From the original NYT essay:

There are many costs to West Point’s capitulation. One is that the academy is failing to provide an adequate education for the cadets. The cadets are no longer able to openly investigate many critical issues like race and sexuality or be exposed to unfamiliar perspectives that might expand their intellectual horizons. As for the faculty members, West Point no longer seems to recognize our duties to our disciplines and our students. Even if we preserve our jobs, we are sacrificing our profession.

Furthermore, the cadets are being sent the message that the debates in which they are not allowed to engage are those the Trump administration considers settled. The lesson many cadets are learning is that it is inappropriate for them to question their own government — a dangerous message to convey to future Army officers.

Then there’s the message that the cadets are learning about West Point. Cadets are told constantly that they are to lead a life of honor, to choose the harder right over the easier wrong, to have moral courage. But now they are learning that these are just empty slogans. What actual leaders do, it seems, is whatever protects their jobs. I fear the cadets will remember this lesson for the rest of their lives.

Finally, there’s the threat to America’s constitutional order. Academic freedom is important at any institution of higher learning, but it has an additional importance at a military academy. The health of our democratic system depends on the military being politically neutral. Protecting freedom of thought and speech in the academic curriculum at West Point is an important way to avoid political partisanship. By allowing the government to impose an ideological orthodoxy on its classrooms, West Point is abandoning its neutrality and jeopardizing a critical component of the very constitutional order that the military exists to protect.

West Point seems to believe that by submitting to the Trump administration, it can save itself in the long run. But the damage cannot be undone. If the academy can’t convincingly invoke the values of free thought and political neutrality when they are needed most, it can’t accomplish its mission. Whatever else happens, it will forever be known that when the test came, West Point failed.

If you want to know what true leadership looks like, it’s this.