President Obama’s Remarks at the Opening of the Obama Presidential Center

 PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Hello, Chicago! Sweet home Chicago. Please have a seat.

Thank you, Punihei, for that outstanding introduction.

President and Mrs. Bush, President and Secretary Clinton, thank you for being with us today, and for your devotion to our country.

And President and Dr. Biden, thank you for your steadfast partnership for eight years.

Joe, we started as running mates and ended as family. And we would not be here without you, and we are grateful.

To our amazing foundation staff and our amazing board, to Governor Pritzker, Mayor Johnson, thank you for making this center possible.

To congressional leaders and foreign dignitaries who have made the trip, I cherish our partnership together and all we got accomplished together. Thank you.

To Michelle, she did me wrong. (Laughter.) She wouldn’t let me see her speech. She knew she was going to mess me up, and she did it anyway. (Laughter.) But she’s always made me better, and I could not be more grateful.

And to Sasha and Malia, what can I say? You mean everything to me.

More than 40 years ago, on a late summer afternoon in 1985, I arrived here in Chicago, entering the city through the very spot where this center now stands. I can still picture myself heading down what was then Cornell Drive in a janky used car that I’d bought in New York, with all my worldly possessions stuffed in the trunk and the back seat, so I really couldn’t see out of the rear view mirror, and I was a safety hazard. (Laughter.)

And I was 23 years old. I’d just been hired by a group of churches on the South Side to help organize a part of the city that had been battered by steel plant closings and chronic neglect. And I didn’t have much organizing experience, didn’t know anybody in Chicago, but I had been inspired by the Civil Rights movement, and I knew I wanted to make a difference.

And although I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to do that, I was possessed with this abiding faith that if we could give people more of a say in the forces that govern their lives, if we could bridge some of the differences that drove us apart, then we could build an America where everyone counts, and everyone has a fair shot, and everyone belongs, even a mixed race kid with a weird back story and a name nobody could pronounce.

And it was here in this city, a city of broad shoulders, that I found what I was looking for. Day by day, block by block, I got to know the people who lived here, their hopes, their dreams, their tragedies, and their triumphs. I witnessed their resilience in the face of hardship and the quiet heroism of a single mom raising her kids and sending them to college on a secretary’s salary, or the priest electing to stay in the city and open his doors to at-risk youths, even as most of his flock had fled to the suburbs.

I learned that leadership has less to do with titles or rank or chasing attention than with helping others find their voice, reaching their potential. And sitting around people’s kitchen tables or on their back porches, spending time in church basements, in barber shops, I was reminded that everyone has a story to tell, if you just care to listen, sacred stories full of courage and humor and grace, and that each of those stories in some way connected to my own.

In other words, I found my purpose here, and I fortified my faith here. And I found my community here, friendships that would last a lifetime. And I found a girl from the South Side, who has been my greatest blessing.

Michelle and I, our wedding reception was over at South Shore Cultural Center. You could walk from here. Our daughters were born right down the street. This is where we bought our first home. This is where our kids took their first steps. This is where I launched my candidacy for the Illinois state senate over at the Ramada Inn on Lake Shore Drive — (laughter) — serving pretzels and soda, embarking on the path that, ultimately and improbably, led to this day.

For me, this center could not be any place else. It is an expression of thanks, an acknowledgement that so much of what I hold most dear, I owe to the people of this city and the people of these surrounding neighborhoods.

And it’s why we designed the center not to be some lifeless mausoleum — I am too young for that — not just a place to see Michelle’s dresses, although I understand that will be the top attraction. (Laughter.) We wanted it to be a vibrant, living celebration of community, where we can learn together and share the joys of art and music and sport and play, because it’s in those moments that we’re reminded of our common humanity and strengthen the bonds of trust that not only make our lives richer, but make our democracy stronger.

We also wanted this center to be a celebration of the extraordinary public servants, many of whom are here today, that made this journey possible. Some of you helped get me elected. Some of you, I had to talk into joining my administration. Some of you were seasoned veterans who helped show a rookie president the ropes, but a lot of you were younger than I was when I first drove into this city.

We’re all a bit older now. Many of you have children of your own, even grandchildren, but the passage of time has only deepened my admiration for your talent and your dedication and your skill. It’s only deepened my gratitude for how much you and your families sacrificed to make this country better.

When you visit this center today, or in days to come, I hope you see yourselves and your hard work reflected in every exhibit. And I hope you take pride in what we accomplished together. You made that happen.

Now, of course, we did not accomplish everything we set out to do. No administration does. Some of the exhibits reflect unfinished business, in some cases, my own shortcomings and mistakes, in some cases, because, as a sign I kept on the Resolute desk read, hard things are hard. And that’s especially true in a big, raucous, diverse, argumentative democracy like the United States of America.

Everybody’s got an opinion, and that means getting stuff done involves reconciling the demands of a couple of hundred million people. Democracy can be frustrating. It can be slow. It can be inefficient. And yet more than anything, I hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how precious our democracy truly is, and remind us what we can achieve when we embrace our shared responsibilities as citizens.

And since we’re a few weeks away from America’s 250th birthday, it is worth remembering just how radical the whole idea of self-government really was back in 1776. To that point, human history was a tale of conquest and caste and rigid hierarchies, a world where the strong dominated the weak, where power and wealth and status flowed through lineage and the many were ruled by the few.

But out of the fire and steel of a revolution, a different story took flight on this continent, a declaration that we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, and that in the newly independent United States, there will be no kings or lords, no serfs or subjects, but only citizens, each of us free to pursue our own version of happiness and able to determine our collective fate through an elected representative government.

It had not been done. And because it hadn’t been done before, the success of this experiment was never a given. In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property, but in drafting a constitution and a bill of rights, they did have the foresight, the genius to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect.

And over more than two centuries, through petitions and protests, marches and strikes, moral appeals from the pulpit and conversations at the family dinner table, men and women from all walks of life of every color, every faith, every region took up the cause of democracy and made it their own, until “We the people” came to include not just some of us, but all of us.

And that’s why the story we tell in this building begins not with Michelle’s origins or my origins, but with our nation’s, with the founding era print of the Declaration of Independence, and a pin and ink stand used by Frederick Douglas, Lincoln’s bible and a pamphlet by Ida B. Wells, suffragists’ buttons and a hard hat worn by FDR’s labor secretary, Frances Perkins.

And it’s why the exhibits here focus not just on policies but on the shared values that make democracy possible, a belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people, and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection, a belief in checks and balances in our government and an accountability that comes with an independent judiciary and a robust, free press.

A belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party but to the people and our Constitution.

A belief in the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections, recognizing that in a large, complicated society like ours, no group or faction gets its way 100% of the time.

And a belief that qualities of character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion, a sense of duty and honor, those things matter in our public dealings, just as they do in our private lives.

These are the values and traditions I believe in, and they are not Republican or Democratic values. They’re American values we can all share, regardless of party, values every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold, values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in, no less than I did.

It is our greatest inheritance, the story of America at its best, because it reflects a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens and the possibility that despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together.

That’s what I hope every visitor to this center takes away from their experience. And that’s why, if you come for a day and you don’t have time to see everything, I would urge you to skip the clips of my speeches — you have heard them all before — in favor of the stories of those ordinary citizens who helped make that change happen.

The cancer survivor who feared rising premiums would force her out of her home and was brave enough to speak out about it, she’s why we pushed so hard for health care reform.

The small business owner trying to keep the lights on, the teenage girl who told me she was worried her dad might lose his job in the auto crisis, they’re why we focus so relentlessly on pulling our economy back from the great recession.

The wounded warrior overcoming debilitating injuries, the gay Air Force major serving her country, even when forced to hide who she was, they’re why we worked to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and care for those who have worn our country’s uniform and do right by our military families.

It’s their voices that led to our successes.

And while going through the exhibits, I’d also ask you, listen to the voices of people around the world who have been inspired by American ideas.

Yes, America has made its share of foreign policy mistakes. Our actions have not always matched our rhetoric. We’ve learned that we can’t solve every conflict or solve or stop every atrocity around the globe, but at our best the United States has been an undeniable force for good in the world.

And what I heard on every continent as President, is that when American foreign policy lives up to our highest ideals, when we champion human rights and democracy and the sound stewardship of our planet, when we take the lead in eradicating disease and feeding the hungry and educating children, when we encourage cooperation between nations, instead of trying to dominate and bully and squeeze every advantage, just because we can, and most of all, when we show through our example here at home, that even a country as big and diverse as ours can make democracy work, it turns out all nations, including ours, become more prosperous and secure, and the world gets a little bit brighter.

I recognize it’s been almost a decade since I left office. In that time, we have lived through more war and a terrible pandemic, economic disruptions, mass protests, backlash against mass protests, political conflicts that have shaken the very foundation of our democracy.

We’ve witnessed a technological revolution that promises remarkable discoveries, could revolutionize medicine, but is also accelerating inequality that puts all the world’s information in the palm of our hands, but somehow makes it harder for us to tell a truth from a lie, that connects us instantly like never before, even as it makes us more distrustful and more withdrawn and more fearful and more isolated from each other.

It is a lot. For millions of people in this country and around the world, the future feels uncertain, the ground unstable beneath our feet. And as algorithms keep feeding us a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts, it’s tempting to give in to cynicism and even despair, to stop trying.

We start thinking that appeals to democracy and civic participation are corny and old-fashioned and boring and naive, that the very idea of working on behalf of the common good is a sucker’s bet, and that in order for us to win, somebody else has got to lose.

I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt, but I do know this: When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.

I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end.

I don’t believe it, because for us to give up, for us to give in now, after all this country has been through, to cynicism and division would be a betrayal of our founding ideals, a betrayal of our faith.

And I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way, that as unsettled as we are, people aren’t looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect, that deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away.

I believe this because I’ve seen it all across our country, in cities that have worked together to reclaim their streets from crime, in rural communities that have rebuilt their economy, in businesses that are finding new ways to make housing affordable, and those ordinary people in the Twin Cities who braved frigid temperatures, risked their own safety standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors, and sometimes look out for strangers, because they knew that was the right thing to do.

I’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it in a new generation of leaders here and around the world, like Punihei and Addison, leaders who are determined to make our governments and our economies and our societies work for everyone. Obama Foundation leaders like Hannah, a Food Corps member from rural Ohio, who is helping ensure every child has access to at least one nourishing meal; or George, an entrepreneur whose nonprofit helps get unused, unexpired medicine, often at no cost to people who need it; or Zuzana, a human rights lawyer in Poland, who’s won more than 30 landmark cases.

There are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these young people out there making a difference right now. And this center is devoted to lifting up their stories, giving them the tools and support they need to expand their impact, for while our work is nonpartisan, we are not values neutral. We have a point of view.

The exhibits in the center are not meant to evoke nostalgia for some gauzy, bygone era, some unattainable past that we can dream about, and say, oh, we miss you, Barack. They’re meant to remind us of who we can be, to remind us of what’s possible, so we can forge ahead, clear-eyed and confident, and do the work that still needs to be done.

We can learn from the past, but America’s story isn’t frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written, not by one person or a few people, not by Barack and Michelle, or anybody with a fancy title or a high office, but by all of us.

One of the things a lot of presidential libraries now have in common is a replica of the Oval Office. And if you take a peek at the one inside this building, you will see some objects that carried some special meaning for me during the time that I was in office.

There’s a program that a friend from the South Side gave me that he had retrieved from the 1963 March on Washington. He was there. There’s a Norman Rockwell painting of the Statue of Liberty with workers hanging on ropes burnishing the torch that she holds aloft.

And on the road, you’ll read words from some of America’s greatest leaders, including a quote that inspired that arch that you see right there at the south end of the plaza by Theodore Parker. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

It’s a quote that was often invoked by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but it originally comes from a Boston minister’s sermon more than 170 years ago. And at the time, the abolitionist cause seemed lost, the compromise of 1850 had made harboring fugitive slaves a crime under federal law, even in those states that had abolished slavery.

And in a case that garnered national attention, a young fugitive in Boston had been seized and tried and marched to the wharf by hundreds of armed officers, where he was summarily put on a ship bound for the south, where he would remain in shackles and chains.

It was a moment of profound uncertainty and despair, a moment the minister called darker than any New England had witnessed.

“We do not see, Reverend Theodore Parker observed, “that justice is always done on earth. Many a knave is rich, sleek, and honored, while the just man is poor, hated, and in torment. I do not pretend,” the preacher said, “to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience, but from what I see, I am sure it bends towards justice.”

The good Reverend was under no illusions about the perils and obstacles facing the abolitionist cause. His words offered no easy answers, no comforting assurances that he or his congregation would live to see the progress they so desperately sought.

Rather, his was a declaration of faith, a defiant call not to abandon hope or give way to fear, but to stay true to our better selves and true to one another, and to keep fighting to fulfill the promise of this nation, even in the face of cruelty and bitter disappointment, even in the face of impossible odds.

It is that spirit that we open the center today, the same spirit that so many of you showed all those years ago, the same spirit that inspired generations of Americans to meet the challenges of their time, the same spirit that is alive and well here on the South Side of Chicago, the same spirit that will see America and the world through its present trials.

There is a new generation out there ready to write the next chapter of our story. We intend to help them do it, and we ask that you join us.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.

After Trump’s order, West Point curbed faculty speech. One professor said no

 NYACK, N.Y. - The longest-serving law professor at West Point rose to declare the school's new rules unconstitutional. Within moments, a uniformed colonel stood to challenge him.

Tim Bakken, speaking to dozens of colleagues at a faculty meeting, argued that none of them should be forced to seek approval before publishing papers or giving speeches, as a policy unveiled that day would require. "This violates the First Amendment," he said, predicting an end to West Point's professed tolerance for opposing views.

Col. E. John Gregory, according to Bakken and three other people in attendance that day, didn't want to hear it. "Stop talking," Gregory, a deputy department head, said in a raised voice, "and sit down."

Bakken, a 68-year-old who had never served in the military, did not sit down. He reminded the colonel that he had sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he accepted his teaching job. "It's like how military officers must not follow illegal orders -" he began to say.

"We're a military institution," Gregory interrupted, according to Bakken and the other attendees. "We follow orders."

President Donald Trump assumed power for the second time with an ambitious agenda to reshape norms and policies across government and throughout the private sector. His administration has moved swiftly to undo diversity initiatives that proliferated in prior years, reshape how U.S. history is taught in museums and parks, and assert a greater federal role in how universities hire and manage their funding.

To the president's supporters, these efforts represent an overdue reset for liberal policies that had veered out of control. To many other Americans, they amount to ideological, and sometimes unconstitutional, overreach. In little more than 18 months, the administration has drawn a surge of lawsuits alleging violations of civil liberties or other essential freedoms, a Washington Post analysis of hundreds of thousands of court records found.

One of those was filed by Bakken.

His confrontation with the colonel that day in March 2025 brought the clash to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the emerald-green-and-granite campus on the Hudson River that trains the leaders of tomorrow's Army. Since World War II, West Point had fostered academic openness, advancing the view that dissenting opinions are crucial in forming sound military judgments. But Trump and his top lieutenants, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, argue that West Point must prize patriotic obedience to authority above all else.

Seven days into his second presidency, Trump issued an executive order forbidding military colleges like West Point from "promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating" ideas that his administration deemed "un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational." It also required teaching that "America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history." Within weeks, West Point's dean introduced a revised "academic engagement" policy, stipulating that the school's nearly 700 professors - roughly a third of whom are civilians - must seek approval from their department head before they could deliver a speech, publish a paper or even speak on a podcast.

Bakken had never needed such approval before, he said. One of the first civilian professors hired at West Point, he had taught criminal and constitutional law there since 2000.

Nonmilitary faculty were meant to improve West Point's intellectual rigor and provide an outside perspective. Many uniformed colleagues never fully embraced their presence, however. Bakken, whose colleagues and students described him as a principled but brusque contrarian with a penchant for criticism, had often felt isolated.

Now, listening to the colonel's words about "following orders," Bakken felt alone in the room once again.

He had long argued that a military culture of unquestioning obedience, coupled with an aversion to criticism and a sense of superiority, had caused the U.S. to lose every war it fought since 1945. "Inside America, the last seventy-five years of military intervention have unleashed a flood of incompetence, hubris, and denial," he wrote in a 2020 book, "The Cost of Loyalty." "I have been living at the headwaters."

West Point officials hadn't liked that book, or much of Bakken's criticism. But they had never tried to silence him, he said - until Trump's second presidency, when West Point revised its faculty speech rules.

"Men and women die because other men and women do not have the reasoning, or the ability, or the courage to speak truthfully."

Excerpt from Tim Bakken's book "The Cost of Loyalty"

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Hegseth, a former Army major and weekend co-host of "Fox & Friends," said West Point shouldn't employ civilian professors, calling them "left-wing" and "woke." In office, he later told cadets that the academy had "hired professors who advocated for anti-American ideologies right here in these halls. But no more."

West Point's new policy came as Bakken prepared a new book that, like his first, criticized the academy and the military. But he was unwilling to seek permission to publish it, not from West Point, and not from Hegseth's Pentagon.

In September, he sued West Point in federal court. The "intent and effect" of his employer's new policy, he contended, "is to chill and suppress speech and censor viewpoints that might be contrary to the views" of West Point, the Army, the Defense Department, Hegseth and Trump.

A spokesperson for West Point declined to answer a list of questions, writing in an email that, "as a matter of policy, we do not comment on ongoing litigation." Various West Point employees declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell likewise declined to comment, citing Bakken's ongoing lawsuit. But he wrote in a statement that Hegseth "completely supports" Trump's executive order. Referring to Bakken, Parnell added: "We are not concerned by the half-baked thoughts of a disgruntled individual."

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not directly answer questions about speech by Bakken or other professors at West Point, writing in an email that "individuals who refuse to follow the sacred chain-of-command … threaten the lives of our warfighters. Such reckless and dangerous actions will not be tolerated."

Although Bakken filed his lawsuit on behalf of civilian faculty, he saw it as protecting the rights of all professors. But they didn't seem to agree. After the suit, many stopped speaking to him, he said. His three closest colleagues confided that they'd like to help but their wives wouldn't allow it. One of his oldest friends, who had started at West Point the same day he did, asked him to reconsider.

"This policy is good for us," Bakken recalled him saying. "It will prevent us from saying things that get us in trouble."

Bakken arrived at West Point as a fan: enamored with the school's history, reputation and regular roster of Rhodes Scholars.

But he learned quickly that life in Upstate New York was different for civilians. On his first morning, he joined three new military hires on a tour of the academy. They stopped at the gift shop. Inside, Bakken could see candy, clothes and notebooks bearing West Point's distinctive logo. The new professor, clad in a business suit, began to follow his uniformed companions through the turnstiles.

The manager held up her hand. "No civilians allowed," she told the group, in Bakken's recollection.

Bakken knew he would be in the minority. He hadn't expected that.

Congress passed legislation in 1992 encouraging service academies to employ civilians. Until then, faculties at West Point and the Air Force Academy were almost entirely commissioned officers. (The Naval Academy already employed half military and half civilian professors.) Lawmakers hoped an influx of civilians with doctorates would boost intellectual diversity and raise academic standards.

Dwight D. Eisenhower had earlier pushed the idea. While serving as the Army chief of staff in 1946, he wrote to West Point's superintendent arguing that cadets should be taught psychology, with help from knowledgeable civilians, so they could handle "human problems on a human basis."

Bakken seemed the kind of subject-matter expert Eisenhower envisioned: He had worked as a prosecutor and as a lawyer in private practice, and taught at the university level.

In his job interview, Bakken had a swift answer to every question, said Gary Solis, a now-retired West Point professor who served on the hiring committee. He struck the interviewers as smart, capable and unafraid to speak his mind - an exemplar of what civilians were supposed to bring to West Point, Solis said. The committee unanimously recommended him, Solis recalled.

Before the interview ended, Solis reminded Bakken that West Point is not an ordinary school. Teaching there, he said, meant agreeing to abide by military principles: Submitting to authority. Following orders.

"Tim," Solis recalled, "had no problem with that."

At the time, Bakken accepted that, for the military to function, rank-and-file soldiers had to obey their superiors, he said. But he took the West Point job believing that, as a civilian professor, he would enjoy the same freedoms - to provoke, to debate, to criticize - afforded to professors at nonmilitary universities.

That was vital, he said, because one day, his cadets would be giving orders to soldiers. He had to teach his students to think critically. Lives depended on it. He would dwell on that over the years as six of his own students were killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"What is the purpose of being a military officer, especially a general, if you are unwilling to speak up about something that will help the nation?" Bakken asked in an interview with The Post. "Such as whether a war should be fought, or if the country should withdraw from a war, or if the country is losing soldiers?"

Over time, Bakken came to see West Point as its own hierarchical and insulated world, one where civilian professors were distrusted and treated as second-class citizens. More than a dozen current and former West Point personnel, most of them civilians, agreed with Bakken's impressions. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Their concerns stretched far beyond access to the campus gift shop. For instance, the Army paid for West Point military instructors to pursue graduate degrees, a benefit not offered to civilian professors. While military faculty had their pick of "move-in ready" campus homes with up to six bedrooms, civilians had sparser options for lodging on West Point's grounds. Military faculty received a year of sabbatical leave, while civilian faculty got six months.

"We were treated as not really members of the community … not full members of the faculty, in a way," former professor Graham Parsons said. "Civilians are fringe."

Bakken refused to remain on the margins. In 2005, he helped rewrite the faculty manual, granting equal sabbaticals and more flexible working hours for all professors.

Five years later, as chair of an academic freedom committee, Bakken led efforts to add a rule: Civilian professors who believed they were being disciplined or fired for something they said could challenge their punishment on First Amendment grounds.

The rule was tested almost immediately.

In 2010, assistant professor Dan Rice planned to show his cadets "The Tillman Story," a documentary released that year about the military cover-up in the death of former National Football League player Pat Tillman. He had been shot accidentally by his fellow Army Rangers in Afghanistan, not killed by enemy fire as military officials at first claimed. The film suggested that Gen. John P. Abizaid, who had retired and was serving as a "distinguished chair" at West Point, had played a role in the cover-up. University administrators opposed the screening, according to Bakken and Rice.

(Asked about the episode this year, a spokesperson for Abizaid said the retired general does not grant interviews. A West Point spokesperson declined to comment.)

After Rice threatened to go to the academic freedom committee, West Point relented, he and Bakken said. Rice could show the movie - and invite the documentary's director, Amir Bar-Lev, to address students. But officials stipulated that an Army lawyer speak to the class, too. Bakken attended and listened as Bar-Lev told cadets that it was important to "speak the truth as you see it."

A few weeks later, Rice learned that West Point was terminating his contract. Bakken encouraged him to sue. Feeling worn down, he declined, Rice recalled in an interview.

Bakken thought he had helped secure free speech at West Point. Rice's termination, which he and Bakken believed stemmed from the Tillman documentary screening, convinced him otherwise.

So he decided to write a book.

A decade later, Bakken published "The Cost of Loyalty." From its opening lines, it frames America's costly conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq as failed products of an "opaque and secretive" military culture.

In the book, which earned a muted but positive critical reception, Bakken argues that the military lies - to the public and to itself, in major and minor ways. For instance, he writes that the Pentagon fakes bugle-playing during military funerals because the military lacks musicians. Officers hold up the instruments and pretend to blow while activating digital recordings tucked inside the horns, he writes.

More consequentially, he writes, during the Vietnam War, Army Chief of Staff and West Point graduate Harold Johnson developed doubts but chose not to air them. Johnson believed that higher-ups' plan to pursue large military campaigns against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong was foolish, if not fatal, Bakken writes. Johnson imagined walking to the Oval Office and resigning. But he stayed quiet, a decision that haunted him in old age.

Bakken quotes Johnson's late-life comments to an interviewer: "I am now going to my grave with that lapse in moral courage on my back."

"Americans are harder on football coaches who lose games than on generals who lose wars. … The U.S. military has possessed the most fearsome weapons ever created, and has often looked unbeatable on paper. However, somehow it has experienced great loss in every war in which it has fought since 1945."

Excerpt from Tim Bakken's book "The Cost of Loyalty"

After his book was published, most military and civilian faculty stopped eating lunch with Bakken, he said. One of the few who dared, chemistry professor Gary Washington, confided that his boss had instructed him to stay away because the law professor "couldn't be trusted." After Bakken left meetings with military colleagues, Washington said, they'd hang back to commiserate. "He doesn't understand us," Washington recalled them saying. "He can't make us change."

Still, West Point officials never sought to block the book or sanction him for writing it, Bakken said. Instead, they circulated a three-page memo shortly before its release, calling it "unflattering" and sharing answers to anticipated questions.

Was Bakken disciplined for writing the book? "No," according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post. Were his allegations true? Bakken, the memo said, represented "a minority opinion."

Why did West Point "allow this professor to still be employed?" The memo answered: "Academic freedom is essential to USMA's core mission [and] grounds our ability to develop leaders who can think critically. … Academic freedom means that faculty and students can engage in intellectual discourse and debate without fear of retaliation."

"The structure that creates the generals should be abandoned. ... The military academies should be transformed into national civilian universities. As currently constituted, they foster hubris, arrogance, favoritism, and mediocrity in the highest ranks of the military."

Excerpt from Tim Bakken's book "The Cost of Loyalty"

Bakken recalled that memo after Trump's executive order in 2025.

As West Point's new policy on faculty speech took hold early that year, library books were reviewed for references to "diversity, equity or inclusion," according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former West Point staff. An American history instructor nixed an assignment asking how the nation had expanded the idea of freedom over time and replaced it with an essay on banking. A cadet was told not to research the World War II-era detention of Japanese Americans. A staffer teaching a mandatory course on the history of Western thought was ordered to leave out Karl Marx.

Some changes came at the direction of higher-ups, while others appeared to be acts of self-censorship, the staffers said.

"There seemed to be this overcompliance for what they thought the administration would want to see," said one military lecturer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the president and the Pentagon. "Or at least getting rid of things the administration would not want to see."

A West Point spokesperson declined to comment on this account of curricular changes at the school.

Officials at the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy also scrutinized their teaching in response to the president's order, canceling or reconsidering classes about gender and sexuality, and cutting lectures about climate change and authoritarian regimes. Spokespeople for both academies declined to answer requests for comment, as well as questions about whether they considered limiting faculty speech as well.

At West Point, several professors, including Parsons, resigned in protest. On social media, Hegseth cheered.

At an August meeting, West Point's dean warned faculty never to share opinions with cadets during class. Bakken saw this as an extension of the academic engagement policy to the classroom. Bakken interpreted the dean's remarks as forbidding the kind of analysis he had given for decades, assessing the reasoning and impact of the court rulings he taught.

Four times that fall, Bakken said, he stopped himself from answering student questions because of the new policy. He did not answer a cadet who asked whether he agreed with the Supreme Court's ruling in Robinson v. California that punishing someone for a narcotics addiction is cruel and unconstitutional (he did), or another who asked what he made of McQuirter v. State, which held that juries may consider social conditions (the decision was probably wrong, Bakken believed, but influential). He declined chances to publish papers, too, including a piece questioning the legality of Navy attacks on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean.

In January, Bakken learned that West Point was moving to dismiss the suit. Col. Krista Watts, a vice dean, argued in a court filing that the academy had to follow Defense Department rules. Moreover, she wrote, the new policy protected West Point.

"These regulations and policies," Watts wrote, "permit senior Academy officials to be prepared for follow-up questions or concerns by the American public or by governmental leaders."

"Professor Bakken is required to comply," she continued, "as a condition of his employment."

Bakken feared that if the judge sided with West Point, he would lose his job.

At the first all-faculty meeting after Bakken sued, staff filled every seat. Except the four rows surrounding Bakken.

A few yards away, military instructor Maj. Benjamin Ordiway watched in silence. Bakken, Ordiway said, looked like an island. "This is bulls---," he told the teachers next to him. Ordiway, who has since retired, barely knew Bakken but admired him. He stood, walked over and cleared his throat.

"You did what a military officer should have done," he said, according to his and Bakken's recollections. "Standing up for the First Amendment."

Bakken hesitated, then held out his hand. The two men shook, and Ordiway sat beside him. "Thanks," Bakken said.

Bakken hoped he had conveyed how much Ordiway's support meant, even if he found it embarrassing. He hated being told that he was "in the right" or on the "right side of history," he said. Let a judge make that determination.

Such humility didn't always come across to colleagues, who could bristle at Bakken's certitude. Even his allies acknowledged that Bakken's prickly personality sometimes deepened his isolation.

Parsons remembered laboring for months over a proposal to allow civilians to compete for positions as department heads and deans. But when Bakken saw it, he threw it on the table in disgust, saying it didn't go far enough.

"He always wanted to be the critic," Parsons said. "He wouldn't be a member of any team that would have him."

Students noticed his stubbornness, too. He demanded cadets think aloud and refused to accept sloppy reasoning, said Lt. Brian Matthews, a 2024 West Point graduate. Unlike other professors, Matthews said, Bakken never used PowerPoint or summarized cases. Instead, he'd start class with a question. Such as: Do you think laws against hate crimes are effective?

"Then for the next hour, we'd go down the rabbit hole - one view after another - but at the same time, students weren't allowed to say crazy things with no background," Matthews said. "It was an environment I'd never seen before. It was pure intellectual curiosity."

Solis, who hired Bakken, said the professor has become "the dog who barks in the night." West Point needs that, he said. But it can get pretty lonely for the dog.

On his days off, Bakken usually dined alone on orange chicken and fried rice at an aging, financially distressed shopping mall that someone had tried to combine with an indoor amusement park. He read law articles in the shadow of an empty Ferris wheel and a Mount Rushmore-themed climbing wall.

Bakken had never married. For decades, he had lived alone in a series of shabby apartments an hour's drive from West Point. The most recent, in Nyack, was a two-room walk-up with no stove or dining table. He had always put work first - a decision he'd come to regret.

He'd begun picturing retirement in Florida, or by the lakes in his home state, Wisconsin. He envisioned the warmth. The water. He imagined buying a painting to hang on a sunny wall in a place he owned.

On a clammy day in mid-April, Bakken got home late after taking a bar recertification course in New York City. It had been half a year since he filed suit. He had no idea when it would be over. As he mounted the stairs to his apartment, thoughts of Florida surged. Bakken paused on the splintered wooden steps.

"Why," he asked himself in the darkness, "am I still doing this?"

- - -

A month later, in a federal courtroom in White Plains, Judge Cathy Seibel peered through her glasses at Bakken and his two lawyers, who sat surrounded by manila folders. Across from them was West Point's attorney.

"I asked you to come in," Seibel said, "because I have questions."

For the next hour, Seibel, who had been nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, grilled the lawyers on whether Bakken even had the right to sue in federal court. Why shouldn't he go directly to a federal agency with oversight of workplace conditions, like the Office of Special Counsel, as the government argued?

"There are a couple cases out there that don't look good for you," she told Bakken's lawyers.

Attorney Jonathan Goldman argued that transferring Bakken's case to the Office of Special Counsel would be a death blow. Trump had fired the agency's head and appointed an acting leader who promptly ended its investigation of the president's mass firings of federal workers. "It would be essentially asking the person who promulgated the policy whether the policy is constitutional," Goldman argued.

The judge next said she wanted to move to "the constitutional issue": Was West Point violating the First Amendment?

She turned to West Point's attorney, Dana Kumar. "What's the academy afraid of?" Seibel asked.

Kumar said that West Point, "as a military institution tasked with training military leaders of the future," had to ensure that the academy was not "misconstrued" to the public. Kumar asked the judge to imagine if Bakken gave a speech asserting that American conflicts overseas were illegal.

"No one is going to mistake that for the Army's position," Seibel said.

It could create the impression, Kumar said, that "that's what they're teaching at West Point."

The judge leaned forward. "Shouldn't we want … exactly those kinds of debates?" she asked.

Bakken could join a podcast to share his views about international conflicts without violating the policy, Kumar said. He just couldn't identify himself as a West Point professor.

Seibel said Bakken's West Point affiliation was the reason people invited him to appear on podcasts or write books. Otherwise, he was just "a random guy." She sat back, rubbed her temples and said she had "a lot to think about" but would decide "fairly soon."

Outside, Bakken waved goodbye to his lawyers. He wondered how much longer he'd have to stay silent. His new book, "Don't Say Sorry: Make Great Decisions, Without Regrets," was due to publish in early August.

The semester ended without a ruling.

As cadets collected their degrees, the war with Iran neared its fourth month, still without formal sanction from Congress. The number of people killed in strikes on alleged drug boats neared 200. Bakken read that top Trump officials wanted all federal workers to sign nondisclosure agreements - and, later, that the Pentagon had barred journalists from its press office. To Bakken, it seemed the administration was finding more ways to limit scrutiny or dissent.

On May 26, three days after West Point's graduation, Seibel ruled that Bakken's case against the Trump administration could proceed. She also temporarily enjoined West Point from enforcing the academic engagement policy for civilian professors, forbidding the university from "prohibiting or restraining" Bakken from "expressing or offering his opinions, beliefs or views to his students" while the case moved forward.

The government could appeal Seibel's interim ruling. It had until late July to decide. The case could drag on for months regardless, possibly even leading to a trial.

Still: It was a victory. To celebrate, the professor drove to the mall, alone.

At the food court, Bakken told himself not to think about what lay ahead. He sat down with a foam tray and looked over his shoulder to the fake Mount Rushmore and its ersatz presidents. "In a smaller way," he told Thomas Jefferson, who founded West Point, "I've contributed my bit to the U.S. Constitution, too." Then he turned back to his teriyaki salmon.

Two days later, Col. Joshua Berry, the deputy head of West Point's Law and Philosophy Department, delivered Bakken a formal memorandum warning that he could face "disciplinary action" for working from home one Friday, according to a copy obtained by The Post. He also issued a second memo censoring Bakken for a "discourteous" interaction he had with mail room staffers in March.

Bakken contested both memos, which he saw as retaliation for his court victory. Asked about the timing of these sanctions, Berry deferred comment to West Point, whose spokesperson declined to comment. Berry rescinded the documents a few days after Bakken complained, according to emails obtained by The Post.

By early July, Bakken was hoping things had died down when he unlocked his office door one morning. He spotted something glittering on the polished surface of his desk, which he'd left bare the night before. It was a penny, upturned to show Abraham Lincoln's face.

He already knew what it signified, but he typed the question into Google anyway. "What is the meaning of a penny placed on an object in the military?" The answer: Soldiers leave pennies on grave sites to honor fallen comrades.

It didn't feel like a mark of respect to Bakken. He called a friend, a retired Army colonel who had taught at West Point.

"Is this a threat?" he asked. "I can't come up with any other explanation."

"This was a message to you," the colonel answered. "This is the way it works at West Point."

Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.