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NYT: The Naval Academy Thinks Midshipmen Can't Handle the Truth
NYT - The Naval Academy Thinks Midshipmen Can’t Handle the Truth (Gift article)
April 19, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET
By Ryan Holiday
Mr. Holiday had been asked to give one of the Stutt Lectures at the U.S. Naval Academy on April 14.
For the past four years, I have been delivering a series of lectures on the virtues of Stoicism to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and I was supposed to continue this on April 14 to the entire sophomore class on the theme of wisdom.
Roughly an hour before my talk was to begin, I received a call: Would I refrain from any mention in my remarks of the recent removal of 381 supposedly controversial books from the Nimitz library on campus? My slides had been sent up the chain of command at the school, which was now, as it was explained to me, extremely worried about reprisals if my talk appeared to flout Executive Order 14151 (“Ending Radical and Wasteful Government D.E.I. Programs and Preferencing.”)
When I declined, my lecture — as well as a planned speech before the Navy football team, with whom my books on Stoicism are popular was canceled. (The academy “made a schedule change that aligns with its mission of preparing midshipmen for careers of service,” a Navy spokesperson told Times Opinion. “The Naval Academy is an apolitical institution.”)
Had I been allowed to go ahead, this is the story I was going to tell the class:
/snip
April 19, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET
By Ryan Holiday
Mr. Holiday had been asked to give one of the Stutt Lectures at the U.S. Naval Academy on April 14.
For the past four years, I have been delivering a series of lectures on the virtues of Stoicism to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and I was supposed to continue this on April 14 to the entire sophomore class on the theme of wisdom.
Roughly an hour before my talk was to begin, I received a call: Would I refrain from any mention in my remarks of the recent removal of 381 supposedly controversial books from the Nimitz library on campus? My slides had been sent up the chain of command at the school, which was now, as it was explained to me, extremely worried about reprisals if my talk appeared to flout Executive Order 14151 (“Ending Radical and Wasteful Government D.E.I. Programs and Preferencing.”)
When I declined, my lecture — as well as a planned speech before the Navy football team, with whom my books on Stoicism are popular was canceled. (The academy “made a schedule change that aligns with its mission of preparing midshipmen for careers of service,” a Navy spokesperson told Times Opinion. “The Naval Academy is an apolitical institution.”)
Had I been allowed to go ahead, this is the story I was going to tell the class:
/snip
6 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Until his father died and he returned to Georgia to run the family business. The Navy was not happy, they had big plans for him - and Rosalynn didn't speak to him for awhile after that. He learned a lesson from that since he hadn't included her in his decision and she loved the freedom of being a Navy wife. Jimmy Carter included all this, and much more, in his autobiography "A Full Life: Reflections at 90." 
How many times have I listened to his autobiography, read by the author?? 