U.S. Naval Academy Leadership Executes an Immediate ‘Ass Covering About Face’ After MRFF Exposes Shameful Attempt to Placate SecDef Hegseth’s Tender Sensibilities Regarding Constitutionally Guaranteed Equality

April 3, 2025

Since delivering a notably petulant anti-DEI opening statement to the U.S. Senate during his nomination hearing on January 24, 2025, and following his swearing-in as the 29th Secretary of Defense on January 25, 2025 (51-50 Senate approval vote), the new U.S. SecDef Petey Hegseth has shown his naked affinity for the Orwellian Memory Hole regarding any honorable service by non-White/Christian/Male U.S. Military service members.  Early examples of SecDef Hegseth’s love for the ‘memory hole’ included immediate removal of displays and information from the Pentagon regarding:

Of particular note are ongoing Pentagon removals of historical tributes to female service members:

• Tributes to Jackie Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers.
• Historic photos of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.
• Biographies of prominent figures like Medgar Evers.

(source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/pentagon-anti-dei-campaign-images-027205)

• Stories of military “firsts,” such as the first female Army Reserve graduate of Ranger School and the first female fighter pilot.

“Most female aviator stories and photographs are disappearing—including from the archives. From the WASPs to fighter pilots, @AFThunderbirds to @BlueAngels —they’ve erased us,” Carey Lohrenz, one of the Navy’s first female F-14 Tomcat pilots, posted to X. “It’s an across the board devastating loss of history and information.” Among the webpages removed include one about the Women Air Service Pilots, or WASPs, the female World War II pilots who were vital in ferrying warplanes for the military, and the Air Force Thunderbirds.

(source:  https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-03-22/pentagon-dei-purge-remove-restore-online-content-17230027.html)

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded with a predictably petulant and scapegoating statement apparently intended to soothe the tender feelings of SecDef Hegseth and POTUS tRump on the matter:

“This is fake news and anyone with a pulse knows it!” the Defense Department’s new “Rapid Response” social media account asserted March 7. “We are NOT removing images of the Enola Gay or any other pictures that honor the legacy of our warfighters.” Over time, the Pentagon has shifted its public response as more examples of deleted pages came to light. On Thursday [3/20/2025], Parnell acknowledged in a video posted online that: “Because of the realities of AI tools and other software, some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed. We want to be very, very clear: History is not DEI. When content is either mistakenly removed, or if it’s maliciously removed [emphasis added], we continue to work quickly to restore it.”

“I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this — that anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is, is frankly, incorrect,” Parnell said during a Pentagon media briefing. “Our shared purpose and unity are our strength.”

On April 1, 2025, MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda reported in the Daily Kos on the rapid and gutlessly insidious spread of SecDef Hegseth’s ‘memory hole’ policy priority to the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA):

This is what it’s come to. Scrambling to hide any “wokeness” ahead of Secretary of Anti-Wokeness Petey Hegseth’s visit today, the U.S. Naval Academy removed virtually all photos of female Jewish Academy graduates from a Jewish naval history display but left the photos of male Jewish graduates and servicemen.

The photos of the Academy’s distinguished Jewish graduates, both male and female, were displayed in Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel, named for the 1806 Jewish DEI-hire who became the first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy, with the bulk of the building’s construction funded by donations from Academy alumni.

From the website of the Friends of the Jewish Chapel at the Academy, describing Stein Fellowship Hall, the area of the Levy Center where the photos were displayed:

“There are several display cases containing not only the rich history of the Academy, but also information on Uriah P. Levy, USNA Jewish athletes and graduates, Jewish naval personnel and Monticello, the famous home of Thomas Jefferson.” (Commodore Levy purchased Monticello after Jefferson’s death.)

The photos…, sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) this morning by one of our many Naval Academy clients, show the display cases in Stein Fellowship Hall described in the above quote, which now have many large gaps on their shelves – gaps that until the scramble to “dewoke-ify” the display for Petey’s visit contained photos of the Navy’s distinguished Jewish females. All that remain now are the male Jews. Jewish females, with the double woke whammy of being both women and a religious minority, have been written out of the Academy’s history.

The display case…, whose empty shelves used to honor female Jewish Naval Academy graduates, has now been stripped of everything non-male except for the photo backdrop of civilian Jewish women who went to work during WWII to support the war effort.

According to the MRFF client who took the photos:

“This case was filled with 5-10 notable Jewish female graduates and their associated historical and remarkable paraphernalia like a bronze star, military cover (cap), military rank insignias, photos from experiences in Iraq, and USNA graduation photos.”

(source:  https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/1/2313826/-Scrambling-to-hide-wokeness-for-Hegseth-visit-Naval-Academy-removes-photos-of-female-Jewish-grads)

In response to this MRFF client’s email and Chris Rodda’s article, MRFF President/Founder Mikey Weinstein issued the following statement:

“The 100% shameful, appalling, and cowardly actions of the United States Naval Academy (USNA) at Annapolis, Maryland, in disgracefully and deliberately removing the photographs of the distinguished and heroic female Jewish Naval Academy graduates from public display in the USNA Jewish Chapel area, simply because they fear the wrath of the hideous, misogynistic, Islamophobic, Christian Nationalist, drunk Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is completely indefensible and wretched beyond description! Speaking as an Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, and the father of three children who graduated from the United States Air Force Academy and, especially, the son of a Distinguished Jewish Graduate of the United States Naval Academy, I speak on behalf of not just my family and our civil rights advocacy organization here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation but on behalf of ALL Americans and worldwide citizens to decry and condemn the Naval Academy today for choosing this act of craven timidity and literally breathtaking spinelessness ONLY because they fear triggering Hegseth/MAGA/tRump and their fetid dogma of twisted and tortured hatred for anything allegedly ‘Woke’ and/or DEI!”

One day after MRFF’s reporting and statement, and legitimately assuming USNA leadership’s full awareness of MRFF’s response on behalf of our 31 USNA clients, Chris Rodda updated her reporting at the Daily Kos:

UPDATE: The Naval Academy has restored the photos and memorabilia of the female Jewish graduates to the exhibit!  One of MRFF’s clients at the USNA emailed the result of MRFF’s quick intervention and exposure early this morning:

“Thank you for MRFF’s support in responding to the removal of the Distinguished Jewish Women graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Levy Center Stein Fellowship Hall and Jewish Chapel. Following MRFF’s report, the Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, along with her leadership team, returned the artifacts to the cases last night. The scores of midshipmen, staff, and faculty clients are grateful for MRFF’s quick and decisive action to address this injustice.”

In response to the incredible courage of MRFF clients and MRFF’s quick exposure of this truly embarrassing incident at the Academy, the USNA leadership issued a stunningly weak and incredulous response by… wait for it… attempting another dive into SecDef Hegseth’s beloved ‘memory hole’:

The confusion about how to interpret the DEI policy was underscored Monday as Naval Academy personnel mistakenly removed some photos of distinguished female Jewish graduates from a display case as they prepared for Hegseth’s visit. The photos were put back.

In a statement, the Navy said it is aware that photos were mistakenly removed from the Naval Academy Jewish Center. It said U.S. Naval Academy leadership was immediately taking steps to review and correct the unauthorized removal.
(source:  https://apnews.com/article/military-academies-dei-hegseth-trump-ba9731f24b4eb4bd9c02b568209f97af?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mil-ebb)

MRFF quickly responded to this quisling-like response from USNA leadership regarding the Academy’s naked pandering to a SecDef & POTUS who are obviously caught ‘all up in their feels’ (i.e. emotional rather than rational) about Wokeness/DEI:

Chris Rodda:

So, someone with no authorization just sauntered into the Academy’s Stein Hall and “mistakenly” emptied out display cases in an historical exhibit, removing only photos of Jewish women?

Does USNA really expect anyone to believe this?

 -and-

Mikey Weinstein:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) continues to condemn the horrific cowardice of the Naval Academy senior leadership and their attempt to expunge from their display cases any history of the rich accomplishments of female Jewish distinguished Naval Academy graduates. However, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation salutes the courage, patriotism, and intrepidity of our 31 naval Academy clients, comprised of Naval Academy faculty, midshipmen, and staff of many faith and non-faith traditions who came to our foundation requesting our civil rights advocacy assistance to fight this sinister, repulsive display of ass-kissing to the reprehensible secretary of defense.

Norwegian WWII war-time leader Vidkun Quisling would’ve been proud of the spineless nature of the response from USNA leadership to the current administration’s public policy (…notably and obviously inspired by the Christian Nationalist Project 2025) to undermine the U.S. Constitution and government institutions. 

Konstantin Toropin reported via Military.com on the incredibly helter-skelter environment created within our military institutions by the current SecDef & POTUS:

The removal appears to be the latest example of military and defense officials removing displays, websites and other materials honoring the achievements of women and minorities within the military, often with the presumption of acting on Hegseth’s orders or reacting to his preferences and beliefs.

[…]

Hegseth issued a vague order for the Defense Department to remove all “news articles, photos, and videos promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), including content related to critical race theory, gender ideology, and identity-based programs.”

Since that order, the military has removed books from schools that featured women who fought in the U.S. Civil War; deleted websites that highlighted Kristen Griest, the first woman to graduate from the Army’s grueling Ranger School; and pulled lessons in Air Force boot camp that featured the Tuskegee Airmen, the historic Black aviators, and the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.

(source: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/04/02/naval-academy-staff-removed-display-female-jewish-graduates-hegseth-visit.html)

On April 3, 2025, Haley Britzky reported on CNN.com (Politics):

The removal of the Jewish Women of the Naval Academy display occurred just days before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the academy on Tuesday, and spoke with midshipmen and met with Superintendent Vice Adm. Yvette Davids.

In an email obtained by CNN, the Friends of the Jewish Chapel, a nonprofit organization created to “enhance the religious and cultural lives of the Jewish Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy,” told its members it spoke with Naval Academy officials and said the removal of the display only happened to coincide with Hegseth’s visit [emphasis added], as Davids had also directed the academy to be in compliance with executive orders and Pentagon policy directives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[…]

The issue was brought to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation on Monday, the organization’s founder Michael Weinstein told CNN on Wednesday, by a group of roughly 30 academy faculty and midshipmen. Photos of the exhibit shared by MRFF online appeared to show a piece of cardboard covering a sign in a display case talking about the accomplishments and history of Jewish women in the Navy, and alleged that photos and awards of accomplished Jewish female graduates from the academy, including a Bronze Star, had been removed.

“Targeting Jewish females who graduated from the Naval Academy, and pulling their faces off— some of them have combat medals, others, you know great academic achievements, achievements in business, significant achievements in the military, aviators and others — pulling them down so they can’t be seen is unforgivable,” Weinstein said. [emphasis added]

(Source: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/politics/naval-academy-jewish-women-graduate-display-mistakenly-removed/index.html

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