“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.”
That is Graham Parsons, whose individual webpage has already been taken down by West Point, announcing his resignation in The New York Times today.
The changes he is referring to are those demanded by Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in an executive order and a memo concerning prohibitions on what faculty may teach at United States military educational institutions, and put into place by West Point’s administration, which he says has interpreted them broadly. The result: “a sweeping assault on the school’s curriculum and the faculty members’ research.”
Dr. Parsons writes:
In a matter of days, the United States 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…
Mr. 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.”
Mr. Hegseth’s memo went further, adding that the service academies were prohibited even from providing instruction about such topics. Mr. Trump and Mr. 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.
There were also restrictions on faculty writing implemented by the West Point administration:
Neither Mr. Trump’s order nor Mr. 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.
More details are in the full piece, which is worth reading.
UPDATE: The New York Times reports further on the changes at West Point. An excerpt:
A West Point philosophy course, required of all the academy’s sophomores, until recently included a lesson on Immanuel Kant, a key figure in Western enlightenment philosophy. The lesson noted that Kant was also a proponent of racial hierarchies, and it encouraged cadets to wrestle with the contradiction.
West Point administrators decided in early February that the lesson violated Mr. Hegseth’s order.
Kudos to him. This is what integrity looks like. His final gift to his students.
Here is a gift link for anyone who doesn’t have an account or institutional access.
Thank you!
Appreciate that enormously. Daughter of a career combat US Army veteran and widow of Vietnam Combat veteran. Those who served and serve, trained and train, fought and fight it wasn’t for this.
I taught at West Point during the first Trump administration, from 2018-2020. The constraints under which faculty are operating now are completely different than back then. (I never had anyone question my research, my syllabi, the positions of the ethics bowl team [for which I was a faculty advisor]. I taught and wrote on many of the topics that are now verboten, and I felt very supported throughout.) There are, of course, certain limitations that come from being a politically neutral environment; but these are not too terribly different from what we might consider best practices at most universities.
As Graham notes, this time around is different, and it is as infuriating as it is frightening. It’s awful at any institution, but there’s a special irony that this is happening at what we often think of as one of the preeminent leadership academies in the country, if not the world. One wonders whether this exact case will be studied at West Point decades from now as a significant example of moral courage; and it will be interesting to hear cadets discuss the fact that it was a civilian professor that demonstrated courage—not any of the many military leaders, for whom moral courage is (ostensibly) at the center of their entire educational experience. (This all assumes that West Point, as we knew it, will reappear sometime in the future. Like Graham, I am not particularly optimistic.)
I commend Graham for demonstrating such moral courage. He is not the only one: another philosopher, Pauline Shanks Kaurin, shared on LinkedIn today that she is resigning as well from her position at the Naval War College, for similar reasons (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pauline-shanks-kaurin-758bb56_opinion-west-point-is-supposed-to-educate-activity-7326219350418362368-XvRz).
I sincerely hope we, as a discipline, can find ways to support our colleagues like Graham, Pauline, and others who are driven out of their roles by this administration’s assault on higher education.
This is _Gleichschaltung_. That is: the events that Dr Parsons recounts are a frightening attempt to bring intellectuals – whom just about every autocratic regime needs to neutralise – into line. I commend Dr Parsons and others who when faced with similar attempts at coercion do as he did.
(I am a philosopher within the polity called ‘The United Kingdom’.)
Phenom. thanks for saving the credibility of our institution — guys like Trump and Hegseth have no idea what this Nation stands for.
A salute to Professor Parsons. Bravo!
I second that. Thank you, Graham, for the courage of your conviction. Your work for the Ethics of War and Peace conferences at West Point have had a significant impact. The military is sworn to support the Constitution, not politicians.
I went to grad school with Graham at CUNY and am not a bit surprised to learn of this act of great courage and integrity from him. It is shameful and shocking that he was put in this position. Solidarity with you, Graham!
I would also note the remarkable annual conference on the ethics of war and peace that Graham has run at West Point, surely the most wide-ranging and inclusive conference of its type that I have known of. It has included political philosophers across the political spectrum, including yours truly who spoke about political pacifism several years ago to a warm and welcoming audience. In fact, another faculty member invited me back to West Point for a more extensive talk on the topic, but that will not be happening now thanks to Pres. Trump. Others at that conference included war skeptics like Sam Moyn, as well as top younger people raising questions about the logic of war like Ned Dobos and Lee-Ann Chae. This event will be sorely missed, but there already discussions of how to continue a yearly conference of this sort raising fundamental questions about war under the auspices of a program I help run, the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights.
About Graham, I can only add that at a time when many academics are all too hesitant to say anything at all, much less take a stand involving great personal sacrifice, Graham is a model to us all of high principles and courage.
This was a major story on Fox News, by the way. Fox was not sympathetic, painting resistance to Trump’s agenda as “woke” radicalism.
I’m not sure this is at all possible, but I wonder if there’s any way for instructors to do things that will at least enable the students to think critically about this policy and what they are not being taught. For instance, could professors start or end the semester by having rich, extended discussions about these bans and instructional restrictions? Could they at least note what they are leaving off the syllabus and ask what students think of those limitations? Could the provide recommended readings and explain why they can’t be required? Can they note their willingness to talk about material that is not allowed in the classroom outside of class? It’s horrible to have to suggest this, but it feels worth considering, given the importance of giving these students – students who not infrequently go on to be military or other elites – a proper educational experience
Thank you Professor Parsons and Professor Kaurin for upholding such central moral values at serious personal cost.
Where are all the defenders of academic freedom? I remember a lot of people from my time in philosophy who were very loud and passionate about threats to academic freedom from the left. I came back to peek at what the profession is saying about current events, and I’m disappointed but reassured about my decision to leave.