To the Editor:
Re “West Point Is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate,” by Graham Parsons (Opinion visitor essay, Could 12):
Dr. Parsons’ rebuke of the Trump administration’s chokehold on educational freedom and its assault on “broad-based, critical-minded, nonpartisan schooling” at West Level attests to a uncommon character trait: braveness.
I’m a former Air Pressure captain skilled below the Reserve Officers’ Coaching Corps within the Eighties. My fellow cadets and I have been uncovered to each sort of scholarship and viewpoint that our civilian college needed to supply. Many people availed ourselves of numerous programs during which we might take heed to the opinions of our professors and different college students and check their theories and concepts towards our personal viewpoints and ideologies.
I imagine that these classes, skilled in live performance with our navy coaching, made us higher knowledgeable, extra critically pondering Air Pressure officers when it got here time to guide and observe our oaths to our Structure whereas in uniform and past.
The truth that the Trump administration believes that hobbling the minds of our future officers is in our nationwide curiosity betrays the president’s insecurity within the women and men in uniform who should be consultants in management, historical past, ethics, democracy and our Structure, warts and all. Could we’ve the braveness to defend their proper to data.
Wilder J. Leavitt
Bethesda, Md.
To the Editor:
On June 8, 1966, 579 young men graduated from West Point. I used to be amongst them. Some 30 of us have been killed in Vietnam, and plenty of others have been wounded.
However our class continued to serve, empowered by our schooling and devoted to the oath to the Structure we took that day. Over the following years of my service (within the Military, the State Division, the Senate workers and the C.I.A.), I watched with pleasure as West Level and the opposite service academies grew into world-class educational establishments.
I used to be due to this fact heartsick to learn Graham Parsons’ essay describing the craven response of West Level to the know-nothing dictates of the administration.
A few of at the moment’s cadets and midshipmen will sit within the State of affairs Room advising a future president about safety challenges that we can not think about. When that day comes, they should be outfitted to offer smart counsel, drawing not solely on their expertise from having commanded giant forces in fight but in addition from a deep understanding of the world and the nation they serve.
They won’t have acquired this data nor the boldness to specific it if, as President Trump and Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth demand, they need to stick their heads within the sand throughout their days on the academies.
I due to this fact salute Professor Parsons and hope that when these harmful instances move, West Level will return to the core values and rules which have served this nation so nicely for thus many a long time.
Jeffrey H. Smith
Washington
To the Editor:
Relating to Graham Parsons’ glorious and chilling description of the adjustments on the U.S. Navy Academy:
My father graduated from West Level in 1945. Though he resigned from the Military in 1954, he proudly wore his West Level ring for the remainder of his life, maintained his affiliation with the college and, most vital, taught his youngsters by phrase and instance to dwell by West Level’s motto, “Responsibility, Honor, Nation.”
As a lot as I miss him, I’m glad my father isn’t alive to witness the degradation of the establishment he so revered.
Sydney Ladensohn Stern
New York
That Aircraft From Qatar Would Belong to Us, To not Trump
To the Editor:
Re “Qatar Is Said to Give Trump Official Plane” (entrance web page, Could 12):
Our president could not obtain a present from a overseas ruler or from a overseas state with out approval from Congress. The present of a aircraft turns into property of the USA. It’ll particularly be the property of the U.S. when it’s fitted for presidential service.
It won’t be the ex-president’s non-public aircraft to make use of as he needs when he leaves workplace.
The aircraft will belong to “we the folks.”
Thomas V. Koehler
Two Harbors, Minn.
To the Editor:
The present, as described, is a clear-cut violation of the Emoluments Clause of our Structure, whether or not or not Donald Trump goes to have the ability to proceed to make use of it after his time period in workplace. Don’t let anybody attempt to inform you in any other case.
Additional, it’s an outrageous instance of how this presidency is on the market. Mr. Trump and his administration reek of corruption. Contemplate, as one other instance, the large crypto scams.
This must be unacceptable to all People concerned about sincere authorities.
William Titelman
Athens
The author is a U.S. citizen and a retired lawyer.
