As the legal court battle over the Trump administration's efforts to ban certain books in Defense Department schools for military children makes its way through the courts, new details are emerging about the parallel effort to ban some books at the military service academies.
In April, the Naval Academy became the only one of the three service academies to release a complete list of the books it pulled from its library following the orders of the Trump administration. Of those 381 books that were identified in the spring, an official told Military.com that 21 have been formally removed -- including nine from the original list.
According to a list of the 21 books ultimately pulled from the shelves that was reviewed by Military.com, the titles all deal with affirmative action programs, diversity and discrimination, and the experiences of transgender people.
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The list included titles like "How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi -- a book that has become a frequent target of criticism by conservatives -- but also included books that represent conservative viewpoints.
Among the 21 banned books were "Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America" and "The Declining Importance of Race and Gender in the Labor Market: The Role of Employment Discrimination Policies."
The latter book received praise from a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, ahead of its publication in 2012.
The book made the case that civil rights laws had little impact on women and Black people entering the workforce -- a finding that one economist said "calls into question the continued usefulness of an elaborate civil rights enforcement program that may well be highly counterproductive."
Also included on the list was the book "Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming Out Transgender."
The book was written by Chris Beck, a former Navy SEAL who transitioned to being a woman for a period of time and started going by the name Kristin Beck. Beck has since "detransitioned," a move that coincided with his adoption of strong Christian beliefs.
In April, The New York Times reported the academy still had two copies of Adolf Hitler's manifesto Mein Kampf on its shelves. That book was not among the 21 titles banned.
The Naval Academy began its review in March after top officials in the Pentagon ordered the academic institution to do so.
Leaders at the school didn't think they needed to remove any books since President Donald Trump's January executive order banning materials on diversity applied to kindergarten through 12th-grade schools that receive federal funding -- not colleges.
That effort has yielded a list of 596 banned titles at Defense Department schools around the world.
The Naval Academy's initial search had yielded a list of about 900 books that was eventually winnowed down to the 381 titles that were released in April by the Navy.
The list included titles by prominent Black authors such as Maya Angelou as well as Black politicians like Bakari Sellers and Stacey Abrams. The list also included a book on female Jewish experiences in the Holocaust and a midshipman's research thesis.
In May, the Pentagon created a temporary Academic Libraries Committee "consisting of knowledgeable leaders, educators and library professionals" from across the Defense Department who would work to help identify books for censorship and then help decide what to do with them once they were slated for a ban.
The official that spoke with Military.com to confirm details of this story said the ultimate fate of the 21 books identified by the academy was with this committee.
Military.com reached out to Pentagon officials with questions about the fate of the books removed by the Naval Academy, as well as questions about how many titles were removed from the other service academies, but did not receive a reply in time for publication.
According to the Pentagon's policy, all the military's war colleges and service academies were to "promptly" identify books on about 20 topics and set them aside by May 21.
Related: Here Are the 596 Books Being Banned by Defense Department Schools
