Air Force Academy officials have canceled an upcoming annual lecture after discovering the speaker's online history of disparaging President Donald Trump, prompting serious concern from the donor who supports the series.
Academy alumnus David Jannetta started funding the series in 2008 to bring in writers and artists that have contributed to the understanding of war and encourage critical thinking among cadets.
When Superintendent Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind called Jannetta on Friday to tell him that the school had decided it was not appropriate for University of Utah professor Paisley Rekdal to speak as scheduled in September because she had made disparaging remarks about Trump, Jannetta said he was disappointed and taken aback. Jannetta said the superintendent told him that while Rekdal had a right to express her opinions, it was not appropriate for her to appear at a military academy.
"I won’t support a lecture series, where again, the author has to pass some muster of a litmus test for political reasons," said Jannetta, who planned to discuss his charitable giving further with the academy's Association of Graduates while visiting in September.
Jannetta said he was inspired to start the series after seeing Joseph Heller, the author of "Catch-22," appear at the school while he was a cadet. "Catch-22" is a satire of modern warfare and bureaucracy set during World War II.
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The Jannetta Lecture Series, endowed by Air Force Academy graduate David Jannett, brings in "respected writers and artists who have contributed to our understanding of war," according to the academy's website.
"It was striking to me ... how much this institution must have confidence in itself to bring a book like this to the cadets and have them study it," he said.
In the past, a speaker's politics have not played a role in planning the series and, Jannetta said, he won't support the lectures if that's the case going forward. But the academy said Tuesday it was canceling the speech in an effort to remain apolitical.
The academy said in an official statement that it canceled the lecture because of Rekdal's comments about the president.
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"While we welcome and will continue to invite speakers who encourage vigorous debate on a variety of subjects, we have chosen not to move forward with this engagement consistent with the U.S. Air Force Academy's non-partisan obligation."
The academy went on to say the Jannetta Lecture Series has been a valuable component of the school's offerings by bringing in writers and artists to contribute to the intellectual development of cadets.
"We are currently reviewing our speaker selection process to ensure it is consistent, thorough and aligned with our standards, and we look forward to hosting an iteration of the lecture series at a later date," the statement said.
As part of the speaker series in 2014, the academy hosted Roxana Robinson, the author of "Sparta" who grew up in a Quaker community and questioned whether war was moral, Jannetta said. It was a tough conversation for some cadets.
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"The more cadets are challenged, the better leaders they are going to be," said Jannetta, who has attended all the lectures.
Rekdal had planned to discuss how wars are memorialized using portions of her book, "The Broken Country," and her poetry. Some war memorials can simplify the conflict, focusing on the reason for the war. Others, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a black granite wall listing the names of the fallen in Washington, D.C., ask the visitor to consider how they "stand in relationship to the enduring wounds of war," she explained.
American artist and architect Maya Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and listed the names of casualties by their date of death to give visitors a sense of the timeline, Rekdal said.
"She was thinking about the nature of time and grief."
Rekdal's book explores the legacy of the Vietnam War and the psychological wounds it inflicted. It covers the story of a Vietnamese man, Kiet Thanh Ly, who stabbed several people in a grocery store parking lot in 2012, and explores how that crime fits more broadly into the war's trauma, according to the official summary of the book.
Telling the stories of the Vietnamese broadens understanding about those who were our allies and who immigrated to the U.S. to become Americans, she said.
"History is better served when we hear more people's stories," said Rekdal, who comes from a family with many service members.
The academy representative who informed Rekdal her September lecture had been canceled did not give her the official reason, she said.
In a public post on social media, Rekdal said she was told by a faculty member that high-ranking military supervisors at the academy Googled her, found something out about her, her book or her poems and ordered the lecture to be canceled.
An earlier post on Rekdal's Facebook feed references the president and executive orders: "If you care about free speech at all, Trump’s newest EO targeting student protests and—effectively—all international and/or undocumented students is not just unconstitutional but one more move towards authoritarianism."
After finding out about the cancelation, Rekdal said in her public post, she was unsurprised by it, noting it is happening to more and more speakers.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression tracks attempts to block lectures on college campuses and has found they have been happening more frequently for about a decade, said Sean Stevens, chief research adviser for the group. Attempts to block events dipped in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic when fewer in-person events were held.
"We are very concerned with the increasing number of attempts and the sheer volume of them — there is roughly one every two to three days a week now on a campus somewhere," Stevens said.
The U.S. Naval Academy is among the institutions that have canceled a lecture. The school canceled Ryan Holiday, a best-selling author, because he refused to remove slides from a presentation critiquing the school for removing almost 400 books.
Following the Air Force Academy cancellation, Jannetta said he planned to personally apologize to Rekdal.
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