By John Hughes, USMA ’96
In February 2025, SECDEF Pete Hegseth posted the following online:
“Last week, I met with the leadership of @westpoint_USMA, @navalacademy and @af_academy. My message was simple: stick to leadership, standards, excellence, war fighting, and readiness. These are MILITARY ACADEMIES, not civilian universities. I was impressed by the changes already underway and look forward to visiting each institution. Social Justice and DEI are OUT; History, Engineering, and War Studies are IN. We must restore the warrior ethos to the @deptofdefense — and it starts with our future leaders.”1
In March 2025, LTG Steven Gilland, Superintendent at West Point, reassured the Senate Armed Services Committee at a public hearing that DEI had been expunged from USMA.
Recall that in May 2025, West Point professor Graham Parsons resigned publicly as he defended DEI at West Point. He maintained a public website devoted to his teachings on Toxic Masculinity and other DEI concepts in what appeared to be a violation of the orders to eliminate DEI.
At the time of the writing of this article, current USMA English professor, Nicholas Utzig, had the following book posted on his bio on the official West Point English department home page: Much Ado About Nothing And the New Awareness. (Lexington Books, 2023).
He is listed on the cover as the co-editor of the book. His official bio on the www.westpoint.edu government website prominently lists “Dr. Utzig is the co-editor of “Much Ado About Nothing and the New Awareness,” and he is working on a book about the midcentury Shakespearean actor-producer Maurice Evans and his circle.”
The problem is that this book is a modern interpretation of the Shakespearean classic. Its introduction lists its lens: Critical Race Theory.
The book’s introduction states:
“Through the lens of critical theory, they explore culturally relevant topics such as epistemology and truth, crime and punishment, and the treatment of women by men in the present and the past, women’s agency and the lack of it, and adaptations and performances of the play.”
Once again, it appears that LTG Gilland is failing to comply with the SECDEF and POTUS’ very clear directive to get rid of DEI at West Point.
Either Gilland is guilty of failure to control his professors or outright insubordination.
Either way, he deserves some attention from the SECDEF and a discussion on why he is still failing to obey orders.
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John Hughes: Emergency Physician. United States Military Academy Class of 1996. #1 graduate. 3rd Generation West Pointer. USUHS Grad c/o 2002. 4 combat tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. STARRS member. MacArthur Society Member. Author – American Doctor – Coming Home to War; Author – West Point’s Cult of DEI | www.americandoctor.org
First published on Armed Forces Press
Book Description:
The essays in this volume rethink Much Ado About Nothing from the standpoint of the New Awareness. Scholars today are by necessity both the products and the producers of this awareness. Moreover, the essays in this collection touch upon problems that are germane to the political climate today and similar to the concerns reflected in this play. Three essays discuss epistemology and determining real information from its simulation. Other essays concern issues that are central to the #MeToo Movement, including rape culture and the credibility of women. Aside from the immediate textual and historical context, other essays address issues of race and gender in adaptations and theatrical productions, especially in young-adult prose adaptations of the play and in theater’s practice of inclusive and race-conscious staging.
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