The cultural wars of the Pentagon strike West Point

Four days after he was sworn in as Defense Minister, Pete Hegseth instructed the military service academies to have classified her curriculum by ideologies president Trump as a “split”, “un-American” and “irrational”.

Hours later, the department heads sent in West Point e -mails for civilian and military professors and asked about their curricula.

Some professors stated that the school would defend their academic program. Instead, the leaders of the US Military Academy initiated a school-wide advance to remove all readings that focused on breed, gender or the darker moments of American history, according to interviews with more than a dozen civil and military staff in West Point. Most spoke about the condition of anonymity because they were not justified without speaking to the media without the approval of the academy.

Two classes – one English and a history course – were scrapped in mid -semester due to non -compliance with the new guideline.

According to several academies, a history professor who leads a course on genocide was instructed to mention atrocities against the American indigenous people. The English department cleaned works by well-known black authors such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, said the officials.

Mr. Hegseth’s command, which was issued in January, and West Point’s answer shaken the academy and caused many civilian and military professors to question the school’s commitment to academic freedom. In the past few days, at least two found professors have resigned in protest.

The leaders of the academy have had to reconcile contradictory requirements for a long time. West Point is a Grad Granting Institution, and its commitment to academic freedom is codified both in the law and in its own regulations. It is also part of the Ministry of Defense, and its leaders are obliged to follow legal orders by the President and the Pentagon.

The bitter and partisan culture wars that the country have divided in recent years West Point, its military leaders and trainers have an increasingly difficult place. The order of Mr. Hegseth has contributed to improving the pressure.

Since Mr. Hegseth took over the Pentagon, he has sworn to restore the “warrior ethos” of a force that he said was infiltrated by “Marxist” professors, “social justice saboteurs” and “Feckless generals”.

A West Point spokesman said in a statement that the academy had checked its curriculum “according to the instructions of executives” and Pentagon guidelines. “We are confident that our strict academic program ensures that cadets develop intellectual agility that is necessary to make critical decisions in war chaos,” the explanation says.

Mr. Hegseth’s command and the changes he triggered have forced West Point professors and administrators to wrestle with a number of difficult questions. Should you resist Mr. Hegseth’s command or withdraw in protest? His language was confusingly vague. Were there any opportunities to work? What was the best for the cadets, for the academy, for the army?

Some long -standing academy managers have decided to stop.

At the beginning of March, Christopher Barth, Senior Librarian of West Point, announced that after 14 years he was leaving for a job on another college. Mr. Barth’s counterpart at the US Naval Academy has already been asked to remove 381 books from the campus library, which occurred by Mr. Hegseth’s command. Mr. Barth was also said that he should identify titles that may have violated the command, officers from West Point said.

He told his employees that he had read the Ethics guidelines of the American Library Association. “I have already compromised them several times,” said Barth, according to three people who were at the meeting. “I can’t do it anymore.”

Graham Parsons, a permanent professor of philosophy, wrote in a similar way in a new York Times’ guest attachment published on Thursday that Mr. Hegseth’s command and the changes in West Point politicized the academy and made it impossible for him to do his job.

“I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form,” he wrote.

A found professor in the English department, who was almost a decade in West Point at the end of April when she had no longer allowed her to teach an essay by the writer Alice Walker.

In the essay written in 1972, Ms. Walker describes the difficulties with which her mother – a Sharecropper and seamstress in rural Georgia – was confronted with, and encourages readers to look at the voices in American history.

The professor cited data protection concerns, asked not to be mentioned. She made an appeal against the ban on her department head and Dean, both confirmed that she had to cut or replace the text. In an interview, the professor said that she had no clear reason why she was no longer allowed to teach the essay.

Mr. Hegseth’s command prohibits professors to deliver “instructions” in “critical racial theory” and “gender -specific ideology”. In addition, the service academies have to teach that “America and its founding documents remain the most powerful strength for the good in the history of mankind”.

The professor said she knew that her resignation in West Point would probably not make any difference. “I could set on fire in the middle of the paradise and it would be forgotten tomorrow,” she recalled that she told her bosses.

But she decided that she couldn’t go on in the academy. At the end of April, she dedicated part of her last class of the cadet to explain why she had refused to find a replacement for Ms. Walker’s essay and why she left West Point.

A few days later, an e -mail sent her an e -mail in which she thanked her for her courage. He wrote that it was the first time that he ever used someone for something she had cost her directly.

West Point takes a unique place in the army. In the classroom, cadets cannot agree like at any civil university.

But the academy is unmistakably part of the army. The lessons begin with a section marcher selected by the instructor, calls up the class, takes a role, carries out a uniform inspection and a greeting. Participation is mandatory.

Civilian and military professors in West Point have the freedom to “inquire and learn, teach and learn in their classrooms and academic disciplines. But they are also “servants of the nation”, states of the army, and are subject to the orders of the President and the political pressure associated with compliance with the huge German bureaucracy.

In interviews, the faculty members of West Point feared that any kind of public protest would lead to their release.

Some instructors replaced forbidden texts by works by lesser known authors who presented similar arguments. Others were looking for ways to register their concern.

Until recently, a West Point Philosophy course, which was necessary of all Sophomores of the Academy, included a lesson over Immanuel Kant, a key figure in the Western Enlightenment philosophy. In the lesson it was found that Kant was also a supporter of racist hierarchies and encouraged cadets to wrestle with the contradiction.

West Point administrators decided at the beginning of February that the lesson had violated Hegseth’s command. Instead of teaching it, a philosophy trainer from the day class of Plato’s apology was devoted to the defense of Socrates in his trial for unknown and corruption of the Athens youth. The students discussed how important it is to speak difficult truths, so two professors familiar with the class.

Several civilian and military professors shocked the lack of the lack of debate on how Mr. Hegseth’s command can be implemented and how quickly it was enforced.

Two black authors – Mrs. Morrison and Mr. Coates – whose works were no longer allowed in West Point were previously welcomed as speakers on campus. In 2013, Ms. Morrison read passages from “Home”, her novel about a black Korean war veteran who has to deal with PTSD, and his return to a separate America. More than 1,500 cadets visited.

Four years later, Mr. Coates asked an audience of 800 cadets in the first year to examine the myths that the United States and even West Point had built after the civil war.

“What kind of truth will you maintain?” According to a video of his speech, he asked her, which was recently removed from the Internet. “Will you be interrogated by the stories that this country tells itself, or do they pass the lies?”

Dr. Parsons, the professor of philosophy, who recently resigned in protest, said he spent in February and March to find out what to do.

On April 10, he accepted a one-year professor job on the nearby Vassar College. The step meant that he would lose economic security that was associated with a fixed position. It also meant leaving West Point, a place that has been his professional home for 13 years.

The next day he told his superiors that he stopped. He expected a difficult conversation. “I was very tense,” he recalled.

But his superiors did not ask him why he gave up his permanent position for a temporary job, he said, and he had no explanation voluntarily.

“I think there is only a lot of desire to avoid the reality of what is happening here,” said Dr. Parsons.

His experience had made him doubt the leaders of the army and West Point. “I have lost the belief that most people will do the right thing under pressure,” said Dr. Parsons. “This is the really painful part of the past few months.”

But he still believed in the cadets. “I trust you to be successful,” said Dr. Parsons.

Julie Tate Research contributed.