Naval Academy’s Choice of Speaker Runs Afoul of Pentagon Edict

By inviting a speaker, history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat of New York University—who has already said that she plans to attack presidential candidate Donald Trump in the annual Bancroft Lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy on Oct. 10—the academy is violating Defense Department directives prohibiting the military from engaging in partisan political activity.

In addition to constituting a clear violation of a long-standing, mandatory policy, families whose sons and daughters are attending this august military institution should be outraged by the academy’s partisan indoctrination of future officers of the U.S. Navy.

The Bancroft Lecture is held in October of each year and “was established by the Naval Academy’s History Department to honor the academy’s founder, George Bancroft.” Bancroft was the secretary of the Navy during President James Polk’s administration in the 1840s and became a good friend of Republican President Abraham Lincoln.

According to the academy, which was founded in 1845, the lecture is supposed to bring in historians to speak about “their research and the relevance of the historian’s craft to today’s world.” But that’s a far cry from delivering a partisan screed attacking a major political candidate in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign, which is precisely what Ben-Ghiat has indicated she’s going to do next week.

She claims that what motivates former Trump is his “authoritarian character, desire to destroy democratic values and ideals, and loyalty to autocrats” such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Going further, she claims that Trump has an “attachment to America’s enemies.” 

One can debate the hallucinations that apparently inhabit the mind of this so-called historian from New York University, but the more important point is that her venomous, partisan attack on a political candidate involves the Naval Academy, which is sponsoring her lecture in direct violation of Defense Department rules.

Department of Defense Directive No. 1344.10 (Feb. 19, 2008) bans active members of the military, which includes the naval officers who are administrators and teachers at the academy, from engaging in “partisan political activities.” 

By putting the academy’s official imprimatur on this rancorous harangue, the academy is doing exactly what the directive says its shouldn’t do: “appear to imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement” of what is patently a partisan, political speech.

In an op-ed about what she intends to say to the plebes at the Bancroft Lecture, Ben-Ghiat claims Trump has a “consistent habit” of “insulting and mocking the military.” According to her, Trump’s “personal predilections and attitudes … mirror those of authoritarians more generally,” and that authoritarianism will be part of her lecture on “Fascist Italy, Pinochet’s Chile, and the Russian military.” 

She claims that Trump’s supposed repeated “attacks” on the military show “what side he favors in the struggle between democracy and autocracy.”

Even if you agree with Ben-Ghiat’s wild, unsupported claims, that isn’t the point. The point is that the Naval Academy should not be inviting, sponsoring, or in any way endorsing lecturers who are at the academy to give what is clearly a political speech, whether it’s attacking or supporting Donald Trump, or attacking or supporting Kamala Harris.

The mission of the Naval Academy, it says, is to “imbue” its midshipmen “with the highest ideals of duty, honor, and loyalty” so they will be able “assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship, and government.” 

Whoever invited Ben-Ghiat to speak on campus used extremely poor judgment. Our military service academies are publicly funded, government-run institutions, designed to train future warfighters to serve this country with honor and distinction, regardless of who is the commander in chief.  Graduates serve under presidents of both parties and focus on the defense of our country.

That’s how it’s been—and should be.

The academy should disinvite this speaker now. 

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