I hope Samara Firebaugh has updated her résumé.

In a two-page memo drafted late last month, Navy Secretary John Phelan outlined President Donald Trump’s next step toward a military dictatorship, in which loyalty to the commander-in-chief matters most for anyone in uniform.

It pushes Firebaugh, academic dean and provost at the Naval Academy for two years, to the front of the line for getting fired.

“Asses and appoint if needed a new Dean with an O-6 Permanent Military Professor (PMP) for a 5-6 year term,” Phelan wrote on July 23.

He offered a penny’s worth of propriety — “if needed” — but a pound of meaning in his confusion of the word assess with the plural of ass. The goal appears to be to replace Firebaugh with a Navy captain or Marine colonel.

Phelan’s letter to Scott Duncan, acting assistant Navy secretary for manpower and Reserve affairs, lays out what is about to happen at the Annapolis military college. Under orders from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Phelan proposes a new board to make sure the academy follows MAGA orthodoxy.

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The Naval Higher Education Review Board will identify “material or practice” considered diversity, equity and inclusion heresy, cut out everything “inappropriate for today’s warfighter” and create a trajectory to continue the “vision” of the president.

The memo doesn’t name Firebaugh. It doesn’t have to.

She may have spent her academic career at the Naval Academy, but she graduated from Princeton University and MIT and is the only service academy dean who isn’t active duty or retired military.

So it goes on the road to a military dictatorship.

The purge of independent thought won’t immediately affect the 78% of officers who come from civilian colleges and universities.

But it would turn Annapolis, West Point, Colorado Springs, New London and Kings Point into authoritarian assembly lines, creating a cadre of Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine officers who learn loyalty to Trump’s vision is what counts.

First, it was scouring the curriculum for DEI boogeymen, then a book ban fueled by the same paranoia. Then Hegseth and his henchmen got rid of the first female superintendent, Vice Adm. Yvette Davids.

After Firebaugh, it will be the civilian faculty.

“Asses the selection criteria, process and composition of committees. By: Expanding the number of PMPs from 40 to at least 100, ensuring military leadership at every level of academic and institutional oversight,” Phelan wrote. “Appoint PMPs to serve as heads of academic schools (Engineering, Math/Science, Humanities, Leadership), chairs of all 16 departments, the Dean of Admissions, Deputy Superintendent, and Deputy Commandant of Midshipmen.”

When the mids return for the fall term Aug. 18, a third of the civilian professors could be gone. Some took early retirement; others left for new jobs.

Among those who remain, many are job hunting. Although some permanent military professors may be well qualified to teach, earning a doctorate in uniform is different than pursuing one in civilian life.

The military grooms and appoints officers to earn graduate degrees and then pays for their studies. Civilians decide to compete for limited spots in top programs, then for the best teaching jobs and yet again for academic tenure.

The difference is expertise the academy has long recognized.

A faculty split evenly between civilian and uniformed professors put Annapolis atop the ratings not only of the service academies but of undergraduate engineering and humanities programs.

Phelan makes clear that Trump, who avoided service during Vietnam and has said a career in uniform is for chumps, wants to sink that success.

“Divest from the civilian university modeling emphasis in order to remain the premier service academy in service to the Nation,” he listed among the new board’s objectives. “Additionally, we will ensure merit-based scholarship opportunities compliment the warrior ethos and sharpen the skills of warfare specialties.”

Not surprisingly for someone who doesn’t know the difference between “complement” and “compliment,” the secretary put the humanities faculty on notice.

“A particular emphasis will be applied on the Humanities and Social Sciences, including History and English,” he wrote. “Faculty recruitment and selection processes will be reviewed to ensure merit-based selection that leads to preparing our future officers for leading in Peace Through Strength and then success in combat when the Nation calls.”

If midshipmen don’t get the point, Phelan has a plan for them, too.

“Reinstate and encourage a culture of discipline as a part of the warrior ethos,” he listed, and “Increase leadership exposure and inspiration for midshipmen and officer candidates.”

Mids who question the blind obedience needed for a commission will be shown the door. Loyalists will pick future mids.

You’d hope that if American voters send a message in 2026 — authoritarian nonsense isn’t acceptable — and flip the White House in 2028, Trump’s goon squad might back off its academic purge.

Maybe this can be reversed.

But disheartened faculty members I spoke with wonder what top-rated researcher or Ph.D. would ever gamble on coming to Annapolis now? The Navy secretary is replacing meritocracy with mediocracy.

At a December meeting of the Board of Visitors, Firebaugh offered a presentation on the tradition of academic freedom at the Naval Academy. She quoted admirals and generals on the importance of an officer corps trained to follow orders but also to think for themselves.

“These are the guidelines we went to war with,” she said.

It could fall to Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte to oust Firebaugh. He was sworn in last month to replace Davids, a Biden appointee set to leave this month for the Pentagon, where she can serve until retirement.

I hope I’m wrong about this and, if I am, it may be Borgschulte who saves the dean.

I’ve met a few Marine Corps generals, and not one of them was a pushover. Borgschulte, a 1991 Annapolis grad who has kept his politics to himself, could stand up for academic integrity. Or not.

The future of the academy and the nation may depend on him.