West point: Supposed to educate, not indoctrinate

It turned out to be easy to undermine West Point. All it took was an executive order from President Trump and a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dictating what could and couldn’t be taught in the military and its educational institutions.

In a matter of days, the US Military Academy at West Point abandoned its core principles. Once a school that strove to give cadets the broad-based, critical-minded, nonpartisan education they need for careers as Army officers, it was suddenly eliminating courses, modifying syllabuses and censoring arguments to comport with the ideological tastes of the Trump administration.

I will be resigning after this semester from my tenured position at West Point after 13 years on the faculty. I cannot tolerate these changes, which prevent me from doing my job responsibly. I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.

The trouble began around the time Trump was sworn in for his second term as president. That week, West Point administrators pressured me to withdraw an article about the military’s obligation to be politically neutral that had been accepted for publication at the national security blog Lawfare. The administrators did not find fault with the article but said they were worried that it might be provocative to the incoming administration. Reluctantly, I complied.

Then came the executive order from Trump on Jan. 27 and Hegseth’s memo two days later. Trump’s order prohibited any educational institution operated by the armed forces from “promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating” certain “un-American” theories, including “gender ideology” and the idea that “America’s founding documents are racist or sexist.”

Hegseth’s memo went further, adding that the service academies were prohibited even from providing instruction about such topics. Trump and Hegseth also ordered that the academies shall “teach that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”

These were brazen demands to indoctrinate, not educate.

Whatever you think about various controversial ideas — Hegseth’s memo cited critical race theory and gender ideology — students should engage with them and debate their merits rather than be told they are too dangerous even to be contemplated. And however much I admire America, uncritically asserting that it is “the most powerful force for good in human history” is not something an educator does.

Another problem with Hegseth’s memo was its vagueness. Did critical race theory mean the specific work of scholars like Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw? Or did it mean any discussion of the complexities of race in society? Did gender ideology refer to the view that biological females can be men? Or did it refer to any examination of the role of gender in our lives?

Rather than interpreting Hegseth’s demands narrowly, West Point seems to have read them broadly. What followed was a sweeping assault on the school’s curriculum and the faculty members’ research.

Neither Trump’s order nor Hegseth’s memo mentioned faculty research. Nevertheless, on Feb. 13, the dean’s office shared a memo outlining a policy requiring faculty members to get approval from their department heads to do any writing, talks, social media posting or other public expressions of our scholarship if it is affiliated with West Point. I am writing this essay without having secured approval.

Though the memo does not say so, administrators have told me that any parts of my research that seem to conflict with the Trump administration’s politics will not be approved. Many faculty members, including me (I study, among other things, masculinity and war), can no longer publish or promote our scholarship.

There are many costs to West Point’s capitulation. One is that the academy is failing to provide an adequate education for the cadets. The cadets are no longer able to openly investigate many critical issues like race and sexuality or be exposed to unfamiliar perspectives that might expand their intellectual horizons. As for the faculty members, West Point no longer seems to recognize our duties to our disciplines and our students. Even if we preserve our jobs, we are sacrificing our profession.

Furthermore, the cadets are being sent the message that the debates in which they are not allowed to engage are those the Trump administration considers settled. The lesson many cadets are learning is that it is inappropriate for them to question their own government — a dangerous message to convey to future Army officers.

West Point seems to believe that by submitting to the Trump administration, it can save itself in the long run. But the damage cannot be undone. If the academy can’t convincingly invoke the values of free thought and political neutrality when they are needed most, it can’t accomplish its mission. Whatever else happens, it will forever be known that when the test came, West Point failed.

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