BUZZ
School policy causes unconstitutional ‘prior restraint,’ judge rules
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point can no longer enforce its policy requiring civilian faculty to receive approval to engage in certain external speech following a district judge’s ruling Tuesday.
Tim Bakken, a longtime civilian law professor at West Point, challenged two of the school’s policies. The court temporarily blocked enforcement of the speech restrictions while the case proceeds.
The Academic Engagement Policy requires civilian faculty to get prior approval from superiors before engaging in media interviews, publications, conferences, podcasts, op-eds, social media, etc. if they use their West Point affiliation or speak within their area of expertise.
Another directive instructs faculty not to advocate for particular positions or ideologies in the classroom.
Judge Cathy Seibel ruled that these policies likely violate the First Amendment, as they act as a prior restraint on speech, according to the preliminary injunction.
Professor Bakken is currently under contract to publish a book that is critical of West Point and believes the approval process would likely be used to block or censor it.
“Plaintiff has written a book to be released in August 2026 in which he wants to state that he is a USMA professor without having to first obtain approval from Defendants,” the ruling states.
“In the book Plaintiff is at times critical of the government, sharing his ‘analysis, questioning, or agreement or disagreement with government policies, including those by USMA and/or the Department of Defense and Army’ and providing his ‘view on how to improve conditions within the [U.S.] military, such as how to lower the rates of suicide and sexual assault,’” it states.
Earlier this year, West Point Dean Krista Watts told the court that school policy “stops short of requiring explicit sanction of any anticipated external communication,” Higher Ed Dive reported.
“Instead, it requires faculty members to let [West Point] leadership know when external communications using [West Point] affiliation are impending,” she said.
The dean added that the policies “delineate the correct line between a professor’s external communications using his or her West Point affiliation, and those unscrutinized, external communications that can occur without using any West Point affiliation.”
In response, Judge Seibel said Watts’ explanations appear “to be more a reverse-engineered justification for the policy than a serious attempt to either explain the true motivations for it or to connect it to genuine military needs.”
The school policies took effect in 2025 after President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning military academic institutions from promoting “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories,” according to the ruling.
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