Books by Robert P. Jones, Anthea Butler, Jim Wallis, Maya Angelou and Ibram X. Kendi are among the 381 volumes banned from the U.S. Naval Academy library by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last week.
“It is heartbreaking and frightening that the Oval Office and the Department of Defense have now ordered outright book banning. But I am taking comfort from being in the company of such courageous, important authors,” said Jones, founder of PRRI and author of White Too Long, which was among the banned books.
That book, which details the legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity, won a 2021 American Book Award and was a national bestseller.
Robert P. Jones
“The list of banned books reads like a who’s who of leading writers,” Jones wrote on his Substack. “It includes award-winning and best-selling books, many of which have established themselves as foundational works in their fields.”
Other books on the list include Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide, and Collective Memory by Janet Jacobs; White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America by Anthea Butler, history professor at the University of Pennsylvania; America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners; and How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi.
Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, will move this summer to Howard University as professor of history and director of its Howard Institute for Advanced Study. He is the National Book Award-winning author of 16 books for adults and children, including 10 New York Times bestsellers — five of which were No. 1 New York Times bestsellers.
“Pulling the books off the shelves is another step in the Trump administration’s far-reaching effort to eliminate so-called DEI content from federal agencies, including policies, programs, online and social media postings and curriculum at schools,” reported the Associated Press.
Steve Israel
Former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, who is former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was among those blasting Hegseth’s book ban.
“We sharpen our warriors’ effectiveness when we develop their skills in critical thinking, languages, cultures and history. But we are now going dangerously backward,” Israel wrote in an op-ed for The Hill.
“The act of banning history books in a naval library is a betrayal of the men and women who keep us free,” he declared.
He added: “Instead of supporting our warriors with libraries that will give them an unvarnished telling of history, the Pentagon has decided to whitewash it. Instead of encouraging critical thinking skills, the Navy has decided to dull them.”
Jones offered more explanation of the significance of the ban.
“To understand just how chilling this book ban is, you have to understand the place that the Naval Academy holds in the American higher education landscape,” he wrote. “As a selective four-year college, it is the highest-ranked among the three U.S. military academies. According to US News & World Report, the Naval Academy is ranked No. 4 in the National Liberal Arts Colleges category, just behind Williams College, Amherst College and Swarthmore College. It ranks higher, for example, than well-known prestigious liberal arts colleges such as Bowdoin, Pomona, Wellesley and Carleton. Its alumni include the likes of President Jimmy Carter and Sen. John McCain.”
The Christian nationalist agenda of the Trump administration is dangerous beyond expression, Jones said.
“This defilement of a respected academic institution by those who are waging an outright assault on higher education is, disturbingly, the goal. Honor and integrity are inconvenient stumbling blocks on the road to absolute power. To create a new American authoritarianism, Trump and Hegseth must invert our most cherished values, maligning truth-telling as divisive ideology and censoring critical scholarship in the name of freedom of speech.”
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