Trump demands ‘lies’ in West Point climate curriculum, professor claims in new lawsuit

A tenured professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point claims he was fired after pushing back on a presidential directive to “defy science” and stop teaching cadets that climate change had “primarily human causes, something contrary to the ideology of the Commander in Chief and forbidden at West Point.”

Last September, Dr. Adam Kalkstein, a professor of geography and the only climate scientist at the United States Military Academy , says higher-ups “expressly forbade” him from talking about anthropogenic climate change, according to a federal lawsuit reviewed by The Independent .

“At the time, [Kalkstein] was teaching two sections of Climatology in which he taught that humans were responsible for much of the current planetary warming trend and presented the scientific evidence, consequences, and military impacts,” the complaint states. “Learning how humans affect the atmosphere was a fundamental component of his course which he had been teaching for many years, and the concept that humans can alter Earth’s climate is a plainly established scientific fact.”

The order had come from the White House, Kalkstein was informed, his complaint says. Its intent was to “chill and suppress speech and censor viewpoints contrary” to those promulgated by the Trump administration, the complaint goes on.

However, Kalkstein – a conservative Republican , according to his lawyer – spoke out against the decree, telling West Point brass that misrepresenting reality “violated the mission of the academy as it required professors to hide scientific truth,” according to the complaint.

“We’re only telling cadets part of the story,” Kalkstein told his bosses. “We’re lying to them, deceiving them. It would be like trying to teach the law without being able to even mention the Constitution. The guiding principle of any school should be to the truth… I’m supposed to be an educator and a scientist upholding Army values, but… right now, I’m a liar and a fraud.”

In response, Kalkstein was stripped of his tenure and put on a contract – which has since been canceled. It is set to expire in December, the complaint states.

Attorney Michael Sussman, who is representing Kalkstein, told The Independent that he is presently battling two types of cancer but felt this case was too important to pass up.

“This is not someone who is a radical or a progressive or anything close to that,” Sussman said on Tuesday. “He is a scientist though, and he’s trying to inform the cadets on what is true. But they told him, ‘If you teach that, you’re out of here.’”

Sussman said Kalkstein even wrote a letter to Trump-appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, pointing out that climate change is a recognized threat to the military itself, but that the missive never reached its intended destination.

Ignoring the human factors that are accelerating climate change is “counterproductive from the perspective of people who are deeply concerned about the military and its challenges,” Sussman argued.

“What’s going on there is a form of censorship, which is just shocking,” he said. “And it's not being defended based on any intellectual principles.