TRUMP-HEGSETH DEBASE WEST POINT & ANNAPOLIS

MAGA SERVICE ACADEMIES ?

The Naval Academy and the United States Military Academy flourished for more than 40 years, achieving academic excellence, while impressively diversifying and producing a first rate officer corps. This was during conservative Republican and liberal Democratic Presidents and Pentagons.

That golden era is over. President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth are politicizing the service academies, setting curricula, eliminating courses and projects, banning books, getting rid of professors or would-be professors who might not be in sync with the MAGA world, cashiering highly regarded civilian professors and terminating diversity efforts that have worked well.

This is a disservice to those bright, committed and patriotic young men and women enrolled in the service academies. It poses the danger that future military leaders will be less informed and effective.

"Some of today's cadets and midshipmen will sit in the Situation Room advising a future President about security challenges" wrote Jeffrey H. Smith, West Point class of 1966 who went on to a top position on the Senate Armed Services Committee, State Department and was general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency. "They must be equipped to provide wise counsel, drawing not only on their experience from having commanded large forces in combat but also from a deep understanding of the world and the country they serve.

They will not have acquired this knowledge nor the confidence to express it if, as President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demand, they must stick their heads in the sand during their days at the academies.,"

(The Air Force Academy is being victimized too, but I'm more familiar with the situation at Annapolis and West Point.)

The priority for the unqualified Hegseth -- -his last job was as a Fox TV weekend host -- -- is always to please and pander to Trump; the Secretaries of the Army and Navy are weak yes-men.

At the Naval Academy, 381 books were banned, mainly dealing with racism and feminism, one on memorializing the Holocaust. After an outcry, many were restored, but the message was sent., Other demands include the purging of most civilian professors.

Some faculty resigned and the granddaughter of Five Star Admiral Chester Nimitz, who commanded the Pacific forces in World War II noted: "He never would have thought the Academy would fold." (At the Naval Academy it's the Chester Nimitz Library,)

Under orders the Academy cancelled its annual Foreign Affairs conference which was to be on humanitarian assistance. The great film maker, Ken Burns, offered to show the Midshipmen clips of his documentary on the Revolutionary War, due out in November. Not now officials replied.

It's just as bad 260 miles north. At West Point lectures have been eliminated, courses cancelled and restrictions placed even on the debate team. The Librarian and tenured faculty have resigned in protest.

Nothing better illustrates the know-nothingism that Trump and Hegseth are inflicting than what has happened to Jan Easterly. She's a West Point graduate, Rhodes scholar, served in Afghanistan and Iraq, was an aide to Republican national security executive Condoleezza Rice, and was in charge of cybersecurity in the Biden Administration, based on her expertise not politics.

She was natural for a distinguished professorship at her alma mater. It was announced on a Tuesday, attacked immediately by Laura Loomer, a 32 year old conspiracy nut who somehow gets through to Trump. The next day Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, a pal of Vice President Vance, cancelled the appointment gloating that the academy "terminates the gratuitous service agreement with Ms. Jen Easterly."

The only thing gratuitous is the cowardice of Driscoll in denying those cadets a learned teacher and capitulating to the rantings of a kook.

The atmosphere on the banks of the Hudson is unsettling. Returning for a visit, retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule, who was chair of the history department at the Academy, told me "The stress is palpable."

The Trump-Hegseth ban on any diversity policies at Annapolis and West Point flies in the face of the exceptional job they have done. These once overwhelmingly white and all male institutions saw the need to diversify as their graduates won't be patrolling a world that is overwhelmingly white and all male. They did this while elevating academic performance. This success has been hailed by prominent military leaders and approvingly cited by the Supreme Court.

All of these unprecedented and malicious acts have shaken those who revere these academies.

Graham Parsons, a veteran philosophy professor at West Point, resigned declaring he was "ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.",

Craig Symonds, a prodigious author, the foremost expert on the Navy in World War II, chaired the history department at the Naval Academy, teaching there for 30 years. He has long believed Navy, with its academic excellence, mixture of freedom of thought and tough discipline and character-building, was the best University in the country. What's happening today more than just saddens him.

"I don't know what I would say to a young man or woman today seeking an education at the Naval Academy," he told me. "I might suggest you'd be better off going to a civilian university and joining the Naval ROTC to get your commission."

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