By Michael Woyton
A professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point has resigned citing policies issued by President Donald J. Felon.
Graham Parsons, a philosophy professor at the academy for 13 years, wrote about his reasons in a New York Times opinion column Thursday.
He said he assumed that the leaders of West Point “would set an example for the cadets by raising their voice in defense of the values and mission of the institution.”
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Instead, Parsons wrote, “I have seen an eagerness to reassure the Trump administration that the academy is in its pocket.” (The link is free for everyone.)
He said he was pressured around the time of the inauguration in January to withdraw an article he’d written regarding the military’s obligation “to be politically neutral that had been accepted for publication at the national security blog Lawfare.”
Parsons was told that the administrators “did not find fault with the article,” but said they were worried that the incoming president might think it was provocative.
“Reluctantly, I complied,” he wrote.
An executive order followed, with a memo with more restrictions also coming from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Combined they prohibited any educational institution, including West Point, from promoting or providing instruction on “certain ‘un-American’ theories, including ‘gender ideology’ and the idea that ‘America’s founding documents are racist or sexist.’ “
Parsons’ conclusion was simple: “These were brazen demands to indoctrinate, not educate.”
Since the EO and memo were issued, he said there was a “sweeping assault on the school’s curriculum and the faculty members’ research.”
Reviews of syllabuses were ordered by department heads and then changes were demanded, Parsons said.
Two history courses — one of gender history and another on race and ethnicity — were scrapped. A Black history project was disbanded and the sociology major was dissolved.
Professors were forced to remove James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, among other women and men of color, from their courses.
Parsons ends his essay by saying this is a threat to America’s constitutional order.
“The health of our democratic system depends on the military being politically neutral,” he wrote.
“West Point is abandoning its neutrality and jeopardizing a critical component of the very constitutional order that the military exists to protect.”
Read the complete essay in the New York Times through this link.
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