A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from enforcing policies that limited how civilian professors could speak in class and in public, handing a setback to rules tied to a January 2025 Trump administration order. Judge Cathy Seibel also denied the government’s request to throw out the lawsuit.
Seibel said the academy could not require civilian faculty members to seek approval before speaking publicly and could not stop them from sharing their personal views in the classroom. She called the rules a “blunt force instrument” and said they were not preventing “any real harm,” while blocking cadets from “experiencing a robust classroom debate.”
The ruling is the latest turn in a fight that began in September, when law professor Tim Bakken sued West Point over what he described as a crackdown on free expression. Bakken said the academy moved quickly after the January 2025 executive order, which barred the military from promoting what it described as un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist and irrational theories. By the following month, West Point had begun putting in place policies that restricted civilian professors’ in-class expression and required approval before they could mention their military affiliation in outside journal publications, conference presentations, media interviews, podcasts, opinion editorials, blog posts and social media posts.
The case also points to broader changes Bakken says swept through the academy. The suit alleges that West Point officials and academics removed books from its library, deleted words from course syllabi, eliminated various courses and majors, and took the publications tab off a faculty website. Bakken said one colonel told him the steps were meant to show the academy’s “radical compliance” with the White House’s campaign to root out wokeness in the military.
For Bakken, the policies were not abstract. He said he actively declined to respond to certain student questions because of the rules, and said he was unsure how he would promote his forthcoming book under the restrictions. After the ruling, he said he could once again “search for truth, and not be subject to the censorship of the military and the government.”
West Point said in a statement that, “In accordance with standing procedures, the Academy does not comment on current litigation.” It added that “West Point will continue to work with Department of Justice attorneys from the Southern District of New York on next steps.”
The decision is preliminary, but it leaves West Point unable to enforce the speech policies while the case moves forward. Bakken, who previously won one whistleblower dispute against the academy over its hiring practices, said he will now seek a permanent injunction to stop the policies for good.
