AEI’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies will host Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter for a timely discussion of U.S. defense budgets, of the changing strategic landscape in the U.S. and the force that this landscape demands.

In the course of doing everything I could to turn things around first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, from the early months I ran up against institutional obstacles in the Pentagon--cultural, procedural, ideological--to getting done what needed to get done on behalf of those fighting the wars we are in.

Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, discussed the New Normal in K-12 education and how schools need to start doing more with less.

At AEI on May 24, Secretary Gates will deliver one of his last Washington addresses as secretary of defense.

If the Obama administration succeeds in its plans to cut defense further, that percentage will drop to 3 percent or lower--the lowest total in the whole of the post-World War II era. But first, members of Congress and the American taxpayer want answers from Leon Panetta.

This event will address the problems and improvements needed for student loans, beginning with a keynote presentation by former secretary of education Bill Bennett.