Naval Academy accused of election interference for promoting extremist ideology

Two columnists at the Daily Signal are asking why is the U.S. Naval Academy engaging in election interference by inviting a far-left speaking to an annual dinner.

And how are they getting away with it.

The questions are being raised by Hans von Spakovsky, the chief of the Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and Cully Stimson, the deputy director of the Meese Center and manager of the National Security Law Program.

At the Daily Signal they explain that the academy has invited Ruth Ben-Ghiat of New York University to speak at the academy.

She “has already said that she plans to attack presidential candidate Donald Trump in the annual Bancroft Lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy on Oct. 10,” They explained.

That would put the academy in violation of “Defense Department directives prohibiting the military from engaging in partisan political activity,” they charged.

“In addition to constituting a clear violation of a long-standing, mandatory policy, families whose sons and daughters are attending this august military institution should be outraged by the academy’s partisan indoctrination of future officers of the U.S. Navy,” they explained.

The dinner event dates back years, and was set up to honor George Bancroft, the secretary of the Navy when James Polk was president in the 1940s.

The academy claims the lecture “is supposed to bring in historians to speak about ‘their research and the relevance of the historian’s craft to today’s world.’ But that’s a far cry from delivering a partisan screed attacking a major political candidate in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign, which is precisely what Ben-Ghiat has indicated she’s going to do next week,” they charged.

The report explains Ben-Ghiat has claimed what motivates Trump is an “authoritarian character” and a desire to destroy democratic values,” when, in fact, he’s been an outright advocate for those concepts in America.

She claims, instead, that Trump is loyal to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

She even hallucinates “Trump has an ‘attachment to America’s enemies,'” the report said.

They authors explain the ideas resident in “the mind of this so-called historian from New York University” can be debated, but the point at hand is “her venomous, partisan attack on a political candidate” at the academy, “in direct violation of Defense Department rules.”

In fact, Department of Defense Directive No. 1344.10 “bans active members of the military, which includes the naval officers who are administrators and teachers at the academy, from engaging in ‘partisan political activities.'”

In this case, the academy is doing exactly what it is ordered not to do by appearing “to imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement” of what is patently a partisan, political speech.

“Even if you agree with Ben-Ghiat’s wild, unsupported claims, that isn’t the point,” they explain. “The point is that the Naval Academy should not be inviting, sponsoring, or in any way endorsing lecturers who are at the academy to give what is clearly a political speech, whether it’s attacking or supporting Donald Trump, or attacking or supporting Kamala Harris.”