"Inside Pete Hegseth’s Civilian Purge at West Point" By Jasper Craven, Politico (8/28/2025)

"Days after his confirmation, Hegseth blasted out a memo to military school faculty prohibiting instruction that could be in any way construed as promoting 'Critical Race Theory, Gender Ideology, and DEI.' Then he gathered service academy leaders on a teleconference. Beamed into each campus was a clear order: Focus on history, warfighting and engineering, and hobble much of the rest. Department heads moved quickly, requesting faculty review their syllabi for materials potentially in conflict with Hegseth’s dictate.

"... West Point ultimately banned Parsons’ entire list, part of a broader sweep across the service academies that scrubbed hundreds of books from courses and library catalogs, including work by James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, plus a slate of texts interrogating masculinity. West Point also dissolved its sociology major and abolished at least a dozen student diversity clubs, including a chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and the Latin Cultural Club. They also removed history and English courses, including one called 'Power and Difference.' ”

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