I still remember the day I became a patriot.

I was a sophomore in college in 1980, and I was soured on America ¨C especially its war in Vietnam, which had ended five years earlier. I was sitting in class and discussing political philosopher Michael Walzer¡¯s 1977 book Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer was highly critical of American actions in Vietnam, as well as of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. So while his book was ideal for an Ivy League philosophy class, I assumed it would be figuratively burned on sight at military service academies.

Except that our professor then told us that the book was required reading at the US Military Academy at West Point.

That¡¯s when the light bulb went on. There must be something right ¨C indeed, something great ¨C about a country that made its future military leaders reckon with its most difficult moments. For the first time, I felt proud to be an American.

But I am not proud now.

The problems began back in January, when secretary of defense Pete Hegseth??military service academies to purge their curricula of instruction on ¡°critical race theory¡± and ¡°gender ideology¡±. Two days earlier, President Trump had issued an??barring any educational institution run by the armed forces from ¡°promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating¡± any ¡°divisive concepts¡±, including the idea ¡°that America¡¯s founding documents are racist or sexist¡±.

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After that, West Point leaders told instructors to submit their course syllabi for review. A history professor teaching a class about genocide was?. Academics were ordered to from their syllabi. And two history courses ¨C ¡°Topics in Gender History¡± and ¡°Race, Ethnicity, and Nation¡± ¨C were scrapped entirely.

In his order, Hegseth also said military academies ¡°shall teach that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history¡±. But a nation that truly believed in its greatness wouldn¡¯t require its educational institutions to declare that.

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The order marks us as petty and small, not great. And it turns its back on a proud history of intellectual rigour in the US military.

Troops during the Second World War were sent?, including works that were highly critical of American culture and society, such as John Steinbeck¡¯s The Grapes of Wrath and Sinclair Lewis¡¯ Babbitt. Published in pocket-sized paperbacks that soldiers could carry easily on the front, these ¡°armed services editions¡± taught servicemen and women that free speech and open expression?.

¡°BOOKS ARE WEAPONS,¡± declared the??printed in the Dell War series of paperbacks. ¡°In a free democracy, everyone may read what they like.¡±

But no longer at our military academies. The US Naval Academy at Annapolis??from its library to comply with Hegseth¡¯s order, including histories of the Holocaust, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching in America.

Told to identify books that might violate the order, the head librarian at West Point?. So did a tenured philosophy professor, who was??from a course called ¡°Philosophical and Ethical Reasoning¡±.

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You can¡¯t learn to reason if you¡¯re blocked from exploring complex and challenging ideas. And you certainly can¡¯t become an ethical soldier ¨C or commander ¨C if you¡¯re taught to simply follow orders.

That¡¯s why West Point professors have , which explore questions of duty and individual responsibility in wartime. And it¡¯s also why the academy hosted an??by Hugh Thompson, the Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians from American soldiers during the 1968 massacre at My Lai.

To its credit, West Point is still teaching Just and Unjust Wars. But it¡¯s hard to see how the school could conduct an honest assessment of the Vietnam War ¨C or of any other military conflict in American history ¨C if it¡¯s blocked from addressing issues around race, which the Trump administration seems determined to censor.

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?made up 23 per cent of US combat troops in Vietnam, even though they accounted for only 11 per cent of the American population. They were disproportionately assigned to menial duties and passed over for promotions. And they faced?, who burned crosses and flew Confederate flags to celebrate the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the past, all of these facts could be openly shared in West Point classrooms and libraries. Today, they would almost certainly be blocked as ¡°divisive¡±. That should offend anyone who believes in the greatness of our military institutions, or of our country.

In a 2015??taped at West Point, Walzer recalled his frequent visits to the school and the robust debates they fostered: ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any place in the country where war and the ethics of war is taken more seriously than right here, and I had no idea that that was or could be the case.¡±

I had no idea, either. But while West Point made me proud to be an American 40 years ago, now I¡¯m ashamed. Aren¡¯t you?

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?teaches history and education at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the advisory board of the?.