The Pentagon’s Culture Wars Strike West Point

Four days after he was sworn in as defense secretary, Pete Hegseth directed the military service academies to scrub their curriculum of ideologies President Trump had deemed “divisive,” “un-American” and “irrational.”

Hours later, department heads at West Point sent civilian and military professors emails asking for their course syllabuses.

Some professors said they assumed the school would defend its academic program. Instead, the U.S. Military Academy’s leaders initiated a schoolwide push to remove any readings that focused on race, gender or the darker moments of American history, according to interviews with more than a dozen West Point civilian and military staff. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media without the academy’s approval.

Two classes — an English and a history course — were scrapped midsemester for noncompliance with the new policy.

A history professor who leads a course on genocide was instructed not to mention atrocities committed against Native Americans, according to several academy officials. The English department purged works by well-known Black authors, such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the officials said.

An English class and a history course were canceled midsemester for failing to comply with the new directives from the defense secretary.