Lieutenant General Tony D. Bauernfeind, right, Superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy, addresses senators on March 26, 2025, during a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — Only a handful of courses at the military’s service academies have been eliminated to comply with President Donald Trump’s directive to scrub diversity programming from their campuses, the academies’ superintendents said Wednesday.
Two classes were cut at the Military Academy, two classes were canceled at the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy has marked three courses for potential suspension under guidelines issued by the Trump administration to end diversity, equity and inclusion content.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, acting on Trump’s orders, in January mandated the prohibition of all instruction on DEI, gender ideology and critical race theory, an academic framework that teaches racism is systemic.
The two courses eliminated at the Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., were a history course called Race, Ethnicity and Nation and an English course titled Power and Difference, Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland, the superintendent, told a subpanel of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
A review of the academy’s curriculum is still ongoing, he said, but only two classes in a review of more than 600 courses were deemed out of compliance. They were electives with fairly small enrollment, with 25 cadets enrolled in the history class and a dozen cadets enrolled in the English course, Gilland said.
The Senate Armed Services Committee meets on March 26, 2025, in Washington to hear testimony from the superintendents of the military service academies. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., two courses related to gender were eliminated. One was a Gender Matters leadership course and the other was an English course, Gender Sexuality Studies, said Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, the superintendent.
The academy also found 18 other classes that will need to be slightly modified to comply with executive orders, she said. A total of 870 courses were reviewed.
Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, superintendent of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Co., said an initial review of 735 courses has identified 55 courses for further analysis. He estimates 40% of them will require no change, 53% will require minor changes and three could be suspended.
“I have not made that decision yet,” he said.
Bauernfeind said the Air Force Academy no longer teaches critical race theory, in accordance with a defense policy bill passed in December that banned such instruction at the military academies.
“We’re delving in hard on teaching our future leaders how to think and not what to think,” he said.
Hegseth’s order to purge DEI from curriculums also requires the service academies to teach that “America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”
His directive also bars the use of sex-based, race-based or ethnicity-based goals for academic admissions. The Supreme Court in 2023 ended race-conscious college admissions but exempted military academies from the decision.
The academies became a frequent target of criticism by conservatives during President Joe Biden’s administration, with critics arguing the academies were becoming overly consumed with pushing a “woke” agenda focused on liberal ideology.
Trump has moved quickly to implement his vision for the academies.
Last month, he fired members of boards that provide oversight at the Military Academy, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy and Coast Guard Academy, saying, “Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years.”
Trump’s offensive against DEI programs in the government also led West Point last month to shut down cadet clubs primarily centered on ethnic and gender affiliation, including the National Society of Black Engineers Club and Society of Women Engineers Club.
