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WASHINGTON — As the US Naval Academy removed a display honoring Jewish female graduates ahead of a visit from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it also removed books that covered the history of white supremacy in the US ahead of his visit last week.
The order to remove the books, most of which focused on topics like race, diversity and gender, appeared to come at the behest of Hegseth himself.
The Pentagon chief, whose initiatives against DEI have led to other removals from the Defense Dept.’s digital platforms, sent a memo to the Annapolis, Md. school instructing it to comply with larger anti-woke purges at the department.
The list of books was made public by the Navy on April 4.
Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a Navy spokesperson, told JTA the books “required removal in order to ensure full compliance with directives outlined in Executive Orders issued by the President.”
The removals were notable for occurring at the college level. According to free-speech literary advocacy group PEN America, it was the first notable instance of “college-level library banning.”
In recent years, K-12 schools across the country have been the sites of high-profile debates over the removal of books from school libraries.
The list of removed books at the Naval Academy includes:
• Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America, by Philip Perlmutter, former director of Boston’s JCRC.
• Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity, by former US Holocaust Memorial Museum fellow Robert Beachy.
• The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany, by Katie Sutton.
• Hate on the net, by Antonio Roversi and Lawrence Smith.
• Censoring racial ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American struggles over race and representation, 1890-1930, by M. Alison Kibler.
• Blood and Politics: The history of the white nationalist movement from the margins to the mainstream, by Leonard Zeskind, a MacArthur Fellow.
• Josiah Nott of Mobile, a biography of a 19th-century physician who once wrote a pamphlet outlining “The physical history of the Jewish race,” by Reginald Horsman.
• American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, an account of minority group persecution under the first Trump administration, by Arjun Singh Sethi.
• Other books about white supremacism in the US, including American Swastika.
Earlier in the week, a display case in the academy’s Jewish chapel that had previously contained a collection of photos and memorabilia from female Jewish graduates of the academy was completely emptied prior to the visit, according to photos obtained by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Before the removals, the case had contained items that belonged to a number of Jewish women who graduated USNA, including a bronze star, military cap and insignias, as well as photos from USNA graduation and tours in Iraq, according to MRFF. Other displays featuring male Jewish graduates had stayed up.
“While the boys were away, we worked for victory,” read a banner held by female Jewish civilians during WW II, in the only remaining photo in the display.
A piece of cardboard had also been propped up to block a placard that described “Jewish women in the Navy,” according to a photo shared by MRFF.
The items were reinstated by the academy, reportedly following the visit, and the removals raised questions about why they were taken down. According to an academy statement, it was done “mistakenly.”
“US Naval Academy leadership is immediately taking steps to review and correct the unauthorized removal,” said the Naval Academy’s director of communications in a statement.
During his visit April 1 in an address to the academy, Hegseth argued that “past distractions” had “diluted” the focus of the military, saying, “Our differences don’t make us strong. Our shared mission does.”
In March, following a memo ordering officials to purge Dept. of Defense digital platforms of all DEI content, among the pages deleted were the stories of Kitty Saks, a Holocaust survivor, and Bea Arthur, the Jewish “Golden Girls” actress and WW II Marines veteran.
Arthur’s story along with another article about Holocaust remembrance that was originally taken down have been reinstated following a public outcry, but Saks’ article is still unavailable.
