‘Heartbroken’: West Point Alums, Faculty Grieve Axed Student Groups

When Mary Tobin was a cadet at West Point from 1999 to 2003, she and her friends — many of them Black, many of them athletes — would often sit together in the front row at the prestigious military academy’s football games.

Until one day, she recalled, when a senior leader at the academy came to her, “and told me that from that day forward, Black cadets were not allowed to sit together — because it looked like we were up to something.”

Tobin knew where to go: the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, or CAS, a club on campus for young cadets to gather and discuss social issues that crossed ethnic, racial and ideological backgrounds.

The group, of which Tobin ultimately became vice president, often hosted speakers who led discussions on the challenging debates of the day. It was a forum for young future military officers to embody the cadet’s prayer, which says in part, “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.” And it was a social space that hosted postgame parties where cadets of all backgrounds would hang out, teaching each other dances. Those parties were “the social gatherings of the season,” Tobin recalled. “CAS made me want to learn more about cadets who were not like me.”

At CAS, upon hearing what had happened, members of the West Point women’s basketball team, which was mostly made up of white women, determined that they would intermingle at football games with Mary and her friends. They faced their leader’s bigoted directive together, a mosaic of the nation’s future.

That was then — 25 years ago, when America’s political and military leadership was more willing to officially acknowledge and celebrate diversity.

On Tuesday, West Point leadership, evidently acting upon an executive order from President Donald Trump, disbanded CAS as a sanctioned organization at the military academy. Eleven other affinity groups focused on gender, race and ethnicity were also shut down, including three engineering clubs and an organization named after the first woman to receive a military pension.

After West Point, Tobin went on to serve two combat tours in Iraq and had stints at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Americorps — the latter as a Biden administration appointee — and numerous leadership roles at nonprofits.

In a phone interview, she recalled the story about the West Point leader ordering Black cadets not to sit together “because that’s exactly how — I know — the cadets are feeling right now: They’re feeling targeted, they’re feeling like they cannot show up authentically as themselves… and most importantly, they’re feeling like, ‘I do not belong.’”

“I thought that we had evolved past this,” Tobin said. “I am heartbroken.”

‘Un-American, Divisive, Discriminatory’

A two-page memo Tuesday from Chad Foster, deputy commandant at West Point, announced the disbandment of the clubs at the nation’s top military academy. It cited “Presidential Executive Orders” as well as guidance from the Pentagon and Department of the Army. And it prohibited even “informal activities using Government time” or facilities — a tall order for students at an all-consuming government military academy — as well as all trips, meetings and events associated with the clubs. Other groups might also be axed, the memo said, pending a review.

Though Army and West Point leadership did not answer HuffPost’s specific questions on the memo, it appeared they were responding to Trump’s executive orders, including one targeting programs and government employees connected to “DEIA” — that is, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts — and another prohibiting military institutions from promoting concepts deemed “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational,” including “race or sex stereotyping” or “gender ideology.”

A statement from the military academy’s communications office noted that the disbanded clubs were all affiliated with “our former office of Diversity and Inclusion.” An attached briefing sheet noted that soldiers were permitted to attend cultural observances unofficially, outside of duty hours, and that some disbanded clubs may be allowed to reconstitute after resubmitting their charters for review. The briefing sheet stressed, “However, these will not be superficial changes to circumvent applicable policies.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who’s proclaimed that patriotic Americans have “real enemies” in some of their fellow citizens, last month cut off the use of official resources for “identity months,” including Black History month and Pride Month. Hegseth described them as part of efforts to “divide the force — to put one group ahead of another — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.” And he put out his own anti-“DEI” memo, echoing Trump’s. Days prior, military institutions had already begun eliminating public-facing communications and trainings now deemed impolitic.

The disbanded West Point clubs listed in the memo included CAS, the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the Japanese Forum Club, the Korean-American Relations Seminar, the Latin Cultural Club, the Native American Heritage Forum, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers and the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association.

Also on the list were Spectrum, a group for LGBTQ cadets and allies, according to an archived webpage, and the Corbin Forum. The latter group was established in 1976 — the first year women were admitted to West Point — and was named after Margaret Cochran Corbin, the female Revolutionary War veteran who was gravely wounded in battle.

Ryan Goldsmith regularly interacted with many of the clubs that were disbanded Tuesday as part of his time on West Point’s staff. From 2009 through 2011, Goldsmith served as an equal opportunity adviser at the military academy, advising commanders on the Army’s Equal Opportunity and Diversity programs and policies, processing discrimination complaints and planning diversity-related observances and celebrations.

Goldsmith wrote in an email that he believed Trump’s and Hegseth’s “drastic” changes to military DEI programs “are counterproductive of the military’s mission of fighting and winning the Nation’s wars.” The clubs never excluded anyone, he said — and, on the contrary, fostered environments that built trust through mutual understanding and shared goals.

Goldsmith said he’d worked with several generals during his time at West Point, “and I can tell you without a doubt these men absolutely supported, appreciated and recognized the value that these now disbanded clubs served in building leaders of character.”

“[Have] our current civilian leadership asked any of the 600 plus General and Flag officers on Active Duty what their opinions are on DEI programs in our military?” he wondered.

‘That’s McCarthyism’

Diane Ryan, now an associate dean at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, was an Army officer for 29 years and a member of the West Point faculty from 2008 to 2017. For eight of those years, she was the Corbin Forum’s head officer in charge, the equivalent to a lead faculty adviser.

“It’s pretty crushing,” she told HuffPost, referring to the affinity groups’ disbandments. West Point’s co-curricular clubs are part of what the academy calls the “Margin of Excellence” — an umbrella term that includes academic trips, conferences and capstone projects.

Now, the academy has gotten “a lot less excellent,” Ryan said.

She recalled the Corbin Forum as a bustling center for student life, with around 800 members signed up to receive event invitations. The gatherings, which were open to everyone, featured discussions on everything from physical fitness to career planning in the Army. The group sponsored summer internships and partnered with the Girl Scouts. And it created bonds among female cadets in an environment that sometimes encouraged women to “turn on each other” in an effort to be “one of the guys,” Ryan said.

Like others reacting to Tuesday’s memo, Ryan saw the ban on certain student affinity groups as reflective of the misguided idea that acknowledging diversity in the military is somehow divisive or a hindrance to readiness.

From her years as the leader of one of the groups affected, she saw the opposite: that Corbin Forum fostered leaders who stayed in the military beyond their five-year commitments, precisely because they were shown that the military had a place for them, too.

“You get a person — whose education you’ve spent a lot of money on — excited about the job they’re going into, and thinking about, ‘How do I do this long term?’” she reflected.

People hung up on affinity groups seem to “think of things in finite terms,” Ryan said. In reality, the group wasn’t about hating men or deepening division but about making space for people of all identities in military leadership. If people feel valued, she said, “they’ll run through walls for you.”

Now, though, Ryan said she thinks the military is limiting its ability to attract top talent, and doubts whether she would advise a young person to pursue military service.

“If we tell people to narc on each other because they support certain ideas or want to hang out with people who’ve had similar experiences, that is not inspiring unit cohesion,” she said. “That’s McCarthyism.”

Rooted In Ignorance

Trump and his appointees’ attacks on diversity have gone far beyond disbanding student organizations or canceling diversity, equity and inclusion workshops, which are aimed at promoting understanding and professionalism.

Rather, the new administration has been marked by its aggressive purges of scientific data, U.S. history and federal government personnel who, in some cases,simply attended training seminars mandated during the first Trump administration.

The same scrutiny doesn’t apply the other way around. Darren Beattie, one recent high-level appointee to the State Department, was previously dismissed from his role as a White House speechwriter in 2018 after revelations that he’d attended a conference with white nationalists two years prior. Then, in October last year, Beattie wrote on X that “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.” He is now the State Department’s acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs.

Reflecting on the changes at West Point and American society more broadly, Tobin said she knew some people were acting out of bigotry. But for others, she said, “I choose to believe that a lot of these decisions, and these reactions, are rooted in ignorance.”

After all, do most Americans really support the disbandment of West Point’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, of which Tobin was also vice president? The organization sent her to engineering conferences and competitions across the country, provided a platform for Black academic and technical excellence, connected her with mentorship and academic support, and gave her confidence, not only as an Army officer but as a Black Army officer. Who could be against that?

Tobin referenced the debate over the renaming of military installations — discussions she’d personally had with former classmates about living in housing named after Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who owned hundreds of enslaved people. “I could see the eyes of their understanding open because they respected me,” she said.

Hegseth and Trump have already indicated they want to change certain bases’ names back to their Confederate namesakes. Tobin said she felt overwhelmed.

“That’s why my first response is always to encourage these leaders to sit down and actually understand what is happening on the ground,” she said.

“Because otherwise, I would be left with rage.”