trust, integration, and learning across NDU. Open information sharing and applying lessons learned accelerate institutional improvement and reduce inefficiency and keep the institution focused on mission execution.
Integrity: Trust, openness, and ethical conduct is the bedrock for all other values. University personnel demonstrate integrity, operating under the concept of academic freedom within the bounds set to protect information. Central to this integrity is an unwavering commitment to the American values that define our Republic and the character of our Armed Forces.
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