A teacher at the West Point Military Academy announced its resignation in the New York Times. The reaction of the US Secretary of Defense

Ashley Davis1 week ago

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A professor at the West Point Military Academy announced his resignation after 13 years within the teaching body, invoking the distance “in a few days” of the Academy of its fundamental educational principles under the Trump administration, in an editorial for the New York Times.

A teacher announced his resignation from the West Point Photo Shutterstock Academy

Graham Parsons, professor of philosophy at the West Point Military Academy, criticized the institution for “The failure to provide an adequate education to the cadets” under the new administration.

“Once an institution that was not going to offer the cadets wide, critical and impartial education they needed for a career of army officers, it suddenly takes courses, modifies the programs and censures the arguments to comply with the ideological tastes of the Trump administration,” He motivated his resignation.

“I cannot tolerate these changes, which prevents me doing my job responsibly,” he wrote in the editorial. “I am ashamed to be associated with the Academy in its current form.”

He explained that the institution began to censure the school syllabus to align with the ideological preferences of the current American administration, following Donald Trump's Executive Order, as well as a Memory of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. These directives have forbidden the training about the so-called “non-American” theories, including gender ideology and any theory as “the founding documents of America are racist or sexist”.

According to Parsons, West Point administrators have started an aggressive program review. The faculty was pressed to review or eliminate the courses that approached the subjects related to race, gender and dynamics of power.

Courses such as “Topics in the history of the genre”, “race, ethnicity, nation” and “power and difference” have been eliminated. Both the specialization in sociology and a project on the history of color people within the History Department have been withdrawn.

In addition, a new policy requires teachers to obtain the approval of the department before publishing, publicly speaking or posting on social networks about their academic work. This change, says Parsons, has made it impossible for many teachers, including those who study topics such as masculinity and war, to continue their research without censorship.

“West Point seems to believe that, by submitting to the Trump administration, it can be saved in the long term”, he wrote. “But the damages are not reversible. ”

“If the Academy cannot convince the values of free thinking and political neutrality when they need to fulfill their mission,” he added.

The Trump administration has been conflicted with American universities since taking over, the US president threatening to cut federal financing for institutions that do not comply with his requirements.