Nimitz Library

As the current regime in Washington continues its assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools across the country, it has even included the Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy in its modern-day book burning. An order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has purged almost 400 books from the shelves. Tellingly, the books removed included works on the Holocaust, racism, feminism, and civil rights, while volumes defending white power were retained.

The New York Times reports that Maya Angelou’s transformative best-selling 1970 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, chronicling her struggles with racism and trauma, has been removed, while two copies of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler are still on the shelves.

Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacobs’s 2010 examination of how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed and remembered, is gone, while The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. Raspail’s 1973 racist novel, which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from developing countries, has been embraced by white supremacists and promoted by Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser.

The Bell Curve, which argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than white people, is still there. But a critique of the book was pulled.

Also on the list of banned books was White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, by Anthea Butler, a religion and African American studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who said, “I think very clearly that my book was taken off because people hate the truth and people hate history more.”

Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research Institute, said his book, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which was also removed from the library,  strikes a nerve in some by recounting his experience growing up a white Southern Baptist in Mississippi.

Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of African American and diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University, said it appears that many of the banned books were chosen for deletion through simple word searches rather than from reading them.

“I’ve got two books on (the list). But they ain’t read them because what they would understand is that all of us are self-critical, too. We ain’t just cheerleading ‘our side.’ We’re engaged in a serious analysis of what’s happening in the world.”

Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America, a series of letters Dyson wrote to the martyrs of racial injustice, was one of the rejected texts. Dyson’s bestselling Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, which deals with the social and cultural pressures that have shaped issues of race in America, was also removed.

The actions have caused a stir among some of the school’s alumni, who include four-star admirals and generals as well as other high-ranking government and elected officials.

“The Pentagon might have an argument — if midshipmen were being forced to read these 400 books,” said Adm. James G. Stavridis, an author, academy alumnus, and former commander of all U.S. forces in Europe. “But as I understand it, they were just among the hundreds of thousands of books in the Nimitz Library, which a student might opt to check out. What are we afraid of keeping from them in the library?”

One of the admiral’s recent books specifically cited Ms. Angelou’s memoir as a valuable resource for helping military leaders understand the diversity of viewpoints that make up the armed forces.

“Book banning can be a canary in a coal mine and could predict a stifling of free speech and thought,” he added. “Books that challenge us make us stronger. We need officers who are educated, not indoctrinated.”

William Marks, an alumnus of the academy and a retired Navy commander, set up a GoFundMe campaign to purchase books from the banned list and provide them to academy midshipmen.

“These are among the most intelligent students in the world, who we are entrusting to go to war,” he said. “What does this say about the Pentagon if they don’t trust these young men and women to have access to these books in the library?”