Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth is causing a major shake-up among the faculty at America’s military academies in an effort to strengthen the educational focus on military preparedness.
The Department of War (DOW) issued a press release September 29 announcing the latest change the Trump administration is making at U.S. service academies, including West Point and the Naval Academy. In order to keep the academies “laser-focused on lethality and readiness,” there will no longer be any civilians appointed to tenured positions at the academies.
“This directly addresses the critical issues of academic stagnation and complacency that are often associated with tenure, and which threaten to dilute the academies' primary focus on warfighting and tactical dominance,” the DOW press release argued.
This will necessitate a major hiring adjustment, and I would not be at all surprised if the Trump administration ends up in court over this simply because judges seem to interfere with everything this administration does, particularly if it undercuts bloated bureaucracy.
DOW ended the press release by explaining, “In place of tenure, the Military Departments will implement new hiring plans to prioritize flexibility and faculty contribution to the warfighting mission, ensuring future officers are unequivocally prepared to lead our Service members and win on the modern battlefield.”
To give an illustration of how much of a change this new rule will trigger, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point currently has a webpage boasting about its many opportunities for civilian staff and faculty. These positions include everything from campus operations to full-time professors. West Point highlights “[c]ompetitive salaries and opportunities for postdoctoral, fellowship, and visiting professor roles.” And then there’s the key quote: “Approximately one-fourth of West Point’s faculty are civilian educators under Title 10 U.S. Code.”
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And that is just one academy. There will have to be a hiring blitz to replace tenured faculty unless Hegseth plans to let current civilian tenured faculty stay temporarily, applying the new rules for the moment only to new hires. From the press release, it seems this latter option could be the reality.
It is interesting to me, however, that Hegseth himself has emphasized the importance of having civilian leadership of the military before, as he was criticizing extremely woke generals. As always, there is a balancing act between having almost entirely military leadership and a few civilians advising or — in the case of the president — leading.
Former Navy officer Greg Grigoryan gushed in an article for the U.S. Naval Institute last year about civilian faculty, but in the midst of all the praise there was this interesting paragraph:
My only suggestion for civilian instructors is that they remember they are not at the academies to produce scholars but military officers. They teach cadets and midshipmen the value of historical perspective and help them understand the complexities of the world that complicate decision-making and that solutions to many problems—both within the military and around the world—usually require a broader perspective and often the assistance of civilian agencies. Perhaps another way to do this would be to make greater use of retired officers, well-equipped to articulate the practical relevance of what is being taught to midshipmen and cadets in how it would relate to their time in the service.
What he was reluctantly admitting in this paragraph is the fact that there is always something civilian instructors will be missing as they try to teach future officers who are already living a military life.
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