Four days after he was sworn in as Minister of Defense, Pete HegseTh gave up the military service academies to scrub their curriculum of ideologies, President Trump had considered ‘divided’, ‘on-American’ and ‘irrational’.
Hours later, department heads in West Point E emails from civil and military professors who asked for their course syllabuses.
Some professors said they assumed that the school would defend its academic program. Instead, the leaders of the American military academy started a student to remove any lectures that were aimed at race, gender or the dark moments of American history, according to interviews with more than a dozen West Point -civil and military staff. Most spoke about the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media without the approval of the academy.
Two classes – an English course and a history – were played Midsemester for non -compliance with the new policy.
A history professor that leads a course on genocide was instructed not to mention atrocities committed against Indians, according to various academic officials. The English department purified works by well-known black authors, such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the officials said.
The command of Mr. Hegseeth, who was published in January, and the answer of West Point has shaken the Academy and led to question many civil and military professors the dedication of the school of academic freedom. At least two permanent professors have resigned in the last few days.
The leaders of the academy have long had to balance conflicting demands. West Point is a degree-granted institution and its dedication to academic freedom has been 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 from the president and the Pentagon.
The bitter and partisan cultural wars that the country has distributed in recent years, Have West Point, his military leaders and instructors placed in an increasingly difficult place. The command of Mr. Hegseeth has served to retrieve the pressure.
Since the takeover of the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseeth has sworn to restore the ‘Warrior -ethos’ to a force that he said he was infiltrated by ‘Marxist’ professors, ‘Social Justice Saboteurs’ and ‘Feckless Generals’.
A spokesperson for West Point said in a statement that the academy had assessed its curriculum “in accordance with executive orders and Pentagon guidance.” We are convinced that our rigorous academic program ensures that Cadetten develop the intellectual agility needed to make critical decisions in the chaos of war.
The order from Mr Hegseeth and the changes it caused, West Point professors and managers forced to struggle with a series of difficult questions. Should they have the command of Mr. Resist Hegseeth or resign in protest? The language was confusing vague. Were there ways to work around it? What was the best for the cadets, for the academy, for the army?
Some long -term leaders at the Academy have chosen to stop.
At the beginning of March, Christopher Barth, the senior librarian of West Point, announced that after 14 years he left for a job at another university. Mr. Barth’s counterpart on the US Naval Academy was already told to remove 381 Books from the campus library that ran the Order of Mr. Hegseeth van Mr. Hegseeth. Mr. Barth was also told to identify titles that possibly violate the order, the officials of West Point said.
He told his staff that he had read the ethical guidelines of the American Library Association. “I’ve compromised them several times,” said Mr. Barth, according to three people who were at the meeting. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Graham Parsons, a regular professor of philosophy, wrote in the same way in an opinion piece of the New York Times that it was published on Thursday that the Order of Mr. Hegseeth and the changes that followed in West Point had politized the Academy and made it impossible for him to do his work.
“I’m ashamed of being associated with the academy in his current form,” he wrote.
A regular professor in the English department that had been to West Point for almost ten years, hit her breaking point at the end of April when a university manager told her that she was no longer allowed to teach an essay by the novelist Alice Walker.
In the essay, written in 1972, Mrs. Walker describes the hardships that her mother – a ShareCopper and seamstress in the Georgia countryside – was confronted and encourages readers to consider the voices in the American story.
The professor, stating privacy problems, asked not to be mentioned. She appealed against the ban on her department head and Dean, both of whom confirmed that she had to cut or replace the text. In an interview, the professor said she had no clear reason why she was no longer allowed to teach the essay.
Mr. Hegseeth’s order forbids professors to give ‘instruction’ in ‘critical racing theory’ and ‘gender ideology’. It also requires that the Service Academies learn that “America and the founding documents remain the most powerful power for the good in human history.”
The professor said she knew that her resignation would probably not make a difference in West Point. “I was able to set fire to myself in the middle of the Parade site and it would be forgotten tomorrow,” she reminded her bosses.
But she decided that she couldn’t continue at the academy. At the end of April she devoted a part of her last class to explain to the cadets why she had refused to find a replacement for Mrs. Walker’s essay and why she left West Point.
A few days later a cadet sent her an e -mail that thanked her for her courage. He wrote that it was the first time he had ever seen someone stand up for something that cost him immediately.
West Point occupies a unique place in the army. Within the classroom, cadets can disagree as they would do at every civil university.
But the academy is unmistakably part of the army. The lessons start with a marcher section, chosen by the instructor, which calls the class in the attention, roll, perform a uniform inspection and greetings. The presence is mandatory.
Civil and military professors in West Point have the freedom “to inform, to express, teach and learn professional views” in their classrooms and academic disciplines, according to army instructions. But they are also ‘servants of the nation’, says army policy, and subject to the orders of the president and the political pressure that is accompanied by the enormous federal bureaucracy.
In interviews, the Faculty Members of West Point expressed that every kind of public protest would lead to their dismissal.
Some instructors replace prohibited texts with works by lesser -known authors who made similar arguments. Others were looking for ways to register their concern.
A West Point Philosophy course, required from all second -year students at the Academy, included a lesson on Immanuel Kant until recently, a key figure in the philosophy of Western lighting. The lesson noted that Kant was also in favor of racial hierarchies and it encouraged cadets to struggle with the contradiction.
West Point managers decided at the beginning of February that the lesson has violated the command of Mr. Hegseeth. Instead of teaching it, a philosophy instructor dedicated the class of the day to the apology of Plato, who describes the defense of Socrates during his trial for wickedness and the corruption of the Athenian youth. The students discussed the importance of speaking difficult truths, according to two professors who are familiar with the class.
Several civil and military professors expressed shock about the lack of debate about how to implement Mr. Hegseeth’s order and how quickly it was enforced.
Two black authors – Mrs. Morrison and Mr. Coates – whose works are no longer allowed to be given in West Point, were previously welcomed as speakers on campus. In 2013, Mrs. Morrison read passages from ‘Home’, her novel about a black Korean war veteran struggling with PTSD and his return to a divorced America. More than 1500 cadets were present.
Four years later, Mr Coates urged an audience of 800 first -year cadets to investigate the myths that the United States, and even West Point, had built after the civil war.
“What truth will you enforce?” He asked them, according to a video of his speech that had recently been removed from the internet. “Do you want to interrogate the stories that this country tells itself, or do you allow lies to exist?”
Dr. Parsons, the philosophy professor who recently resigned, said he spent February and March behind what he should do.
On 10 April he accepted a one-year guest professor job at nearby Vassar College. The move meant that he would lose economic security that came up with a fixed position. It also meant leaving West Point, a place that had been his professional home for 13 years.
The next day he told his supervisors that he stopped. He expected a difficult conversation. “I was very tense,” he remembered.
But his supervisors did not ask him why he gave his permanent position for a temporary job, he said, and he did not give a volunteer work on a statement.
“I think there is just a lot of desire to avoid reality of what is happening here,” said Dr. Parsons.
His experience had led him to doubt the leaders of the army and West Point. “I have lost the confidence that most people will put the right pressure under pressure,” said Dr. Parsons. “That is the really painful part of the past months.”
But he still believed in the cadets. “I trust they succeed,” said Dr. Parsons.
Julie Tate contributed research.
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