To the Editor:
Re “West Point Is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate,” by Graham Parsons (Opinion guest essay, May 12):
Dr. Parsons’ rebuke of the Trump administration’s chokehold on academic freedom and its attack on “broad-based, critical-minded, nonpartisan education” at West Point attests to a rare character trait: courage.
I am a former Air Force captain trained under the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in the 1980s. My fellow cadets and I were exposed to every type of scholarship and viewpoint that our civilian university had to offer. Many of us availed ourselves of diverse courses in which we could listen to the opinions of our professors and other students and test their theories and ideas against our own viewpoints and ideologies.
I believe that those lessons, experienced in concert with our military training, made us better informed, more critically thinking Air Force officers when it came time to lead and follow our oaths to our Constitution while in uniform and beyond.
The fact that the Trump administration believes that hobbling the minds of our future officers is in our national interest betrays the president’s lack of confidence in the men and women in uniform who must be experts in leadership, history, ethics, democracy and our Constitution, warts and all. May we have the courage to defend their right to knowledge.
Wilder J. Leavitt
Bethesda, Md.
To the Editor:
On June 8, 1966, 579 young men graduated from West Point. I was among them. Some 30 of us were killed in Vietnam, and many others were wounded.
But our class continued to serve, empowered by our education and dedicated to the oath to the Constitution we took that day. Over the ensuing years of my service (in the Army, the State Department, the Senate staff and the C.I.A.), I watched with pride as West Point and the other service academies grew into world-class academic institutions.
I was therefore heartsick to read Graham Parsons’ essay describing the craven response of West Point to the know-nothing dictates of the administration.
Some of today’s cadets and midshipmen will sit in the Situation Room advising a future president about security challenges that we cannot imagine. When that day comes, they must be equipped to provide wise counsel, drawing not only on their experience from having commanded large forces in combat but also from a deep understanding of the world and the country they serve.
They will not have acquired this knowledge nor the confidence to express it if, as President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demand, they must stick their heads in the sand during their days at the academies.
I therefore salute Professor Parsons and hope that when these dangerous times pass, West Point will return to the core values and principles that have served this country so well for so many decades.
Jeffrey H. Smith
Washington
To the Editor:
Regarding Graham Parsons’ excellent and chilling description of the changes at the U.S. Military Academy:
My father graduated from West Point in 1945. Although he resigned from the Army in 1954, he proudly wore his West Point ring for the rest of his life, maintained his affiliation with the school and, most important, taught his children by word and example to live by West Point’s motto, “Duty, Honor, Country.”
As much as I miss him, I am glad my father is not alive to witness the degradation of the institution he so revered.
Sydney Ladensohn Stern
New York
That Plane From Qatar Would Belong to Us, Not to Trump
To the Editor:
Re “Qatar Is Said to Give Trump Official Plane” (front page, May 12):
Our president may not receive a gift from a foreign ruler or from a foreign state without approval from Congress. The gift of a plane becomes property of the United States. It will especially be the property of the U.S. when it is fitted for presidential service.
It will not be the ex-president’s private plane to use as he wishes when he leaves office.
The plane will belong to “we the people.”
Thomas V. Koehler
Two Harbors, Minn.
To the Editor:
The gift, as described, is a clear-cut violation of the Emoluments Clause of our Constitution, whether or not Donald Trump is going to be able to continue to use it after his term in office. Don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.
Further, it is an outrageous example of how this presidency is for sale. Mr. Trump and his administration reek of corruption. Consider, as another example, the enormous crypto scams.
This should be unacceptable to all Americans interested in honest government.
William Titelman
Athens
The writer is a U.S. citizen and a retired lawyer.
