Edward T. Barrett is the Director of Research at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, and an ethics professor in the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law.

Raised in suburban Chicago, he attended the University of Notre Dame on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. After serving nine years as an active duty C-130 instructor and examiner pilot, he began doctoral studies in political theory at the University of Chicago. While in graduate school, he served for two years as speechwriter to the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago, and continued to serve as an instructor pilot in the Air Force Reserves.

Completing his Ph.D. in 2003, he was recalled to active duty for Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and served four deployments as an operations officer and aircraft commander. He returned to academia in 2006 as a research fellow and ethics professor at the Naval Academy, and assumed his current position at the Stockdale Center in 2008.

He is also a Lieutenant Colonel at the Pentagon in the Air Force Headquarter's Division of Long Range Plans, and the author of Human Persons and Liberal Democracy: The Ethical and Political Thought of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II (forthcoming, Lexington).