Naval Academy: A “House Divided"

A former Naval Academy professor writes about his concerns that SECDEF Hegseth might remove some civilian professors at America’s Service Academies (whose sole purpose is to train men and women to lead the armed forces).

He had this strange thing to say about USNA, a MIILITARY academy:

“I found the Naval Academy to be a “house divided.” It rests on an uneasy alliance between two decidedly different cultures, one academic and the other military — neither of which is in total sympathy with the other.

This alliance was particularly fraught between an authoritarian military hierarchy and a collegial English Department that had long been left to exercise sole discretion over whom to hire to their civilian ranks. “

He then talks about James Webb, who became a visiting professor in USNA’s English Department but left to pursue other things after six months (he later become the Secretary of the Navy and a Senator).

“The residual bitterness — the haunting, if you will — stemmed not so much from Webb’s leaving the English Department in the lurch as to the precedent his appointment seemed to set.

The department feared that the soldier-poet, and not the professional academic, would win out as the preferred model for a Naval Academy faulty member in the humanities.

They were used to hiring on the basis of scholarly promise without regard to military experience or affinity, and they went on to jealously guard that prerogative.”

He goes on to warn about “military spiritualists” in academies, people who have

“strong emotional attachment and a sense of personal identification with the military. They try to turn out officers who embrace the military not merely as a profession but as an all-encompassing way of life.”

Seems to be there’s a definite problem if there’s a clash at MILITARY academies on whether the culture should be MILITARY or not. He seems to prove why the SECDEF had to remind the Academy superintendents that the military academies are NOT civilian universities.

Here’s the article, and it won’t surprise you that he has nasty things to say about SECDEF Hegseth and the Commander-in-Chief:

Purging professors from military academics undermines an institution, by Ed Palm