President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he has dismissed the Board of Visitors for various military academies due to their focus on indoctrinating future service members with “woke” ideology.
In a post on Truth Social, the president argued that America’s “Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years” and that he has “ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard.”
Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years. I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard. We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!
Boards of visitors advise the president on the overall health of military academies and ensure that they are properly educating and training future military leaders. The boards provide advice on curriculum and other aspects of military academia. These groups are required to report to Congress each year on their findings and recommendations.
The military has come under fire under former President Joe Biden’s administration for infusing hard leftist ideology into its ranks. The Navy Professional Reading Program, in particular, has been criticized for including books written by high-profile left-wing authors in their reading lists. This includes “How to Be Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi and “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander.
Kendi is a leading proponent of Critical Race Theory, a Marxist attempt to transform American society from within. His book says that we have a “color-blind Constitution for a White-supremacist America.” It further argues that capitalism “is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist. They were birthed together from the same unnatural causes, and they shall one day die together from unnatural causes.”
Alexander’s book, meanwhile, insists that the American penal system represents a modern mechanism of racial suppression. Pierceson’s book takes a side in sexual debates that continue to rage in American society.
This move is in line with Trump’s overall agenda to eliminate progressive ideology from the military and other governmental institutions. He has issued several executive orders aimed at stripping diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and practices in federal agencies.
This also includes the banning of several different military student groups.
The list of banned student groups, all of which were open to all cadets irrespective of identity, includes the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, which “promotes the general knowledge and application of knowledge about the Asian-Pacific region”; the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, which supported cadets “transitioning from civilian to cadet and cadet to officer” through “academic services, mentorship, professional development opportunities, and community outreach programs”; the Corbin Forum, which aimed to promote women’s leadership within the Army; the Japanese Forum Club, which described itself as a place for promoting “understanding and appreciation of Japanese culture and language”; the Korean American Relations Seminar, which focused on education around the Korean American experience; the Latin Cultural Club, which operated two subordinate clubs: West Point Latin Dance and the mentorship- and outreach-focused Latina Connection; the Native American Heritage Forum, which had the mission to “educate members of the Corps of Cadets about the history, heritage, and current affairs of Native Americans”; Spectrum, a social club that provided support to LGBTQ cadets and promoted acceptance of LGBTQ people in the military community; and the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association, which aimed to increase “cultural awareness of the Vietnamese-American experience” and the “legacy of Vietnamese-American veterans.” It also included the West Point chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers.
This move will certainly inflame backlash from the left. However, Trump’s overall agenda could restore confidence in the military. Indeed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced recently that military recruiting numbers have risen drastically since Trump won the 2024 presidential election.