By Grace Gilson
The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis recently removed items from a display honoring female Jewish graduates ahead of a planned visit last Tuesday, Apr. 1, by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
A display case in the academy’s Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel that previously contained photos and memorabilia from female Jewish academy graduates was completely emptied prior to the visit, according to photos obtained by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Before the removals, the case contained items belonging to a number of Jewish women who graduated USNA, including a bronze star, military cap and insignias, as well as photos from USNA graduation and tours in Iraq, according to MRFF.
Other displays featuring male Jewish graduates stayed up.
“While the boys were away, we worked for victory,” read a banner held by female Jewish civilians during World War II, in the only remaining photo in the display. A piece of cardboard had also been propped up to block a placard that described “Jewish women in the Navy,” according to a photo shared by MRFF.
The items were reinstated by the academy, reportedly following the visit, and the removals raised questions about whether they were taken down following recent orders from Hegseth targeting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, content.
Hegseth’s campaign against DEI in his department has led to the censorship of books in schools, Pentagon websites and classes at an Air Force boot camp.
The academy confirmed reports that the items had been stripped from their display, and added that it was done “mistakenly.”
“U.S. Naval Academy leadership is immediately taking steps to review and correct the unauthorized removal,” said the Naval Academy’s director of communications in a statement.
During his visit Tuesday in an address to the academy, Hegseth argued that “past distractions” had “diluted” the focus of the military, saying, “Our differences don’t make us strong. Our shared mission does.”
It is not the first time Jewish historical material has been caught in the crosshairs of Hegseth’s anti-DEI campaign. In March, following a memo ordering officials to purge Department of Defense digital platforms of all DEI content, websites memorializing the Holocaust were removed.
Among the pages deleted in Hegseth’s DEI sweep were the stories of Kitty Saks, a Holocaust survivor, and Bea Arthur, the Jewish “Golden Girls” actress and World War II Marines veteran.
Arthur’s story along with another article about Holocaust remembrance that was originally taken down have been reinstated following a public outcry, but Saks’ article is still unavailable.
In a February cull of Pentagon school books, a picture book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon who was the first Jewish woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, was placed under review for potential DEI content. It was later put back on shelves, according to Military.com.
At the same time as the Naval Academy removed a display honoring Jewish female graduates ahead of a visit from Hegseth, it also removed books about the Holocaust and antisemitism.
The books, which also covered the history of white supremacy in the United States, were among nearly 400 removed ahead of the visit last week.
The order to remove the books, most of which focused on topics like race, diversity and gender, appeared to come at the behest of Hegseth himself. The Pentagon chief, whose initiatives against diversity, equity and inclusion programming have already led to the removal of other Holocaust remembrance content from the Defense Department’s digital platforms, sent a memo to the Maryland school instructing it to comply with larger anti-”woke” purges at the department. The list of books was made public by the Navy on Friday.
Among the removed books with Jewish content were a history of hate in America written by a former director of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council; an academic study of Holocaust memorials through a gender lens; two books about sexuality in Weimar-era Berlin; and a history of early Jewish American efforts to censor antisemitic media.
The author of the latter book, M. Alison Kibler, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “censoring a book about censorship would be laughable, except that banning a long list of books at the USNA is absolutely serious and alarming.
“It’s unclear to me why my book would be dangerous to the education of Midshipmen — adults who are seeking a well-rounded education; and it’s unclear to me why my book is on the list but other books about race and immigration in the history of the United States are not,” Kibler, a professor at Franklin & Marshall College and author of “Censoring racial ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American struggles over race and representation, 1890-1930,” wrote in an email.
The removals were notable for occurring at the college level; according to free-speech literary advocacy group PEN America, it was the first notable instance of “college-level library banning.” In recent years, K-12 schools across the country have been the sites of high-profile debates over whether and when to ban books.
Many books studying racism and white supremacy, including neo-Nazis, were also pulled, along with books about Muslim and Palestinian Americans. The removal list also includes several renowned American books about race, including Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” and at least one student thesis by a recent Naval Academy graduate.
While the school said the photos of Jewish female graduates were restored after Hegseth left, the book removals appear to be permanent. A representative for the Naval Academy did not return a request for comment.
The list of removed books with Jewish themes includes:
Several other books about white supremacism in the U.S., including “American Swastika”
“Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory,” by Janet Jacobs
“Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America,” by Philip Perlmutter, former director of Boston’s JCRC
“Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity,” by former U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum fellow Robert Beachy
“The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany” by Katie Sutton
“Hate on the net,” a study of online antisemitism and hateful ideologies by Antonio Roversi and Lawrence Smith
“Censoring racial ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American struggles over race and representation, 1890-1930,” by M. Alison Kibler
“Blood and Politics: The history of the white nationalist movement from the margins to the mainstream,” by Leonard Zeskind, a MacArthur Fellow and researcher of antisemitism
“Josiah Nott of Mobile,” a biography of an influential racist 19th-century physician who once wrote a pamphlet outlining “The physical history of the Jewish race,” by Reginald Horsman
“American Hate: Survivors Speak Out,” an account of minority group persecution under the first Trump administration, including Jewish stories, by Arjun Singh Sethi
Grace Gilson wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish news source.
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