Buh-Bye West Point

Assistant Professor Graham Parsons got a long screed on the sanctimony of his virtue-signaling resignation from the faculty at the United States Military Academy published in the New York Times¹.  His letter to the editor as a profile in academic courage indicates the need for a serious investigation at West Point.  Additionally, his other publications absolutely shout out for a Blue Ribbon panel to take a deep dive into what in the living, screaming Hell is happening at West Point and the other Service Academies. 

A Commission should consider the following:

Immediately and in the future, no faculty member at West Point should associate ending DEI and CRT indoctrination with “West Point abandoned its core principles².” 

All the faculty should understand that West Point isn’t “Once a school that strove to give cadets the broad-based, critical-minded, non-partisan education they need for careers as Army Officers³”, but a military academy which trains and educates Army Officers to meet the needs of the Army to fight and win wars. 

All faculty should understand the difference between a liberal arts college and a military academy.

Who hired a teacher who advocates the parroting of “scholars like Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw on critical race theory⁷?”  Using “scholar” and “critical race theory” in the same sentence is an insult to scholarship. 

Parsons laments the loss of the courses “Topics in Gender History” and “Race, Ethnicity, Nation” in the History Department and “Power and Difference” in the English Department.  What did the courses teach?  Who was teaching those courses?  Where are they now?  Who approved those courses in those departments?  Who was Dean when those courses were approved?  What responsibility do the current Department Heads and Dean have for keeping the courses?  Did the Superintendent know the courses were being taught and what was in them?

The same questions apply for the Sociology Major dissolved and the disbanded Black History project.  Likewise, the minor in Diversity Studies.

Who will ensure that no future faculty member imagines USMA is “failing to provide an adequate education for the cadets⁸” if cadets are “no longer able to openly investigate many critical issues like race and sexuality or be exposed to unfamiliar perspectives that might expand their intellectual horizons⁹.” 

On the contrary, who will ensure the open investigation of unfamiliar perspectives includes opposing views?  An investigating Commission could determine if the “critical issues of race and sexuality” ever included the relatively conservative views of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, James McWhorter, Carol Swain, or the late Walter Williams.  

Parsons closes his letter with a predictable canard about academic freedom and a virtue signal about the need to “recognize our duties to our disciplines and our students¹⁰.” 

Duty, indeed.

It’s the duty of every academic discipline to not teach cancerous Cultural Marxism.  And to be accomplished enough to not try to pass off gibberish, jabberwocky, balderdash, or gobbledygook as scholarship.  

Parsons was an Assistant Professor at West Point when, after he gave excuses for women leaving Europe to be wives to Muslim ISIS fighters committing crimes against humanity, he wrote, “One of the central contributions of feminist philosophy has been to reveal the extent to which gender has shaped commitments of supposedly gender-neutral theorists.  Just war theorists would do well to keep this in mind¹⁰.” Furthermore, “The great figures in classical and early modern just war theory (Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Vattel, for instance) embrace the gender binary theory in question here¹¹.”  Who knew Just War Theorists were all about gender binary theory? 

Did he teach gender binary theory in his required Military Ethics course? 

Who supervised him?  What were his evaluations?

Apparently, this Military Ethics expert was upset with the Department of Defense (DoD) and President Trump in his first term and went public about it while teaching at West Point. 

Parsons wrote about a DoD policy change because, “It bans transgender persons from living as their preferred gender while in uniform¹².”

This West Point faculty member had an issue because “sex-based standards are important precisely because they ground the standards of privacy and respect on the objective and universal features of biological sex, not the fluid and relative norms of gender¹³.”

He said the policy of his chain of command had “Head spinning conclusions¹⁴”, whose “Argument is downright chilling¹⁵” and included the “trap of asserting it has a nature, gender-neutral standard that is fact laden with assumptions of a brutal cisgender hegemony¹⁶.” 

Furthermore, DoD’s new policy is deeply harmful.  You cannot make transgender rights disappear by merely proclaiming cisgender norms natural and transgender persons unnatural.  In fact, the attempt to do so is itself an instance of the oppression transgender people continue to endure¹⁷.”  Noted.

Apparently, there were no consequences at USMA for a teaching PhD who doesn’t acknowledge biology, psychology, and the whole of human history.  And one who goes public with his disputes.

And, finally, “While the report’s analysis legitimates cisgender women’s rights to privacy and respect, it utterly rejects the transwoman’s rights¹⁸.”

Is the pathetic quality of Parson’s “professional” writing representative of the civilian faculty at Service Academies?

How motivating is this?  “I am reminded of the tragic connection between masculinity and war.  Masculinity enables the permissiveness of killing in war and is a primary motivation for atrocities.  For this reason, humanitarians should make the study of masculinity an urgent priority¹⁹.”

The West Point Association of Graduates should share what is taught to the parents of prospective cadets. 

Would anyone but a civilian academic write such inanity about war that, gasp, “It is legally permissible to attack combatants without regard to the justifiability of their cause or the conduciveness of the attacks to peace. The requirements of proportionality and necessity are also less stringent with respect to attacks on combatants compared to noncombatants²⁰.”  What a shock to those in the Long Gray Line who actually fought in war!

How many other civilian faculty members ascribe to this sophomoric position: “Service members are not protected from violations of their civil rights. For instance, a service member is legally obligated to engage in life-threatening activity when ordered to²¹.”  Seriously, were cadets taught that being ordered into combat was a violation of their civil rights?

And the expert teacher on military ethics exposes his military expertise with “We have used our militaries as instruments of national security and killed our enemies with little restraint because they are presumed to be men who ought to be willing instruments of war.  Facing this opens new space for rethinking our attitudes toward war and the military.  Once we consciously purge the presumption of gender from our theories and laws, we will likely conclude that there ought to be far more constraints on violence in war and that service members are worthy of greater civilian protections as home²².” 

The United States Military Academy (USMA) Board of Visitors could inquire as to how widespread Parsons’ conclusion is taught at West Point: “What this means is that combating the appeal of extreme violence will require confronting the nature of masculinity.  We need to collectively reassess how we raise boys.  We need to provide more space for boys to find their identities affirmed in ways other than through self-sacrificed military labor.  And for those men already enculturated into warrior masculinity, we need to find opportunities for them to have their masculinity affirmed in constructive ways²³.”

Why is military ethics taught by someone who doesn’t know the business end of a bayonet?

Especially when the teacher’s focus is “large literatures have developed on the relation between gender and war as well as feminist approaches to the ethics of war. This article aims to contribute to these literatures and to bring them into closer contact²⁴.” 

Should West Point’s teachers delve into real world examples of military ethical issues or be academic theory dilettantes who pontificate how “Just war theorists should be much more concerned with the gender and war literature and find common ground with feminists who have treated the problem of the political standing of soldiers as a philosophical priority²⁵.”

Parsons got an article published after he announced his resignation which raises concerns about every West Pointer who was indoctrinated by him.  Parsons pulled the piece after President Trump’s initial Executive Order and Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s first guidance on restoring the military.  It’s a capstone for insidious instruction at West Point.

The hair should stand up on the back of every soldier’s neck when they read, “I and others have argued that military leaders may be ethically obligated to refuse or resist some extraordinary orders even if those orders are not patently illegal²⁶.”  Really?  Disobey a legal order?

How many officers in the Army today believe “Military political neutrality in a democratic society is, and always has been, more than a promise of obedience.  It is also a promise to defend civil society and the neutrality of the military, including when these are threatened by civilian authority²⁷?”  How do they distinguish between their oath to defend the Constitution and defending civil society?  On what basis?  How is a threat to civilian authority determined?  Examples, please.

“The point I am making here is that the professional standards of military service do not simply prescribe obedience to authorities.  It is possible to justifiably resist a legal order on the grounds that the order violates the basic values of the military profession in a democratic society²⁸.”  Is Parsons preaching support for the cadets who were dismissed from West Point for refusing to take the experimental anti-Covid drug?  

Are these basic values the same as the Army values which the USMA Superintendent inserted into the mission statement when he deleted “Duty, Honor, Country”?  Don’t values change over time and often are subjects of disputes?  Shouldn’t West Point teach immutable virtues over temporal, subjective, personal values?

Then, Parsons suggests going out of the established procedures and chain of command to dispute an order.  Resisting orders can take many forms including “asking critical questions or raising objections, raising awareness of the orders and one’s concerns with them within the military, with civilian leaders, or with the public; “slow rolling” execution of the order; or offering (publicly or privately) to resign or seek retirement²⁹.”  So away goes discipline and good order in the ranks.

Maybe the Law Department should teach legality in Military Ethics instead of philosophy from the English Department

How do cadets interpret such convolutions as: “if an order clearly threatens civil society, an officer can be obligated to resist it, even if the officer personally supports the order. In these cases, resistance is not in conflict with professional obligations.  On the contrary obligations demand resistance³⁰.”

What does a cadet take from “How a service member should respond to a legal order that violates the ethical foundations of the military profession is highly context dependent³¹” and “I am not in a position to know exactly what a given service member should do in the sorts of painfully difficult situations I am considering³².”

How is West Point serving the Army and the Nation if it teaches: “There are times when, for the sake of civil society and the political neutrality of the state, the military should be insubordinate to civilian authority³³.”

The President as Commander-in-Chief, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, USMA, the USMA Board of Visitors, the West Point Association of Graduates, the U.S. Congress, all old soldiers, and the American People should bid a relieved farewell, an earnest airline steward’s “buh bye”, to Assistant Professor Graham Parsons.  Then, get to the root of why he was teaching at West Point for 13 years or say “buh-bye” to the Army.

Figure out how to find graduates and de-program the Cultural Marxist rot taught (for how many years?).

Fix United States Military Academy, United States Naval Academy, and United States Air Force Academy.  Then, United States Coast Guard Academy and United States Merchant Marine Academy.  Pour institutional concrete in the U.S. Code. 

Once upon a time, The Pointer Magazine, which was a Cadet-operated, financially self-sufficient enterprise, was quick to make corrections.

Please note: Graham Parsons was a full Professor at the United States Military Academy.

Additional note to readers: Insipid ideas don’t make us uncomfortable. We find them amusing, unless they are taken seriously and actually taught. Then, sophistry is insidious.

“pyrene*”

*pyrene is the pen name for anonymous cadet authors who wrote a column in The Pointer magazine (1923-1996).  Pyrene purported to be a mess hall cat and “head mouser,” who wrote about the Corps.  Because a cat couldn’t hit the shift key on a typewriter, the column and the cat’s name were all written in lower case.

Notes: