Six hundred former Navy and Marine Corps officers just signed up for duty in the fight over what it means to think like an American.

The Naval Academy grads wrote an open letter to Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, saying the decision to pull 381 books from the academy library’s shelves shows that the superintendent isn’t doing her job to protect the sanctity of ideas.

And if standing up to pressure from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for academic freedom leads to Davids being removed or resigning, so be it, the campaign’s organizer said.

“What they taught us at the Naval Academy is, if you are faced with conflicting duties, you have a duty to tell your chain of command, especially that you disagree with it,” said Mike Smith, a 2002 graduate from Denver.

“If you cannot carry forth with that, then you ultimately ... you have a duty to resign.”

Davids is caught in a contest between a society free to think and one in which the party in power dictates the American mind.

It‘s happening at Annapolis. It‘s happening at Harvard University.

If the 600 alumni are on one side, Dan Sullivan, the academy board of visitors chair, may be on the other.

“I hate Harvard,” the Republican senator from Alaska said Monday. “I‘ve been fighting it since I graduated.”

The 1987 Harvard grad is a retired Marine Corps colonel who says he saw his university disparage military service. Now he says all college professors beyond service academy walls teach that there is no honor in fighting for your country.

Sullivan joined critics of inviting Ruth Ben-Ghiat to speak in Annapolis last fall as a sign that the academies are at risk of going the same way. The New York University historian was going to speak on the way dictatorships corrupt militaries.

She is also a left-leaning media pundit, and the academy canceled her lecture under pressure from Republicans in Congress.

The dispute spawned the letter to Davids, first as a discussion in a Facebook group for Smith’s class on the academy’s role in creating officers who can think and whether Davids is protecting that.

“Her duty is to the higher good here and to the long-term standing of the institution,” Smith said. “And I believe that she needs to course-correct rapidly in order to preserve the independence of the institution.”

More than 700 people have signed, including academy family members, Navy Blue and Gold officers — they are volunteer admissions ambassadors — and 11 of Davids’ classmates. The letter does not ask the superintendent to resign, instead raising concerns.

“I know you are in a terrible position, but so is our country right now,” wrote former Navy helicopter pilot Catherine Gilles of Annapolis. “Our future leaders need to know all sides.”

It‘s a similar fight at Harvard, where academy grads go for graduate degrees in law, business and government.

“They’re such prestigious institutions, known for their academics but also for their history, the graduates they produce,” said Javaris Turner of Los Angeles, who signed the letter and is studying business at Harvard.

“All of those graduates commit to improving our democracy and freedom, Harvard from a civilian standpoint and, obviously, the Naval Academy from a military standpoint.”

In Annapolis, the terms of the fight are diversity, equity and inclusion. At Harvard, it‘s free speech.

Trump is pressuring colleges where protests erupted over the Israeli-Hamas war. Some protesters harassed Jewish students. The administration threatened to cut research grants unless Harvard changed hiring and admissions, altered courses and ended DEI programs. Harvard sued.

Sullivan was there first.

Two weeks after the war started in October 2023, he accused then-President Christine Gay of coddling antisemites. When he visited in December, he got into a dispute with students sitting in the library under a “Stop the Genocide” banner.

“Not all university leadership is so craven, morally bankrupt and afraid of the most vocal, radical sects of their own student bodies,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “I serve on the board of visitors for the U.S. Naval Academy, which is the No. 1 public university in America. The contrast couldn’t be starker.”

Davids, the first female superintendent, is in a difficult spot.

She declined to comment on the letter, but she has talked about following lawful orders and trusting the chain of command. Trump has fired other top military leaders in his DEI crusade, including the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The books may only be a prelude.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, wants to replace civilian professors — he described them as pushing “left-wing, woke” — with more uniformed instructors. It‘s happening.

In April, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the Air Force Academy superintendent plans to cut civilian instructors from 30% of faculty to 20%.

Naval Academy Provost Samara Firebaugh said Monday that there is no suggestion Davids will follow the same path. About 59% of the academy faculty are civilians.

Some faculty members have discussed leaving. Firebaugh said none are among the 35 civilian employees accepting early retirement offers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Congressional Democrats are, not surprisingly, concerned.

In a letter sent last week, 17 House members called for an explanation of how the Trump administration plans to cut civilian faculty at the military colleges and whether it would jeopardize degree programs and further erode academic freedom.

Every college president gets complaints from alumni.

Davids’ predecessor, Vice Adm. Sean Buck, heard from grads unhappy with football, COVID precautions and, especially, fears the academy was going “woke.”

This letter is both the same and different.

“I appreciated how difficult the spot she is in,” Smith said. “But the superintendent is a three-star admiral because that position is supposed to be independent.”

Independent to protect teaching how to think — not what to think — from outside pressure.

Even when it comes from the commander in chief.