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Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Military Academy at West Point cannot enforce a policy against civilian professors that required them to get approval before speaking at certain outside engagements, per a federal court order Tuesday.
- In her order granting a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel also barred the military college from enforcing an informal policy that forbids faculty from sharing their personal opinions while teaching against law professor Tim Bakken.
- Bakken sued West Point in September, alleging the two policies infringe on his First Amendment rights and those of other civilian faculty. Seibel on Tuesday denied West Point’s motion to dismiss the case and wrote that Bakken’s case is “likely to succeed” on its merits.
Dive Insight:
Bakken, a civilian who has worked at West Point since 2000, alleged the two policies are intended to “control, chill and suppress faculty speech.”
The first, instated via institutional memo on Feb. 13, 2025, mandated that West Point faculty obtain approval from their department heads prior to any outside engagements at which they would speak on their “disciplinary areas of expertise” and identify as West Point professors.
The memo included an extensive list of examples of engagements that would need approval, such as journal publications, conference presentations, opinion editorials and social media posts.
The memo came less than three weeks after President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring military colleges like West Point from “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating” certain views his administration deemed “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational.”
A few weeks after the memo took effect, two department heads told Bakken that the new engagement policy was meant to demonstrate obedience to the Trump administration, according to the lawsuit. One allegedly described “radical compliance” as a way for senior military officers at West Point to protect their positions.
Krista Watts, West Point’s vice dean for operations, defended the memo to the court earlier this year.
“The policy stops short of requiring explicit sanction of any anticipated external communication,” she said. “Instead, it requires faculty members to let [West Point] leadership know when external communications using [West Point] affiliation are impending.”
Watts added that the directive is intended to restate existing Army policy on external communications that keep West Point in compliance with federal rules.
Seibel on Tuesday dismissed Watts’ testimony as appearing “to be more a reverse-engineered justification for the policy than a serious attempt to either explain the true motivations for it or to connect it to genuine military needs.”
Moreover, West Point’s given rationale for the memo doesn’t justify “such a broad and standardless intrusion” on civilian faculty members’ speech, the judge wrote.
Bakken also alleged the dean of West Point’s academic board, Shane Reeves, told all faculty in August that it was wrong to share personal opinions or “advocate for a particular position or ideology” when teaching students.
West Point did not refute Bakken’s account of Reeves’ remarks in court filings.
Seibel heavily criticized Reeves’ directive, calling it “nonsensical if the mission is to prepare the nation’s future military officers.”
“For genuine strength and leadership to result, cadets must be exposed to a variety of viewpoints and trained to think critically about them. West Point cadets are already, by definition, smart, tough and patriotic,” Seibel wrote Tuesday. “They are not snowflakes who will somehow be harmed by learning about controversial issues or competing viewpoints. They will not somehow be weakened in their future defense of our country if their classroom discussions are robust and open.”
Seibel, a George W. Bush appointee, acknowledged that Reeves’ directive “is not a formal policy.” But she said that “it is plain that West Point prefers that its faculty not express personal opinions in the classroom” on several issues and that “Reeves’s remarks were intended to curb such expression.”
This lawsuit is not the first time Bakken has sued West Point. In 2012, a federal judge ruled that West Point had retaliated against him for reporting that retired military officers were being hired and paid more as faculty members over more qualified civilian candidates.
Bakken later wrote about the experience in a 2020 book, arguing that unquestioning faith in the military causes the U.S. to lose wars and waste trillions of dollars. Had Bakken’s book been published under the memo, it would have been subject to West Point approval.
