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Jettisoning the motto in today’s environment poses a real risk to the substance of West Point’s mission and to national security.. March 7, Superintendent Steve Gilland announced a planned change to the official mission of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point: eliminating the words “Duty,” “Honor,” and “Country.” It is impossible to overstate the reverence with which those three words have been held at West Point, in the entire Army, and throughout the U.S. military. In his 1962 farewell address to the West Point Corps of Cadets, Gen. Douglas MacArthur encapsulated their meaning for American soldiers: Duty, Honor, Country...

During the mid and late 1990’s, my mentor and boss at Defense Watch, the late Colonel David Hackworth frequently reported on the military’s descent into the PC maelstrom. What had merely been the rantings of the feminist fringe in Washington in the 1970’s and 80’s, had materialized into policy the moment the great draft dodger swore to protect and defend the constitution in 1993. The self-immolation of a phenomenal fighting force had begun. Highly decorated and a veteran of three wars, Hack knew more than anyone that the Pentagon’s perfumed princes didn’t have the intestinal fortitude nor the foresight to...

Duty – Honor – Country. Those three hallowed words, reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage, when courage seems to fail; to regain faith, when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. . Douglas MacArthur graduated from West Point in 1903. By that time, “Duty Honor Country” was already recognized as the official West Point motto. Since then, it has become ubiquitous – Among many other things, it is on the West Point crest that...

In June 2023, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) prevailed in complaints alleging racially discriminatory admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The 6-3 Supreme Court decision in these cases eliminated decades of ambiguity about what aspects of race were permissible in candidate evaluations at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities. Following the Court’s decision, a number of analysts and commentators noted that Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion contained a footnote exempting military service academies. That footnote reads: The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s...

The US Supreme Court on Friday declined to block West Point’s race-based admissions program that discriminates against whites while a lawsuit against the military academy makes its way through the lower courts. Recall that last year the Supreme Court crushed the racist ‘Affirmative Action’ policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The High Court ruled 6-2 in the Harvard case with liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson opting out. The Supreme Court justices ruled 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case brought by Students for Fair Admission (SFFA). The conservative justices said the race-based affirmative action policies violated...

Student group requested high court block race-based admissions at the academy amid ongoing legal battle.. West Point defended using race in its admissions process in response to a student group's request that the Supreme Court force the military academy to pause the practice while a lawsuit makes its way through lower courts. "For more than forty years, our Nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national-security imperative," U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a Tuesday court filing. "Achieving that diversity requires limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as...

Established in 1802 under President Thomas Jefferson, West Point is our nation’s oldest armed services academy and the first engineering school in the United States. Why engineering? Because it is a battlefield-relevant discipline that promotes the kind of critical thinking military leaders need to fight and win wars. Successful combat officers must be able to solve basic engineering problems, such as determining whether bridges will support trucks and armored vehicles, how best to cross rivers and other obstacles, how to plan and build fortifications, and where to place demolition charges, to name just a few required skills. According to the...

West Point has a storied place in American history. During the Revolution, Benedict Arnold tried to give the fort to the British. After the Revolution, it became America’s first military academy, graduating such luminaries as Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, Generals Omar Bradley, Douglas MacArthur, and George S. Patton, and many other men who have shaped our nation. All the alumni were driven by patriotism even if, as with Robert E. Lee, that patriotism was misplaced. Now, though, West Point has a “minor” that is the essence of anti-patriotism. Welcome to West Point’s Diversity and Inclusion Studies Minor.West Point describes...

Last week, Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group, filed a lawsuit against the US Military Academy at West Point, contending that the academy’s use of race in admissions is unconstitutional. This comes on the heels of the group’s victory in June in a landmark Supreme Court case against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over affirmative action. The lawsuit asks the court to take up an issue that was mentioned in passing in the earlier case. A footnote in Chief Justice John Robert’s majority opinion notes that the military academies were not party to...

Well, West Point had an good run, didn’t it? Once a beacon of prestige and elite training, this institution produced some of America’s most outstanding leaders. But times have changed. Today, West Point is just another woke joke, churning out young Marxists with contempt for the very nation they’re supposedly preparing to defend. West Point has reached the point of no return, particularly after the exposure of their latest “woke” agenda. Believe it or not, but they’re now offering degrees in “Equity and Diversity.” And no, unfortunately, this isn’t a joke. Here’s the information about the woke course from West...

When Ibram X. Kendi’s preposterous thesis that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” becomes mainstream practice, you know things are upside down. Kendi is the author of the poorly reasoned 2019 leftist propaganda book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” which became not only a bestseller, but a clarion call for progressives. In a speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Kendi put his anti-reasoning skills on display, according to the New York Post. “When I see racial disparities, I see racism,” Kendi said. If that isn’t a blanket generalization, the logical fallacy of that name has no meaning....

A nearly 200-year-old West Point time capsule that appeared to yield little more than dust when it was opened during a disappointing livestream contained hidden treasure after all, the U.S. Military Academy said Wednesday. It was just more hidden than expected. The lead box believed to have been placed by cadets in the base of a monument actually contained six silver American coins dating from 1795 to 1828 and a commemorative medal, West Point said in a news release. All were discovered in the sediment of the box, which at Monday’s ceremonial opening at the New York academy appeared to...

A long-forgotten time capsule at West Point recently discovered inside the base of a monument and believed to have been left by cadets in the late 1820s is expected to be pried open Monday. The contents of the small lead box could possibly provide a window into the early, more Spartan days of the storied US Military Academy. It’s not certain exactly when the box was placed in the monument’s marble base or who chose any items inside, though a committee of five cadets that may have been involved with the time capsule included 1829 graduate Robert E. Lee, the...

Vice President Harris told graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that they are entering an “increasingly unsettled world” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and with continued threats around the world. Harris said in her commencement address to the West Point graduates that the world has changed significantly since they began as students at the academy. She noted that the pandemic caused the deaths of millions and “upended” life for many more, the U.S. ended its longest war in Afghanistan and Russia launched the first major European ground war since World War II with its invasion...

The vice president did not mention Afghanistan in the five words she devoted to the topic. But she took the time to warn the cadets that “an accelerating climate crisis” is one of the “biggest challenges the military will face during their careers.” Afghanistan was swiftly reconquered by the Taliban after the United States withdrew in 2021, ending a 20-year campaign. The House Oversight Committee is currently investigating the debacle.

NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday will become the first woman to deliver a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy, an institution that has made slow progress diversifying its ranks in the four decades since the first class of female cadets graduated.This year some 950 men and women are expected to take part in the graduation ceremony in West Point, New York.

West Point affirmed that prospective candidates should be vaccinated against COVID-19, weeks after the mandate was officially revoked, according to multiple statements obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. After the DCNF reached out, West Point reversed course, saying it no longer required the vaccine for new cadets. “There is no telling how many potential cadets this arbitrary mandate has dissuaded from serving our nation,” Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana told the DCNF. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point affirmed a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for incoming cadets weeks after the Secretary of Defense did away with the military...

Created by the fiscal 2021 national defense authorization act, the Naming Commission’s duties included recommending procedures for renaming Department of Defense assets “to prevent commemoration of the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily” with them. While nine U.S. Army posts named for Confederates have received the most attention, the commission’s “remit” extends much further. In fact, a logical end point to its (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion-inspired) work is nowhere to be found: The Commission recognizes that [defense] assets commemorating the Confederacy or an individual who voluntarily served with the Confederacy will continue to be identified after the submission of...

Reversal comes as Congress considers bill seeking redress for military's discharged vaccine refuseniks. The United States Military Academy is reimposing restrictions on unvaccinated cadets despite the lifting of the military's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, reports military attorney R. Davis Younts, a reversal that comes even as Congress mulls legislation seeking redress for service members dismissed for vaccine refusal. The Department of Defense rescinded the military vaccine mandate pursuant to the Dec. 23 enactment of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which included a measure repealing the mandate. During the height of the pandemic, West Point implemented a policy prohibiting cadets...

Before turning against the U.S. military to command the Confederate army, Robert E. Lee served as the superintendent of West Point, the hallowed military academy that produced patriots like Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower.But in the coming days, the storied academy will take down a portrait of Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform from its library, where it has been hanging since the 1950s and place it in storage. It will also remove the stone bust of the Civil War's top southern general at Reconciliation Plaza. And Lee’s quote about honor will be stripped from the academy’s...