Heritage Foundation Pressures Naval Academy Into Axing Lecture On Militaries Under Authoritarian Rule

Rick Hutzell writes for the Baltimore Banner:

You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy. All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear. She’s a New York University historian with a book on what happens to the military when authoritarians take power. She shows up as a commentator on MSNBC, connecting former President Donald Trump to some of the dictators she’s studied.

The academy’s history department invited her to speak about her work at the annual Bancroft Memorial Lecture. Then she was disinvited. Her politics were the problem, not her lecture. Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page roadmap for the next Republican president, its authors say they want the service academies scrubbed of anything and anyone deemed insufficiently pure of thought — exactly what they did to Ben-Ghiat.

Read the full article.

Naval Academy disinvites historian @ruthbenghiat from a history department lecture under pressure from the Heritage Foundation–founders of Project 2025.
Intended lecture was what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule through history https://t.co/WynEfniA97

— Jayne Miller (@jemillerbalt) October 22, 2024

Historian @ruthbenghiat was invited to speak at the Naval Academy. Then she was uninvited. This is exactly what she’s been warning about—caving in to the demands of authoritarian leaders, even before they’re in place. Dangerous & shameful. https://t.co/okvB0rxUm2

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 24, 2024