The Pentagon reportedly is considering eliminating civilian tenure across the military service academies and senior war colleges. The draft proposal also would direct Defense Department officials to conduct a line-by-line review of courses and decide what material is “non-essential” or “ideologically driven.” Political influence over how officers are prepared to exercise judgment carries consequences far beyond the classroom.
Graduates of these institutions eventually command forces, advise national leaders and help determine how the country uses its military power. They must be able to recognize flawed assumptions and tell senior leaders unwelcome truths before mistakes become catastrophes. Military education must develop the independent judgment constitutional service requires, not merely teach approved doctrine.
The institutions covered by the proposal — including West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy — serve officers at different stages in their development, immersing future leaders in academic study, military discipline and demanding standards before commissioning. Command and staff colleges prepare officers for broader operational responsibilities. Senior war colleges educate experienced military and civilian leaders for decision-making at the strategic level, where military force and other instruments of national power must be connected to political objectives.
These schools should be accountable to their missions. Defense Department leaders have every right to insist on rigor and relevance. Curricula should serve national defense, and professors should meet exacting standards. But course reviews built around vague political labels, combined with the elimination of tenure, would make scholarly inquiry increasingly vulnerable to political influence.
Recent events at West Point show how quickly such pressure can spread. Philosophy professor Graham Parsons resigned in 2025 after courses and readings were removed and faculty scholarship was restricted to conform with the administration’s directives. The Washington Post recently reported that a history assignment on the expansion of American freedom was replaced with one on banking, Marx was removed from a Western thought course, and professors withheld views or declined publication opportunities because they feared professional consequences.
Military institutions are especially vulnerable to that kind of anticipatory compliance. They operate inside hierarchies built to translate senior direction into action. Broad instructions are rarely applied narrowly. Faculty and administrators begin anticipating objections from above and removing potential sources of trouble before anyone has to issue a direct order.
The Pentagon already has shown how clumsily ideological reviews can play out in practice. Last year, images of the Enola Gay were flagged for removal during a search for prohibited diversity-related content, apparently because the bomber’s name contained the word “gay.” The Naval Academy initially removed nearly 400 library books under similarly broad direction, then returned almost all of them after the Pentagon provided narrower standards.
The proposed course review would give faculty and administrators reason to calculate the political safety of every lesson, publication or research question. Eliminating tenure would increase the professional cost of resisting that pressure.
Military and civilian professors contribute different strengths to professional military education. Uniformed faculty bring operational experience, professional context and an understanding of the institution. Civilian academics bring habits of inquiry developed through years of research and continuity of expertise across generations of students. Because their careers are less dependent on the military chain of command, they also can bring perspectives that might otherwise go unexamined.
A civilian professor’s role is not to oppose the institution for the sake of opposition. Serious scholars weigh evidence and engage competing interpretations, including those that may depart from conventional wisdom. Sometimes that work leads them to question assumptions the larger institution has come to accept.
Exposure to an idea is not indoctrination. Military schools do not teach Marx to produce Marxists. They examine ideas and upheavals that shaped the world that officers must understand to operate in. They study events such as Wounded Knee and the My Lai Massacre not to shame students or the organization, but to understand how authority can be abused and how future leaders might prevent recurrence.
I did not agree with every position my civilian instructors presented at the Naval Academy. Sometimes I reached a different conclusion. That was part of the value. They exposed us to competing perspectives and uncomfortable ideas, requiring us to test our assumptions, develop positions we could defend and understand how others saw the world. They were teaching us how to think critically, not requiring us to think as they did.
Academic freedom allows scholars to pursue and teach difficult questions honestly. Tenure gives civilian professors a measure of professional security when that work produces conclusions institutional leaders would rather not hear. Together, they allow faculty to teach and model independent judgment without first calculating whether each question or conclusion is politically safe.
The Pentagon proposal would weaken both. A line-by-line review based on vague ideological standards would narrow the intellectual space in which professors teach and conduct research. Eliminating tenure would make challenging those limits more professionally dangerous. The likely result would be more self-censorship and an education increasingly shaped by political approval rather than intellectual merit.
That would teach future officers that accepting the institution’s premises is safer than questioning them. They might well become more fluent in current doctrine while becoming less prepared for the moment it fails.
One of the American military’s greatest advantages over larger adversaries has been its officers’ ability to think critically, adapt and exercise judgment without waiting for political dogma to supply the answer. Russian and Chinese military systems historically have relied more heavily on centralized control and political loyalty. American military education traditionally has sought to cultivate something different.
Making military colleges more dependent on approved ideas would surrender part of that advantage. It also would blur an important constitutional distinction. American officers swear allegiance to the Constitution, not to ideology or an individual leader. Their education should reinforce lawful civilian control while developing the professional judgment and political neutrality that constitutional service requires.
The Pentagon’s proposal would make faculty less secure, inquiry more dependent on political approval and future officers less likely to encounter arguments that challenge the government or the institution they serve.
Politically sanitized military schools may produce more compliant officers. They will not produce better leaders.
Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He writes about leadership and democracy.
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