West Point Civilian Professors - Academic Speech Censorship
After Trump’s order, West Point curbed faculty speech. One professor — citing federal employees' oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution —said no.
NYACK, N.Y. — The longest-serving law professor at West Point rose to declare the school’s new rules unconstitutional. Within moments, a uniformed colonel stood to challenge him.
Tim Bakken, speaking to dozens of colleagues at a faculty meeting, argued that none of them should be forced to seek approval before publishing papers or giving speeches, as a policy unveiled that day would require. “This violates the First Amendment,” he said, predicting an end to West Point’s professed tolerance for opposing views.
Col. E. John Gregory, according to Bakken and three other people in attendance that day, didn’t want to hear it. “Stop talking,” Gregory, a deputy department head, said in a raised voice, “and sit down.”
Bakken, a 68-year-old who had never served in the military, did not sit down. He reminded the colonel that he had sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he accepted his teaching job. “It’s like how military officers must not follow illegal orders —” he began to say.
“We’re a military institution,” Gregory interrupted, according to Bakken and the other attendees. “We follow orders.”
President Donald Trump assumed power for the second time with an ambitious agenda toreshape norms and policies across governmentand throughout the private sector. His administration has moved swiftly toundo diversity initiativesthat proliferated in prior years,reshapehow U.S. history is taught in museums and parks, and assert a greater federal role in how universitieshireandmanage their funding.
To the president’s supporters, these efforts represent an overdue reset for liberal policies that had veered out of control. To many other Americans, they amount to ideological, and sometimes unconstitutional, overreach. In little more than 18 months, the administration has drawn a surge of lawsuits alleging violations of civil liberties or other essential freedoms, a Washington Post analysis of hundreds of thousands of court records found.
One of those was filed by Bakken.
His confrontation with the colonel that day in March 2025 brought the clash to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the emerald-green-and-granite campus on the Hudson River that trains the leaders of tomorrow’s Army. Since World War II, West Point had fostered academic openness, advancing the view that dissenting opinions are crucial in forming sound military judgments. But Trump and his top lieutenants, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, argue that West Point must prize patriotic obedience to authority above all else.
Seven days into his second presidency, Trumpissued an executive orderforbidding military colleges like West Point from “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating” ideas that his administration deemed “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational.” It also required teaching that “America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.” Within weeks, West Point’s dean introduced a revised “academic engagement” policy, stipulating that the school’s nearly 700 professors — roughly a third of whom are civilians — must seek approval from their department head before they could deliver a speech, publish a paper or even speak on a podcast.
Bakken had never needed such approval before, he said. One of the first civilian professors hired at West Point, he had taught criminal and constitutional law there since 2000.
Nonmilitary faculty were meant to improve West Point’s intellectual rigor and provide an outside perspective. Many uniformed colleagues never fully embraced their presence, however. Bakken, whose colleagues and students described him as a principled but brusque contrarian with a penchant for criticism, had often felt isolated.
Now, listening to the colonel’s words about “following orders,” Bakken felt alone in the room once again.
He had long argued that a military culture of unquestioning obedience, coupled with an aversion to criticism and a sense of superiority, had caused the U.S. to lose every war it fought since 1945. “Inside America, the last seventy-five years of military intervention have unleashed a flood of incompetence, hubris, and denial,” he wrote in a 2020 book, “The Cost of Loyalty.” “I have been living at the headwaters.”
West Point officials hadn’t liked that book, or much of Bakken’s criticism. But they had never tried to silence him, he said — until Trump’s second presidency, when West Point revised its faculty speech rules.
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Hegseth, a former Army major and weekend co-host of “Fox & Friends,” said West Point shouldn’t employ civilian professors, calling them “left-wing” and “woke.” In office, he latertold cadetsthat the academy had “hired professors who advocated for anti-American ideologies right here in these halls. But no more.”
West Point’s new policy came as Bakken prepared a new book that, like his first, criticized the academy and the military. But he was unwilling to seek permission to publish it,not from West Point, and not from Hegseth’s Pentagon.
In September, he sued West Point in federal court. The “intent and effect” of his employer’s new policy, he contended, “is to chill and suppress speech and censor viewpoints that might be contrary to the views” of West Point, the Army, the Defense Department, Hegseth and Trump.
A spokesperson for West Point declined to answer a list of questions, writing in an email that, “as a matter of policy, we do not comment on ongoing litigation.” Various West Point employees declined or did not respond to requests for comment.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell likewise declined to comment, citing Bakken’s ongoing lawsuit. But he wrote in a statement that Hegseth “completely supports” Trump’s executive order. Referring to Bakken, Parnell added: “We are not concerned by the half-baked thoughts of a disgruntled individual.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not directly answer questions about speech by Bakken or other professors at West Point, writing in an email that “individuals who refuse to follow the sacred chain-of-command … threaten the lives of our warfighters. Such reckless and dangerous actions will not be tolerated.”
Although Bakken filed his lawsuit on behalf of civilian faculty, he saw it as protecting the rights of all professors. But they didn’t seem to agree. After the suit, many stopped speaking to him, he said. His three closest colleagues confided that they’d like to help but their wives wouldn’t allow it. One of his oldest friends, who had started at West Point the same day he did, asked him to reconsider.
“This policy is good for us,” Bakken recalled him saying. “It will prevent us from saying things that get us in trouble.”
FULL STORY AT GIFT LINK: https://wapo.st/4h1Lxlu
This is Hannah Natanson with The Washington Post. It's been very hard this year to do my job. It means more than I can say to be back reporting and writing again. I am pursuing stories this year examining how the second Trump administration is affecting Americans' essential freedoms, civil liberties and rights guaranteed in the nation's founding documents. I want to hear from anyone who has a story to share about how their civil liberties may have been affected by recent federal, state or local actions. Please feel free to reach out to me at my email [email redacted] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at HannahNatanson.2026. I will use best secure sourcing practices. Thank you for considering — and for reading.
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