Lone Candle

“Retired General Martin France, himself an Air Force Academy graduate and former chair of the academy’s department of astronautics and engineering, views this military campus crackdown, which includes complementary work by other federal bodies, as a myopic effort to eliminate courses that encourage independence, an instinct echoed by many of the more than 20 current and former civilian and military faculty I spoke with, many of whom were granted anonymity to freely discuss the conditions of the crackdown.

“Our officers should be sentient beings who understand just war theory, the laws around conflict, the orders that they are morally obligated to disobey,” France said, arguing that the Trump administration, by contrast, wants to breed compliance rather than teach nuance. This, in turn, France alleged, forms an officer class of “flesh-and-bone drones.”

…

Due to the Air Force’s highly technical mission, its service academy has an especially rich STEM program, one that rears future fighter pilots, astronauts and nuclear missile operators. As such, many of the departing civilian professors taught engineering courses. “They think that our graduates should be more comfortable with crawling through the dirt and carrying a rifle,” vented one current military professor. “We’re the Air Force, we don’t do that. We don’t fire rifles. We operate multi-billion-dollar systems and multi-billion-dollar bomber aircraft.”

…

Amid this exodus of civilians, some military professors are leaving, too. The long-time military professor described a pervasive sense that the overall academic environment has been fatally compromised, dynamics he explained with a baseball metaphor: “When there’s a team with pitchers but no catchers, you can’t play ball.”

…

I understood the worries of the professor in black. They were echoed throughout my interviews for this story. Still, I wondered if maybe his anonymous get-up was a bit of an overreaction.

My mind changed six days later, when it became apparent that I myself had been monitored. That morning, a Secret Service agent showed up to my parents’ door, explaining that West Point had reported me for acting suspiciously. Specifically, they alleged that I’d been asking people to speak with the president. This wasn’t true, and the service declined to discuss the intelligence undergirding the allegation. But it felt like a poetic charge in light of my reportorial focus on the military’s stifling of academic inquiry. Certainly, any reporter, as with any pupil, must be allowed, encouraged even, to ask probing questions.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/28/pete-hegseth-civilians-west-point-00523613