At the US Navy Academy, it is not what is on the shelves that attract attention – but what is missing.
The Nimitz Institution library has been disarmed 381 titlesAccording to the list that was first published in the New York Times, including works that explore race, gender, and national identity.
The extermination included “I know why the birds that were locked up singing” by Maya Angelou, “How to Be a Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi, “the body in doubt” by Elizabeth Reis, and “White Rage” by Carol Anderson. Nothing is prohibited directly – just translated “Not immediately available,” spokesman for the Navy Academy, CMDR. Hawkins team, said. The books, he said, had been placed in a room where customers could no longer access it.
President Donald Trump’s executive order January 29 entitled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” has been expanded to cover the country’s military academy. With language that targets what he calls “discriminatory equity ideology” and “gender ideology”-which he then calls “tyranny of what is called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies”-the government that moves the transfer, review, and broad institutional confusion.
“There are no clear criteria,” Katherine Kuzminski, director of study at the new American security center, told ABC News. “That makes the leadership scrambling – how do we ensure compliance without being accused of excessive correcting?”
Kuzminski said that military leaders, who were bound by strict codes to comply with legal orders, wrestled with what he called the ambiguity of the policy. “Especially in the Air Force,” he said, “when the Tuskegee Airmen learning module was removed from basic training for several days, leadership was trying to follow up with the best intentions.”
The US Navy Academy Campus is seen, March 20, 2025, at Annapolis, MD.
Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP
The Navy Leadership Department determines which book is needed to eliminate the Navy Academy Library, Hawkins told ABC News.
Initially, officials searched for the Nimitz library catalog, using keyword search, to identify books that require further review, the word Hawkins. Around 900 books were identified during the preliminary search, he said, and department officials then carefully examine the initial list to determine which books needed to transfer to comply with the direction described in the executive order issued by the President.
That eventually produced nearly 400 books chosen to be deleted from the Nimitz library collection, he said.
Historians and former military officials told ABC News that the implications were terrible. Richard Kohn, a military historian and former head of historian for the Air Force, saw the move as an “cleaning” effort. “This reveals certain types of weaknesses in current administrative trust,” he said. “They are determined to ask for their Maga constituents by withdrawing decades of the progress of race, religion, and diversity.”
For Kohn, removing these books from the shelves -Rrak sent a clear message to the cadets: to advance in the military, avoid certain ideas.
The retired Colonel of the US Air Force Thomas Keaney, a senior colleague at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, talked about how far the academy had come – and how far he said they were at risk of retreating. “When I was there,” he said, “it was only a white institution,” he said about the US Air Force Academy. “That’s the poorer for that.” Education, he insisted, was about exposure. “You don’t hurt people by letting them read,” he said.
In a letter to the Secretary of the Army, Navy and Air Force, Democratic Representative Adam Smith and Chrissy Houlahan said the book released “blatant attacks on the first amendment” and “his alarming return to the McCarthy era sensor.”
They demanded to find out who ordered the transfer, the process used and which title was being cleaned, while urged immediately.
The cadet lined up to their seats for the ceremony to start with President Donald Trump as a speaker at the US Air Force Academy graduation, May 30, 2019 at the Air Force Academy, Colo.
David Zalubowski/AP
The academy has issued a response with care – or not at all – when asked by ABC News to comment.
The US Marine Academy does not respond to repeated requests. The US Navy Academy, the US Air Force Academy and the US coast guard academy issued a brief statement that confirmed compliance with executive orders but offers several specifics.
“Coast Guard Academy is conducting a comprehensive review of its curriculum to ensure compliance with all executive orders,” said a spokesman.
The US Navy Academy spokesman confirmed that “nearly 400 books” had been deleted from his Nimitz library, explained the move as an effort “to ensure compliance with all directions described in the executive order issued by the President.”
He stressed what he called a strong collection of libraries – around 590,000 printed books and thousands of academic resources – frame the transfer of books as minor compared to the overall size of the collection. “The Navy Academy’s mission,” The spokesman added, “is to develop midshipmen morally, mentally and physically … to prepare them for career service to our country.”
At the US Air Force Academy, a spokesman noted that the curriculum review was ongoing “to ensure our compliance with executive orders.”
But external voices among military academics warned that this problem exceeded compliance, saying it attacks the core of intellectual development.
“You cannot make ideas safe for people, but you can make people safe for ideas,” said Kohn, who specialized in civil-military relations. “If you do not guide students in the academy to understand what is happening in American society, you are not really educating them.”
Keaney, a former US Air Force officer, is more careful but equally care. “I don’t think anyone will get hurt by reading anything – however crazy or outside of their own culture,” he said. “You do not harm people by exposing them to ideas. Conversely, you train them to be intelligent leaders. Give them a chance. Don’t let them deal with ignorance.”