As library staff at service academies and war colleges review books for removal under a Department of Defense directive, a new group is starting to push back on what they perceive as censorship at libraries serving military members and their families. 

Castle Rock resident Kelly Wilson said she is helping found the Committee of Military Families for Free Expression because she wants to ensure service members have the same rights that they fight to protect abroad.

She said that service members take an oath to  “support and defend the Constitution,” the document that protects free speech. While at the same time, military leaders are limiting the rights of service members and their families protected by the Constitution.

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“How is this irony lost on anyone?” she said. 

A Department of Defense memo required its educational institutions, including the Air Force Academy, to sequester books that promote gender ideology or promote divisive concepts by May 21. The books had to be identified using a list of key terms, such as affirmative action, critical race theory, diversity, gender expression, and transgender people.    

The book reviews are part of larger efforts within the Trump administration to remove all diversity, equity and inclusion materials and programs, and to only recognize two genders. 

A temporary Academic Libraries Committee, including educators and library professionals, informed the development of the search term list and will guide the “ultimate disposition” of materials, the memo said. 

The Air Force Academy said in a formal response to The Gazette that books have been identified and are annotated as under review as part of the official process. The academy said it would be premature to release the titles of books identified through the process. The books identified as part of the review have not been removed because they were already stored separately, the school said. 

“The materials in question already reside in technical or special collections and already are sequestered from the main library collection. Regular access to these materials would have to be requested, just like the other materials in the same collection,” the academy said in a  statement.

About 20 books have been set aside as part of the review, a source at the academy said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. 

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The Naval Academy pulled 381 books from its shelves to comply with Trump policies including titles such as  “Designing and Conducting Gender, Sex & Health Research” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” the famed poet Maya Angelou’s autobiography. But after outcry most books were returned and only 20 remain off limits, the Associated Press reported. 

The book reviews and removals have not applied to the libraries at Fort Carson and Peterson Space Force Base. But books have been removed from Department of Defense Education Activity schools triggering a lawsuit over First Amendment rights. The agency operates schools in seven states, 11 foreign countries and two territories. 

The American Civil Liberties Union published a list of titles removed from school shelves as reported by news outlets and individuals. Some of the titles in the court filing include “The Kite Runner,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Two Boys Kissing” and “This Book is Gay” among many others.  In May, the ACLU asked the courts to paused the removal of books from K-12 libraries and restore them to the shelves.  

As the wife of a Navy veteran who separated last summer, Wilson relied on the library on base in Japan to home-school her child. Without the library, it would have been tough for her to access all the materials appropriate and necessary, she said.

For her it is not about individual titles that might be removed, but the prospect of censorship and restrictions on freedom of thought.

Wilson is concerned that government censorship that favors a certain set of beliefs now could be used against a different set of beliefs or groups when the political pendulum swings.

“This is something that will ultimately work against everyone,” she said.

She is particularly concerned that the process for choosing books for removal is not clear, and there is no process to appeal books that are removed.

Troops and their families need access to the full breadth of materials that civilians have access to, Wilson said.

“If we deny them (service members) the ability to access and understand all the opinions and resources that exist. … We are then preventing them from having fully informed opinions,” Wilson said.

She views informed minds as equally important to strength, skills, and combat training.

“Their decision making, their ability to think strategically based on all available information is equally important to whether we have enough ammo and tanks.”

To help protect freedom of expression, the group wants to help educate military-connected families through virtual and in-person events on how to speak out against removing books and censorship and the history of censorship. The group is active on Substack, Instagram and Facebook. 

Focus on the Family Culture and Policy Analyst Jeff Johnston said it is within the military’s purview to remove materials. The Colorado Springs-based nonprofit  is an international group focused on promoting Christianity. 

“They have a mission to protect the country. Their materials, their programs, their trainings I think should be focused on that mission and not on these extraneous issues,” he said. 

While Focus on the Family stands against discrimination and harassment, Johnston asserts that diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as “critical race theory” go beyond that, teaching that White people are oppressors in society. He believes such teachings create division. 

When it comes to books in schools, Johnston’s group does not want kids exposed to books that promote the idea anyone can change their gender because that is impossible. He also pointed to books such as “And Tango Makes Three,” the true story of two male penguins raising a chick as also potentially inappropriate.

“We want to protect children from being sexualized,” he said. 

Johnston also said noted that removing these books from military libraries is not censorship because people can buy and sell books they are interested in online. 

Not all conservative thinkers are united in favor of book removals, however. 

The president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal Jenna A. Robinson, who leads a right-leaning group focused on higher education, spoke against the removals in a short statement. 

“Military academies are a special case. Academic freedom is more limited in military academies than in other institutions of higher education — and for good reasons. However, removing books from the library likely violates military academies’ own promises of academic freedom to their students and faculty.”