A West Point philosophy professor has announced his resignation after 13 years on the faculty, citing the academy’s rapid shift away from its core educational principles under the Trump administration in an essay for the New York Times.
Graham Parsons, a professor of philosophy at the US Military Academy at West Point, criticized the institution for “failing to provide an adequate education for the cadets” under the new administration.
“I cannot tolerate these changes, which prevent me from doing my job responsibly,” he wrote in the essay. “I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.”
He goes on to say that West Point began censoring its curriculum to align with the administration’s ideological preferences following Donald Trump’s executive order and a memo from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. These directives prohibited instruction on so-called “un-American” theories, including gender ideology and any suggestion that “America’s founding documents are racist or sexist.”
As a result, Parsons says West Point administrators began an aggressive overhaul of the curriculum. Faculty were pressured to revise or eliminate courses dealing with race, gender and power dynamics.
Classes such as “Topics in Gender History”, “Race, Ethnicity, Nation,” and “Power and Difference” were removed. The sociology major as well as a Black history project at the history department were both discontinued.
He added that influential authors such as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker were removed from syllabi and a student debate team was instructed not to explore certain positions at a competition.
Additionally, a new policy required professors to obtain departmental approval before publishing, speaking publicly, or posting on social media about their academic work. This shift, Parsons says, has made it impossible for many professors, including those studying subjects like masculinity and war, to continue their research without censorship.
“West Point seems to believe that by submitting to the Trump administration, it can save itself in the long run,” he wrote. “But the damage cannot be undone.”
after newsletter promotion
“If the academy can’t convincingly invoke the values of free thought and political neutrality when they are needed most, it can’t accomplish its mission,” he added. “Whatever else happens, it will forever be known that when the test came, West Point failed.”
The Trump administration has been at odds with US universities since he took office, with the president consistently threatening to cut federal funding to schools that don’t comply with his demands. Institutions of higher education have begun banding together in an effort to resist pressure from the administration.
