UPDATE: The Naval Academy has restored the photos and memorabilia of the female Jewish graduates to the exhibit!
From a USNA client e-mail received by MRFF early this morning:
Thank you for MRFF’s support in responding to the removal of the Distinguished Jewish-Women graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Levy Center Stein Fellowship Hall and Jewish Chapel. Following MRFF’s report, the Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, along with her leadership team, returned the artifacts to the cases last night. The scores of midshipmen, staff, and faculty clients are grateful for MRFF’s quick and decisive action to address this injustice.
This is what it’s come to. Scrambling to hide any “wokeness” ahead of Secretary of Anti-Wokeness Petey Hegseth’s visit today, the U.S. Naval Academy removed virtually all photos of female Jewish Academy graduates from a Jewish naval history display but left the photos of male Jewish graduates and servicemen.
The photos of the Academy’s distinguished Jewish graduates, both male and female, were displayed in Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel, named for the 1806 Jewish DEI-hire who became first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy, with the bulk of the building’s construction funded by donations from Academy alumni.
From the website of the Friends of the Jewish Chapel at the Academy, describing Stein Fellowship Hall, the area of the Levy Center where the photos were displayed:
“There are several display cases containing not only the rich history of the Academy, but also information on Uriah P. Levy, USNA Jewish athletes and graduates, Jewish naval personnel and Monticello, the famous home of Thomas Jefferson.” (Commodore Levy purchased Monticello after Jefferson’s death.)
The photos below, sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) this morning by one of our many Naval Academy clients, show the display cases in Stein Fellowship Hall described in the above quote, which now have many large gaps on their shelves – gaps that until the scramble to “dewoke-ify” the display for Petey’s visit contained photos of the Navy’s distinguished Jewish females. All that remain now are the male Jews. Jewish females, with the double woke whammy of being both women and a religious minority, have been written out of the Academy’s history.
The display case in this first photo, whose empty shelves used to honor female Jewish Naval Academy graduates, has now been stripped of everything non-male except for the photo backdrop of civilian Jewish women who went to work during WWII to support the war effort.
According to the MRFF client who took the photo:
“This case was filled with 5-10 notable Jewish female graduates and their associated historical and remarkable paraphernalia like a bronze star, military cover (cap), military rank insignias, photos from experiences in Iraq, and USNA graduation photos.”
The large white piece of cardboard on the left side of the display case was put up to block a sign that talked about “Jewish Women in the Navy,” but as you can see in this second photo of the same display case, the hastily placed piece of wokeness-hiding cardboard fell down, exposing the now-impermissible recognition of the role Jewish women played in the Navy Reserve during WWII.
Here is a close-up of the unsuccessfully hidden sign:
But display case after display case of male Jewish USNA midshipmen, distinguished graduates, and servicemen remain, albeit with many empty spaces in some of the displays where the female Jewish USNA midshipmen, distinguished graduates, and service members were unceremoniously removed and erased from the Academy’s and Naval history.
The only display case that still recognizes a few Naval Academy Jewish women is the “Jews and Sports at the Naval Academy” display, although it appears that something Petey wouldn’t like was removed from even that display judging by the large empty space on the left of the top shelf.
MRFF’s Mikey Weinstein, whose own father was a Jewish distinguished graduate of the Naval Academy, is as outraged as MRFF’s clients at the Academy for this Petey-pandering history revisionism by the Academy’s leadership, writing:
“The 100% shameful, appalling, and cowardly actions of the United States Naval Academy (USNA) at Annapolis, Maryland, in disgracefully and deliberately removing the photographs of the distinguished and heroic female Jewish Naval Academy graduates from public display in the USNA Jewish Chapel area, simply because they fear the wrath of the hideous, misogynistic, Islamophobic, Christian Nationalist, drunk Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is completely indefensible and wretched beyond description! Speaking as an Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, and the father of three children who graduated from the United States Air Force Academy and, especially, the son of a Distinguished Jewish Graduate of the United States Naval Academy, I speak on behalf of not just my family and our civil rights advocacy organization here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation but on behalf of ALL Americans and worldwide citizens to decry and condemn the Naval Academy today for choosing this act of craven timidity and literally breathtaking spinelessness ONLY because they fear triggering Hegseth/MAGA/tRump and their fetid dogma of twisted and tortured hatred for anything allegedly ‘Woke’ and/or DEI!”
