For 65 years, the Annual Foreign Affairs Conference of the US Naval Academy has been a renowned event on campus, bringing students from around the world for a week of conferences and discussions with diplomats and high -ranking officials.
But this year, the event was suddenly canceled, just a few weeks before starting.
The conference had two strikes against her – her theme and her timing. Organized around the idea of ”the constellation of humanitarian assistance: persevere by conflicts”, it was set from April 7 to 11, as was the Trump administration finished the dismantling of almost all foreign aid programs of the federal government.
According to the Academy, each conference on foreign affairs takes a year to plan. But killing it was much faster, and the decision to do is among the many ways that the school management has tried to anticipate the desires of an unpredictable and avenger president.
The moves included the order of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, last month, which led to the ban on hundreds of books at the Academy of the Academy, and to the cancellation of the school even more events that could attract the anger of President Trump or his supporters.
Most colleges and universities decide courses to be taught and what events are on their campuses. But military service academies like the Navy in Annapolis, Md., Be part of the Pentagon chain of command, which begins with the commander -in -chief.
The Naval Academy declared in a press release that he examined all the events previously planned to ensure that they aligned themselves on executive decrees and military directives. Representatives of the Academy and the Navy refused to comment on this article, but school officials said in private that the academic freedom of their establishment was sub-evaluated on a large scale by the White House and the Pentagon.
A discussion on coup d’etat and corruption
Even before the presidential election, the Academy began to prepare for the potential return of Mr. Trump’s power.
In January 2024, the Academy of History Department invited Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history at New York University, to give a conference as part of a prestigious annual series which brought eminent historians to campus since 1980.
She was to speak on October 10 of how soldiers in Italy and Chile had adapted to the autocratic control of these countries. The title of his conference was “the armed forces and the authoritarian regimes: coups, corruption and costs of the loss of democracy”.
Ms. Ben-Ghiat, who had criticized and spoke in a critical way of Mr. Trump, said that she did not intend to discuss what she considers her authoritarian trends in front of the students as part of the Memorial George Bancroft series at the Academy. Even so, just a week before its conference, an off -campus group opposed its invitation.
After information on the next right-of-the-counter sale conference, Keith Self, Texas Republican, wrote to Vice-Admiral Yvette M. Davids, the Academy’s superintendent, on October 3, exhorting him to disinvitrate Ms. Ben-Ghiat to speak to Navire ships, as the students are called.
The next day, the dean of the academics of the Naval Academy, Samara L. Firebaugh, called to say that the conference had been postponed, said Ben-Ghiat.
It was a month before the elections.
Although victorious, criticisms were still not satisfied. The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society criticized Ms. Ben-Ghiat’s invitation, even after her revocation. A group of 17 Republicans in the Chamber declared in a letter to Admiral Davids that the situation had raised concerns about “the Academy process to choose guest speakers”.
Ms. Ben-Ghiat reminded him that he was told that the conference was a potential violation of the Hatch law, a law which limits certain political activities of federal employees.
“It would only have been true if I was talking about current American policy and Trump’s attitude towards the American army, and it was never part of the plan,” she said.
Ms. Ben-Ghiat now assumes that the conference will never be postponed.
“A small purge was orchestrated,” she wrote in February on the cancellation of her conference, “to make sure that the Naval Academy aligned when Trump came to power and the real purges could take place.”
“It was a loyalty test for the Naval Academy, and they exceeded it, but Trump and Hegseth will surely be back for more,” she added.
A climate conference
On March 10, the leaders of the 1969 class from the Academy received their own unwanted message from Ms. Firebaugh.
The class, which has graduated at the height of the Vietnam War, sponsors the series of Conferences Michelson, which has been given each year since 1981. The event has brought academic lights for vessels studying chemistry, IT, mathematics, oceanography and physics.
This year’s conference, which was scheduled for April 14, would have welcomed Susan Solomon, a distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and recipient of the National Medal of Sciences.
But as Ms. Ben-Ghiat’s speech, Ms. Solomon’s conference was also canceled.
“Unfortunately, the subject we had selected for this year was not well aligned with executive decrees and other directives,” wrote the academic dean in an email, which was shared with the New York Times, “and there was no insufficient time to select a new speaker which would be sufficient stature for this series.”
The MIT, Mrs. Solomon and Mrs. Firebaugh did not respond to requests for comments.
A book ban
At the end of March, Mr. Hegseth’s office ordered the school to comply with an executive decree of January 29 intended to end “radical indoctrination” in kindergarten in the 12th year.
According to several managers of the school, the Academy initially attempted to repel by declaring the evidence: the order was not applied because the Academy is a college.
Mr. Hegseth’s office ordered them to comply anyway.
On April 1, 381 pounds had been withdrawn from the Nimitz library from the school, which was appointed for Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, a five -star naval hero from the Second World War, graduated from the Academy in 1905.
“I think he was expecting him to expect an honest perspective,” said his granddaughter, Sarah Nimitz Smith, in an interview. “He would never have thought that the Academy would fold in.”
Shortly after, the new press, which publishes three of the books now remunerated, offered members of the faculty of free copies of the academy for the aspirants they teach.
“We thought that Book Banning had followed the way to the third Reich, and we are very unhappy to see him again,” said Diane Wachtell, executive director of the new press, in an interview.
According to several Campus officials, at least two members of the faculty resigned to protest against the prohibition of the book, and 18 others at school opted for early retirement, who spoke of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Above the same time, books on race, racism, gender and sexuality were taken from the shelves of Nimitz, a award -winning filmmaker was also on blocking.
A documentary
In November, the representatives of the Ken Burns filmmaker contacted the Academy with a screening offer of clips in its new series in six parts on the American Revolution at the Academy in a private event for a selected group of aspirants. The school accepted and reserved the event for April 22.
But at the end of March, the school leaders estimated that Mr. Burns’ criticism with regard to Mr. Trump before the 2024 elections could cause another storm of conservative reflection groups and republican members of the Congress.
According to three Navy officials, who spoke under the guise of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, Admiral Davids initially ordered his staff to cancel Mr. Burns’ event, but then decided to reprogram him for the next academic year.
An ethical conference
On April 14, the managers of the Academy canceled a third conference.
The author Ryan Holiday had planned to speak to the aspirants of the aspirant of stoic philosophy, and why it was important to read books that disputed their thought. But he said that a member of the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership staff of the Academy had selected his presentation and opposed his discussion on the ban on the school’s book, which included screenshots of times by reporting on this subject.
Appointed via vice-admiral James B. Stockdale, a graduate of the Academy in 1947, the center pays tribute to its service as a chief of American war prisoners in Hanoi. After the war, the admiral often said that his third cycle studies on the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin had offered him an advantage over his interrogators.
“My father was engaging in a conversation with his executioners, questioning them about the Communist Party of Vietnam while they were trying to break it,” recalls the eldest son of the admiral, Jim Stockdale, in an interview, noting that his father merged one of his interrogators by exceeding him on the finer points of Leninism in an argument.
“I was able to make a duel in dialogue with the guy,” said Stockdale after the war. “It was like a magical tour in a prison of torture in an autocracy.”
Annual dedication
William McBride, professor of history, retired in January after 30 years at the Academy.
He was invited to stand next to Admiral Davids on April 25 during the school annual parade of the school, where the aspirants of mid-house put on their dressed uniforms and walk with rifles to honor retired teachers.
But on Saturday, Mr. McBride, who graduated from the Academy in 1974, refused honor and pulled a large side against the admiral.
The prohibition of the book, he said, was a “limitation of the intellectual investigation of the aspirants of ship ships” which “is contrary to the motto of the Academy:” knowledge, maritime power “” and had damaged the school’s mission.
In an email sent to the admiral and shared with the Times, Mr. McBride accused the school of terminating his reputation by leaning on political pressure.
He quoted a line, all incoming students had to memorize when he started his studies 55 years ago: “Where the principle is involved, be deaf to the opportunity.”
“No matter what you have done before,” he wrote, “your heritage will be that of a career that has prohibited Maya Angelou but has kept” Mein Kampf “by Hitler.”
