The Union League’s American Legion Post 405
Annual Dinner Gala
Friday, November 6, 2026
Open Bar Cocktail Hour and Silent Auction begins at 6:00PM
Dinner & Dancing with Live Music begins at 7:00PM
at Union League Liberty Hill Golf, 800 Ridge Pike, Lafayette Hill, PA
Ben Franklin Medal Recipient and Keynote Speaker:
Lt Col John Ngal (ret.) United States Army
Dr. John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, is the General John J. Pershing Professor of Warfighting Studies in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the Army War College. A West Point graduate and retired Armor officer, Nagl served in tank units in combat in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning his Master's and Doctoral degrees in International Relations. His doctoral dissertation was published as "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam" by the University of Chicago. He earned the George C. Marshall Award and an MMAS at the Army Command and General Staff College. Upon retirement from the Army, Nagl served as a Senior Fellow and later as the President of the Center for a New American Security and as a member of the Defense Policy Board and the Reserve Forces Policy Board. He was the first Minerva Research Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, writing the book "Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War", and served for eight years as the Ninth Head of the Haverford School outside Philadelphia. At the Army War College, Nagl is the Lead Faculty Instructor and Seminar Historian for Seminar 13, Course Director for the elective "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan," and director of an Independent Research Project on the Russia-Ukraine war. He is a member of the Board of Advisors at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and at the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a former Fellow of the Irregular Warfare Initiative.