Number of books on the U.S. Navy’s Professional Reading Program missing from updated reading list.
QUICK FACTS:
- Adm. Mike Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, updated the list of books approved for the Navy’s Reading Program and missing were a few ‘woke’ titles that were included in 2021, Fox News reported.
- Books including “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi and “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander were among the books ousted from the new list.
- “We are driving a fleet-wide campaign of self-improvement,” Gilday said Friday. “We must foster an organization that supports and empowers Sailors to have an independent quest for knowledge through reading and information sharing.”
CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS ON THE NAVY’S READING LIST:
“A Navy that learns, adapts, and improves the fastest will be the most successful. Knowledge sharing is essential to creating a learning culture,” the chief said.
BACKGROUND:
- Several Republicans expressed concern over the 2021 list, claiming many of the views expressed in the books were “explicitly anti-American.”
- In a letter written to Gilday in Feb. 2021, a group of congressmen specifically focused on Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” where they said “… Cohesiveness and unity in our armed services is essential. Kendi’s ideas are divisive and will undermine morale and weaken our national security.”
- Gilday said at the time that the book was included on the list because “it evokes the author’s own personal journal in understanding barriers to true inclusion, the deep nuances of racism and racial inequalities.”
