Service-eligible Americans are “looking for purpose,” and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, is ready to mold them into leaders of character, its superintendent said.

“Our younger generation today is looking for purpose,” Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland said during a recent Washington Post event focused on veterans and lessons in leadership, resilience and service. At the academy, cadets are “surrounded by different people, which is our staff, our faculty, our coaches. … Everybody is committed to … developing young people into being leaders of character.”

To prepare cadets to lead the next generation of soldiers, the academy remains focused on the future, Gilland said. “We’re expecting them to … graduate and lead … other young men and women in your Army … and to be able to accomplish missions and objectives that the Army lays out for them,” he said. “From the academy perspective, are we setting those conditions for the new people that are coming into the academy today to be leaders in the 2040s and the 2050s?”

To prepare for the future fight, cadets are learning from ongoing global conflicts. Looking to the fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East, the academy is taking lessons and adapting them into the curriculum “in near real time,” Gilland said.

Future conflicts also will demand novel perspectives to enable the Army to outpace its adversaries, he said. “We have to adapt and look at our adversaries through different lenses,” Gilland said. “What our adversaries were 20 years ago, 11 years ago, may not be what they need to be in the future, and we have got to understand that, and we’ve got to be able to go forward with that mindset.” 

The academy is working hard to foster trust, even as American trust in public institutions wanes, he said.

“We are all in this together as citizens of our nation, and … trust is foundational to everything that we do,” he said.