U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered 381 books to be removed from the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
The books removed contained content addressing diversity, gender, and race including Maya Angelou‘s ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ the 1970 autobiographical coming-of-age story of a young Black girl in Alabama which addresses identity, rape, racism, and literacy.
(Angelou, who died in 2014, read a poem at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.)
A lesser known academic book also removed by the Defense Department is the 2021 non-fiction book Rich Thanks to Racism: How the Ultra Wealthy Profit from Racial Injustice.
According to the book’s description, the author, civil rights lawyer Jim Freeman, “uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States.”
Note: Freeman, who is White and a Harvard Law-trained attorney, served under President Barack Obama as a Commissioner on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
“There are billionaires who have poured 10’s of millions of dollars into think tanks & advocacy organizations that have been instrumental in making sure we don’t address the issues that have been devastating communities of color.”
— The Damage Report (@TheDamageReport) April 22, 2021
– Jim Freeman, author of RICH THANKS TO RACISM pic.twitter.com/blujDRNBJk
Rich Thanks to Racism was published by Cornell University Press.
Note: The Trump administration on Tuesday reportedly froze $1 billion in funding for Cornell as it pursues civil rights-focused investigations into the university.
As part of its efforts to eradicate DEI initiatives in the public and private sphere, the Trump administration is investigating accusations made against Cornell of “racial discrimination stemming from their efforts to promote diversity.”
Other elite schools including Northwestern, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and more are also being targeted for funding cuts by the administration.
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