Fascism's follies

There is a crisis at West Point. This one is not self-invented, as other crises at the U.S. Military Academy have been previously, but rather invented at the White House by Donald Trump.

The crisis is familiar. Trump has ordered that all “quotas, objectives, and goals” in admissions, promotions and career fields be ended at the service academies, that teaching things called “gender ideology,” “critical race theory,” and “DEI,” (presumably as an academic subject that no one has ever heard of) be ended forthwith, and that “lethal force be promoted” by teaching that “our founding documents remain the most powerful force for human good in history.”

This has caused something of a panic at the academy. They’re tossing out history courses on “Topics in Gender History” and “Race, Ethnicity, Nation,” according to an op-ed in the New York Times written by Graham Parsons, a tenured professor of philosophy at West Point who is resigning from the faculty at the end of the term in protest against the changes forced on the academy by Trump’s gender and race warriors at the Pentagon and White House. “West Point seems to believe that by submitting to the Trump administration, it can save itself in the long run,” Parsons opined in the Times, writing without permission or having submitted his manuscript for clearance by the academy leadership.

I am something of an expert about change at West Point. Change comes slowly to the 250-plus year old academy, but it has happened. And each time significant changes have occurred at West Point, military leadership and academy alumni have been convinced that it would lead to the end of West Point’s history of providing the nation with Army leaders of merit and honor.

This is not the first time academic change has happened at West Point. Prior to 1985, the academy had no program of “majors.” Every cadet graduated with a bachelor of science with heavy emphasis on applied mathematics, engineering, and military leadership. When the academy began offering a program of 45 majors, allowing graduates to go into graduate programs in law, medicine, computer technology and other subjects in addition to their regular service in the combat and support arms, you’d have thought the earth had shifted and West Point had begun to crumble into the Hudson. No more four years of calculus crammed into just two? No requirement to study ordnance engineering, the science of weapons? My God! What was the world coming to?

But by the time the majors program arrived at West Point, the academy had already endured two of its greatest earthquakes: the admission a Black cadet in the late 1800’s, and the arrival of women when the U.S. military was integrated by gender in 1976. The military academies also endured another major change. In the early 1970’s, compulsory attendance at church was ended with an 8-0 Supreme Court decision refusing to even hear the government’s appeal of a lower court decision. Along with three of my classmates, I played a role in the cessation of this clearly unconstitutional practice by filing complaints with the Secretary of the Army that exhausted administrative remedies, allowing a federal lawsuit to be filed after we graduated. At the time, we were told that if “mandatory chapel” was ended, it would lead to the end of West Point itself.

In 2011, the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” allowed the admission of gay and lesbian cadets and for them to serve openly at the academy. This was yet another revolution that for decades Pentagon and academy leadership thought would lead to the collapse of “good order and discipline” and a reduction in the combat effectiveness and readiness of West Point graduates.

It goes without saying that none of the aforementioned earthquakes led to the collapse of West Point or the other service academies. In fact, they have thrived, with applications for admission higher than they have ever been.

In fact, I would make the argument that West Point is better in every way since the admission of Blacks, women, and gays and lesbians. It hardly bears saying that neither the army nor any of the other uniform services is comprised solely of white males. We would not have a fighting force to defend the nation without the honorable service of a diverse population of volunteers who fill the ranks of enlisted soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and the officer corps.

What Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are trying to do at West Point and the other service academies is fascistic folly. The Naval Academy, responding to Trump’s executive order on DEI and gender, removed more than 300 books from the academy library. The town of Annapolis, which surrounds the academy, responded by making all the banned books readily available in the town library and its bookstores.

The removal of certain topics of study from the curriculum at West Point is not going to materially affect cadets who undergo extensive training apart from the classroom, both at the academy and during summers spent training with real-world army units in the field. A cadet spending his or her summer training in a unit with a female company commander or a Black platoon leader – or both – is worth a half dozen books on gender studies or critical race theory. The same is true at West Point itself. The academy has had multiple women and Blacks who have served as “First Captain,” the highest-ranking cadet. West Point has had a female Commandant of Cadets, the brigadier general in charge of the Corps of Cadets, and a Black lieutenant general who has served as Superintendent of Cadets, the academy’s highest-ranking officer.

Diversity in the academy’s leadership and in the leadership of the corps of cadets will not end just because Donald Trump signed an executive order, nor will the diversity of the army itself. About 11 percent of soldiers are Black; about 17 percent of soldiers are women. I don’t know the percentage of the army who are gay or lesbian, but I can tell you that the great majority of my class of 800 had no idea that about 25 of our classmates were gay, back in the time when the closet was not a choice but a necessity for gay people in both military and civilian life.

Donald Trump can sign all the executive orders he wants, and Pete Hegseth can thunder about DEI and “wokeism” until he goes hoarse, but they are not going to change the facts on the ground either at West Point or in the Army at large. Women and Blacks and gays and lesbians are not going to be erased by fascist edicts, and by the way, neither are transgender service members, who I guarantee you will find ways to wait out the current nightmare of executive orders that can attempt to cancel their service, but will never bring to any sort of end who they are and their desire to serve their country. Even if some are forced out of the service, they will be back when Trump’s executive orders are inevitably reversed.

West Point has been there on the Hudson since Thomas Jefferson founded the it in 1802 as the nation’s first service academy. It’s not going away. The passion and patriotism of young men and women of all races and sexual persuasions and sexual identities will overpower this authoritarian hiccup in our history. Fifty-six years after I graduated from West Point, I know this as well as I know my own name.