Shannon E. French, PhD

Professor Shannon E. French came to CWRU in 2008 after teaching 11 years at the US Naval Academy, where she was Associate Chair of the division of Leadership, Ethics, and Law. She served as the Inamori Professor in Ethics and Director of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence for 17 years. She directs the first MA program in military ethics in the US. Her primary research fields are military ethics and ethics and emerging technology. Her publications include The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values, Past and Present (third edition 2025), edited volumes, numerous book chapters and articles including Distinction and Civil Immunity, Artificial Intelligence in Military Decision-Making, and War and Technology: Should Data Decide Who Lives, Who Dies? She has been on several grants, is an ELSI consultant for the Institute for Defense Analysis and the RAND Corporation and a member of the ethics board for the ACM. She is associate editor for the Journal of Military Ethics, on other editorial boards, and active in Euro-ISME. She has presented her work at the Army War College, USNA, USAFA, NDU, USMC Quantico, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, and in the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Norway, Spain, Pakistan, Austria, and the Netherlands. She was a distinguished speaker for the UK’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Conventions and has debated at the Oxford Union.