Trump, Hegseth order regimented ignorance at U.S. military academies

The Pete Hegseth Doctrine: "Warriors shall be ill-educated." There is no more plausible interpretation.

In late January, the defense secretary ordered the nation's military service academies to extinguish "divisive" material from their curriculum. He also ordered that "un-American" and "irrational" books be expunged from the classroom. The NY Times reports that his order's "language was confoundingly vague." I would add that it was comprehensively unthinkable — that is, impossible for any professor or administrator to comply with. His order was also fascistic and tyrannical, which we'll get to later. For now, consider Hegseth's — which is to say, Trump's — triad of academic unmentionables.

Divisive is defined as that which causes disagreement between people. Thus at all five military academies no instruction could be offered on the histories of American wars, from the Revolution to Afghanistan, seeing how each involved rather substantial elements of divisive belligerence. Un-American texts from cadets' studies would envelop writings that span from Lord North, Great Britain's prime minister, 1770-1782, to the printed thoughts of Osama bin Laden. And irrational works? Unquestionably applicable here would be the unabomber's manifesto, the 2024 Republican platform and Pete Hegseth's order, but other works — widely distributed works, anyway — of philosophy, politics, history, economics and so on have their defenders and detractors, so blanketly designating one work or the other "irrational" would be .... divisive.

To say the defense secretary's edict is appalling would be both an understatement. It's Trumpism, meaning most anyone but Nazi Germany's Reich Minister of Science, Education and Culture, Bernhard Rust, and whoever oversaw mass illiteracy under Pol Pot would look unkindly on it. Hegseth has vastly surperseded the merely appalling; his febrile bureaucratic war against his mental imageries of "Marxist" professors, "social justice saboteurs" and "feckless generals" — they vs. Pete, who, other than a spell as a National Guard infantryman, courageously defended Guantanamo Bay and was a schoolteacher in Afghanistan — will, not might, reduce graduating cadets to unthoughtful, unreflective automatons abjectly ill-suited to serving a free, democratic nation in the Western tradition.

The Times story centers on West Point and Hegseth's laying waste to its academic freedom. His order and "West Point’s response have shaken the academy and led many civilian and military professors to question the school’s commitment to [it]," wrote the Times, though there's little to question. Nothing, in fact. Academic freedom at West Point is dead, murdered by Trumpism and its impulse to oppress not only partisan thinking opposed to its agenda but all critical thinking, which is lethal to authoritarian regimes. To thrive they require mass uniformity of thought, their thought.

I'm unsure if Hegseth's further-stated targets of "critical race theory" and "gender ideology" are subjects solely divisive, entirely un-American or strictly irrational. I'll leave that to the luminaries of state-ordered censorship. But there's another target, a pro-target, that's more than just dumb; it's dangerous. The secretary has ordered service academies to teach that "America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history." Observed West Point's tenured philosophy professor Graham Parsons in a NY Times op-ed yesterday, "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." But of course Hegeth is uninterested in what educators are meant to do. Konformität über alles is his pedagogic system — conformity to whatever spews from the Bleak House.

It gets worse. Much worse. "Two classes — an English and a history course — were scrapped midsemester for noncompliance with the new policy.... The sociology major was dissolved and a Black history project at the history department was disbanded, reports the Times. A history professor was told to scratch instruction on "atrocities committed against Native Americans." In the English department, works by prestigious Black authors — Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, as well as the writings of "other women and men of color" were "purged." The U.S. Naval Academy's senior librarian was forced to remove 381 books "that ran afoul of Mr. Hegseth’s order." West Point’s senior librarian was given a similar order, after which he informed his staff, "I’ve already compromised [the American Library Association’s ethics guidelines] several times. I can’t do it anymore."

Prof. Parsons has resigned, as had one other tenured professor at the time of the story's publication. Parsons' op-ed, his farewell to years of teaching at West Point, is a heartbreaking document that may someday serve as prominent evidence, taught to all cadets, of the institution's most shameful moment. The academy had forsaken its "core principles" in a "matter days,' he wrote. "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." "if we preserve our jobs, we are sacrificing our profession.... I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form." He wasn't for much longer.

The most poignant and down frightening insight imparted by Prof. Parsons was this: "I’ve lost faith that most people will do the right thing under pressure." His colleagues agreed; "they assumed the school would defend its academic program." It did not, and West Point professors both civilian and military "expressed shock at the lack of debate over how to implement Mr. Hegseth’s order and how quickly it was enforced." I wrote frightening in this paragraph's opening, an emotion I feel with a special intensity this morning. For yesterday afternoon I watched a few segments of the magnificent 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg," which, I'm sure you know, examined the ease with which four Nazi judges had conformed their professional lives to the sick, sinister ideology of Adolf Hitler.

The Times notes that West Point is committed by law to academic freedom, yet it also operates under the Defense Department. As such, its administration must follow orders from the secretary and his boss. This places the Point, says the Times, "in an increasingly difficult spot." That much is true. What should not be difficult is the answer to the question being put before the Point's, and all the military academies', professors: "Should they resist Mr. Hegseth’s order or resign in protest?"

The harm that America suffers today is minor compared to the immense and lasting damage that Trump and Trumpisn will ultimately accomplish in all national arenas. Symbolically, what will be left of U.S. honor post-Trump will look much like the city of Nuremberg, 1946.