US Naval Academy Bans 381 Books but Books Authored by Hitler Are OK

Theodore Johnson's Opinion article on recent book bans initiated by the Trump administration is enough to scare any citizen who values democracy. He recalls a moment when someone asked him why there was a Women's Studies major offered in college when there wasn't a Men's Studies major. Johnson responded that we have Men's Studies - its called history. This story came to his mind recently after reading about the US Naval Academy's efforts to purge books from its library that violate President Trump's executive order mandating schools promote patriotic education - I don't even know if anyone can tell me what that actually means. Anyway, the executive order goes on to tell schools to avoid education that champions diversity, equity and inclusion. In this vein, the Naval Academy pulled 381 books it deemed promoted "anti-American, subversive" thought. Johnson highlights that a "midshipman's honors paper on police violence" was removed but multiple books by Hitler are still on the shelves.

The criteria for determining which books were removed was never specified. It appears the military haphazardly chose to remove books whose titles they did not like, but ironically left books on the same subjects in circulation because their titles were not so obvious as to what the content was. Why the words and stories of minorities and women are being deleted from our libraries, military and schools is confusing to me. Are we going to act like the country was just built by white men and no one else did anything noteworthy? Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was pulled. I was taught in school that Angelou's words clearly promote love of America - and even if they didn't, seems like the reader could decide for himself what the words mean. Read the opinion piece to marinate on Johnson't position. But, I leave you with his spot-on quote from British general William Francis Butler that is a fair warning to our leaders who have deprived our military of these books and histories:

[T]he nation that will insist upon drawing a broad

line of demarcation between the fighting man and

the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done

by fools and its thinking by cowards.

See it here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/15/naval-academy-library-book-ban/#