When Professors Quit, America Wins: Trump Was Right to Purge Ideology from War Colleges

The doctrine of academic freedom was once a noble idea. In theory, it ensures that scholars may explore, teach, and debate ideas without fear of reprisal. In practice, it has become a shield for the promotion of ideological agendas that undermine the institutions they inhabit. This transformation is nowhere more dangerous than in the context of the US military, where academic freedom has been twisted into a vehicle for instilling cultural self-loathing in future officers.

Let us not mince words: the recent wave of resignations at America’s war colleges is not a tragedy, it is a long-overdue course correction. Professors like Pauline Shanks Kaurin, Graham Parsons, Carrie Lee, and Tom McCarthy are not victims of censorship but casualties of a needed realignment. Their departure is the predictable result of the Trump administration’s directive that military education return to its core purpose: producing warriors, not activists.

It is a paradox that calls for clarity. The critics insist that Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are politicizing military education. But the truth is the opposite. They are depoliticizing it, removing the stranglehold of left-wing social theory that masquerades as ethics and leadership training. There is no irony here. The real political colonization occurred years ago when DEI, gender theory, and intersectionality became default lenses through which the military was expected to analyze itself. Trump’s executive order simply removed the false pretense that such ideology was neutral.

The case of Pauline Shanks Kaurin is instructive. A professor of military ethics at the Naval War College, she held the Admiral James Stockdale Chair and was well-regarded among progressives in defense circles. Her resignation, announced in protest of what she called a loss of academic freedom, was reported with sympathetic tones by legacy outlets like The Atlantic. But her own words betray the deeper issue. In a 2021 lecture, she told a group of sailors that racism and sexism were not personal failings but structural forces, embedded within American society. She warned against the idea of individual responsibility, claiming that classical liberalism, the philosophical bedrock of the United States, was insufficient to understand social injustice.

This is not ethics. It is ideology. And it has no place in the intellectual formation of naval officers. Imagine the absurdity of training midshipmen to believe that their nation is structurally evil, their history tainted by ineradicable bias, and their personal accomplishments merely artifacts of privilege. How, precisely, does that build fighting spirit? How does it produce leaders who are willing to die for their country?

In resigning, Dr. Kaurin cited the Trump administration’s prohibition on promoting "gender ideology" and DEI within military curricula. But let us examine what that actually means. The executive order forbids the endorsement of doctrines that assert inherent racial or gender guilt, the idea that America was founded on oppression, or that one’s identity determines their moral worth. These are not restrictions on inquiry; they are boundaries of propriety in a taxpayer-funded military institution tasked with defending the republic.

There is a place for speculative theory. That place is not West Point. Nor is it the Naval Academy or the War College. These institutions do not exist to incubate social experimentation. They exist to create soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines capable of deterring and defeating America’s enemies. Period.

The pushback from faculty like Graham Parsons at West Point illustrates the problem with stunning clarity. Parsons, a tenured philosophy professor, published an op-ed in the New York Times denouncing the new restrictions. He complained that certain readings on white supremacy and feminist ethics were removed from his syllabus. He called the academy’s compliance with the Trump administration’s directive “a sweeping assault.” Secretary Hegseth replied tersely, "You will not be missed."

And indeed, he won’t be. Parsons is emblematic of an academic class that has lost sight of its institutional mission. For too long, these educators have viewed themselves not as servants of the Constitution but as enlightened agents of cultural revolution. Theirs is a project of re-education, not instruction. Their tools are not tactical acumen or strategic logic, but critical theory, intersectional analysis, and gender performance.

The implications are serious. When a military ethics professor tells cadets that the structures they are sworn to defend are themselves oppressive, she does more than teach. She undermines the very purpose of military service. If officers are trained to question the legitimacy of their nation’s founding, they will be less willing to defend it. If they are taught to see every order through a lens of identity politics, discipline erodes. The effect is not enlightenment. It is entropy.

Consider this: would we tolerate an ROTC instructor who taught that the Constitution was a white supremacist document? Would we shrug if an Army major spent class time critiquing the binary nature of gender rather than the principles of combined arms warfare? This is not mere pedagogy. It is indoctrination, funded by the American taxpayer, targeting the very soul of the military.

Defenders of academic freedom, in its current degraded form, often appeal to the notion that robust debate strengthens democratic institutions. That is true, but only if the debate is honest and bounded by the mission of the institution. The Naval War College is not Yale. West Point is not Berkeley. These are not free forums for ideological exploration but components of the US warfighting apparatus. When the ideological commitments of faculty conflict with that mission, they must be resolved in favor of the mission.

In a civilian context, one might argue for pluralism. Let a thousand flowers bloom. But in the military, hierarchy, order, and cohesion are not optional. They are the conditions of survival. And when professors inject divisive ideologies under the cloak of academic freedom, they do violence to the uniform they claim to serve.

Some will say this is censorship. It is not. It is stewardship. The Trump administration’s order does not forbid criticism, inquiry, or philosophical reflection. It forbids institutionalized dogma disguised as academic rigor. It tells the faculty: you may be scholars, but you are also part of a fighting force. Your lessons must serve that end, not subvert it.

Those who cannot accept that have chosen the honorable path. They have resigned. Let them go with dignity, but let us not mourn their absence. Their resignations are not signs of decline. They are signs of restoration. Of a military education system returning to seriousness, to clarity, to purpose.

For those who remain, the message is equally clear: teach virtue, teach honor, teach victory. Leave the theories of deconstruction and grievance for the sociology departments of failing universities. In America’s war colleges, there is only one mission: to defend the nation, not deconstruct it.

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