Courtesy | Rick Wadell
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Rick Waddell is a Hillsdale College Center for Military History and Strategy Distinguished Fellow visiting campus this week to teach a one-credit course titled “U.S. National Security Strategy.” He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy West Point, the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Webster University, and Columbia University, where he earned a doctorate in international relations. Waddell taught in the social sciences department at West Point for three years. He served active duty in the U.S. Army for 12 years and is now in the U.S. Army Reserve. Waddell was the White House’s Deputy National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018.
Q: Why did you come to Hillsdale?
A: I’ve known about Hillsdale for at least about 40 years. I started getting Imprimis in the late ’80s. So, I’ve had an impression of Hillsdale, but my impression was probably more like an Ivy League school, so much larger. Still small, but larger than it is. One of the journalists I traveled the world with is Joel Gehrke [’11, a former writer at the Washington Examiner], Jason Gehrke’s [a Hillsdale assistant professor of history] brother. He said, ‘You really ought to go to Hillsdale.’ And I said ‘Well, sure,’ and Dr. Gerke is also an Army reservist, as I was. January of 2024 I came out and gave a lecture and then Hillsdale asked me if I would be one of their distinguished fellows for military history and strategy. So I guess I came here via journalism.
Q: What draws you to Hillsdale?
A: The intellectual content. Imprimis dealt with issues that, frankly, a lot of other journalists’ publications of 37 years ago would not deal with. I was impressed with what I found here, it was high quality but in small numbers. There’s a saying out there that you ‘punch above your weight class,’ and Hillsdale certainly does that.
Q: Why did you become an engineering officer in the U.S. Army?
A: U.S. Military Academy West Point was the nation’s first engineering school, and part of that is the military. When it was time for me to choose, I could have chosen infantry or aviation or armory tanks, but it seemed to strike me that I should, traditionally, choose engineering. I was less on the construction side and more on the combat engineer side.
Q: What was your favorite experience while serving in active duty?
A: I got to go to a lot of places, a lot of places few Americans get to go. I went to North Korea once on a diplomatic mission, so I’m probably one of the few American general officers or admirals ever to go to North Korea since the Korean War.
Q: What is your favorite thing about America?
A: It’s a land of opportunity. It doesn’t matter whether you come from the mean streets of the city or from a small town in a rural area, we regularly have people that produce things that change the world, and sometimes they’re not all that well educated.
