The U.S. Naval Academy released the list of nearly 400 pieces of literature removed from its library that explored themes of white supremacy, race and racism in America, gender identity and sexuality and diversity.
The book removals follow executive orders from the Trump administration.
Titles from prominent Black politicians Stacey Abrams and Bakari Sellers, literary luminary Maya Angelou, activists Ibram X. Kendi and Tamika D. Mallory and a host of historians and academicians were among the removed books.
Kendi’s National Book Award-winning, New York Times best-selling “How to be an Antiracist” topped the list. Fiction novels, such as Mohsin Hamid’s “The Last White Man” and Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give,” which also became a popular film with the same title, were also eliminated from the library’s collection.
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Titles mentioning gender, transgender or sexuality were cut, including “Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality” by sexologist Anne Fausto-Sterling and even “Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory” by Janet L. Jacobs.
Among the extracted writings were works that had hate crimes, such as “Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment” by Mari J. Matsuda, and racism, like “The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism” by Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin, as subjects.
Officials in the U.S. Naval Academy reportedly reviewed the library’s collection late last week and found 900 books that fit the mold for diversity, equity and inclusion content, which the Trump administration has ordered removal of in federal agencies.
Earlier this week, the academy, which is in Annapolis, purged the nearly 400 books from its library following orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office. The book purge came just days after the academy announced it would not consider ethnicity, race or sex in its admissions process following directives from the Trump Administration.
The Baltimore Banner reached out to the Naval Academy for comment.
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