After he was sworn in as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. Naval Academy to end diversity practices in admissions and in its circulation of the approximately 600,000 titles available in the academy's Nimitz Library.
On Friday, the New York Times found that the result of that policy has been the wholesale removal of books by authors from diverse backgrounds, while keeping books promoting racism and white supremacy on the shelves. Among the books banned include "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, the 2010 book "Memorializing the Holocaust" (about how female Holocaust victims are remembered) and a critique of the book "The Bell Curve," which argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than whites.
However, the Trump administration has allowed "The Bell Curve" itself to remain available for Naval Academy students. Adolf Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf," is also available for checkout. And a 1973 book called "The Camp of the Saints," which is about a fictionalized world in which immigrants from developing nations take over the Western world and is reportedly a favorite of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, is also still on the shelf.
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"Initially, officials searched the Nimitz Library catalog, using keyword searches, to identify books that required further review," Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Tim Hawkins told the Times. "Approximately 900 books were identified during the preliminary search. Departmental officials then closely examined the preliminary list to determine which books required removal to comply with directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president."
The Times noted that "antiracists were targeted" in particular as part of the purge. But the bans were criticized by some Naval Academy alumni, including Admiral James Stavridis, who was previously the commander of all U.S. forces in Europe.
"The Pentagon might have an argument — if midshipmen were being forced to read these 400 books. 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?" Stavridis said, adding that sailors needed to be "educated and not indoctrinated.
“These are among the most intelligent students in the world, who we are entrusting to go to war,” retired commander William Marks, who is an alumnus of the Naval Academy, told the Times. “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?”
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Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).