Ashton B. Carter
25th United States Secretary of Defense
Education
- University of Edinburgh in Scotland -
- Bachelor of Arts in his double-major of physics and medieval history - Yale College
- Doctor of Philosophy in theoretical physics -
Overview
Ashton Baldwin Carter was an American government official and academic who served as the 25th United States Secretary of Defense from February 2015 to January 2017. He later served as director of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
Carter began his career as a physicist. After a brief experience as an analyst for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, he switched careers to public policy. He joined the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1984 and became chair of the International & Global Affairs faculty. Carter served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during President Clinton's first term, from 1993 to 1996, responsible for policy regarding the former Soviet states, strategic affairs, and nuclear weapons.
During President Obama's first term, he served first as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and then Deputy Secretary of Defense until December 2013. In February 2015, he replaced Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense and served until the end of the Obama administration. During his tenure, he ended the ban of transgender officers in the military. In 2016, Carter opened all military occupations and positions to women without exception. This marked the first time in U.S. history that women with the appropriate qualifications would be allowed to serve in military roles such as infantry, armor, reconnaissance, and special operations units.
For his service to national security, Carter had on five occasions been awarded the DOD Distinguished Public Service Medal. He had also received the CJCS Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award, and the Defense Intelligence Medal for his contributions to intelligence. Carter was author or co-author of eleven books and more than 100 articles on physics, technology, national security, and management.
Secretary of Defense :
Carter was nominated by President Barack Obama to be the 25th United States secretary of defense on December 5, 2014.
In his nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said he was "very much inclined" to increase U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Speaking on the Middle East, he said the U.S. must militarily ensure a "lasting defeat" of Islamic State (ISIL) forces in Iraq and Syria. He also opined that the threats posed by Iran were as serious as those posed by the ISIL forces. He said he was not in favor of increasing the rate of prisoner releases from Guantanamo Bay.
Carter was approved unanimously on February 1, 2015, by the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was confirmed by the Senate on February 12 by a vote of 93–5 and sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden on February 17.
In May 2015, Carter warned the People's Republic of China to halt its rapid island-building in the South China Sea.
In October 2015, Carter condemned Russian air strikes against ISIL and other rebel groups in Syria. On October 8, 2015, Carter, speaking at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, said he believed Russia would soon start paying the price for its military intervention in Syria in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties.
A controversy arose in December 2015 when it was revealed that Carter had used a personal email account while conducting official business as Secretary of Defense.
In January 2016, at Carter's direction, the Department of Defense opened all military roles to women, overriding a request by the Marine Corps to continue to exempt women from certain positions. In June 2016, Carter announced that transgender individuals would be allowed to join and openly serve in the military.
Early Life
Ashton Baldwin Carter was born on September 24, 1954, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father is William Stanley Carter Jr., a World War II veteran, United States Navy neurologist and psychiatrist, and department chairman at Abington Memorial Hospital for 30 years. His mother is Anne Baldwin Carter, an English teacher.
He has three siblings, including children's book author Cynthia DeFelice. As a child he was nicknamed Ash and Stoobie.
Carter was raised in Abington, Pennsylvania, on Wheatsheaf Lane. At age eleven, working at his first job at a Philadelphia car wash, he was fired for "wise-mouthing the owner."
Education :
Carter was educated at Highland Elementary School (class of 1966) and at Abington Senior High School (class of 1972) in Abington. In high school, he was a wrestler, lacrosse player, cross-country runner, and president of the Honor Society. He was inducted into Abington Senior High School's Hall of Fame in 1989.
Carter attended the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1975. In 1976, Carter completed his Bachelor of Arts in his double-major of physics and medieval history at Yale College, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. His senior thesis, "Quarks, Charm and the Psi Particle", was published in Yale Scientific in 1975. He was also an experimental research associate at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1975 (where he worked on quark research) and at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1976.]
Carter then became a Rhodes Scholar and studied at the University of Oxford. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in theoretical physics on Hard processes in perturbative QCD in 1979 and was supervised by Christopher Llewellyn Smith. He was a member of St John's College, Oxford.
Carter was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow research associate in theoretical physics at Rockefeller University from 1979 to 1980, studying time-reversal invariance and dynamical symmetry breaking. He coauthored two papers on CP violations in B meson decays with A. I. Sanda, which were used as one of theoretical basis to build B factories.
Carter was then a research fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies from 1982 to 1984, during which time he wrote a public report assessing that the Reagan-proposed "Star Wars" initiative could not protect the U.S. from a Soviet nuclear attack.
Career
- United States - 25th Secretary of Defense
Other Activites
Recognition
Carter received the Ten Outstanding Young Americans award from the United States Junior Chamber in 1987. For his service to national security, Carter was awarded the DOD's highest civilian medal, the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, five times. For critical liaison efforts with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the geographic combatant commanders, he was awarded the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 2013 and the Defense Intelligence Medal for his contributions to intelligence.