A longtime West Point professor is suing the academy, alleging that officials fired him after ordering instructors to stop teaching cadets that humans contribute to climate change.
Adam Kalkstein, who taught climate science at the U.S. Military Academy for more than 17 years, filed a lawsuit this week accusing the school’s officials of retaliating when he pushed back on the directive, violating his First Amendment rights and academic freedom.
“The U.S. Military Academy is aware of the lawsuit and take all such matters seriously. Because this involves active, pending litigation, we will not comment further on the allegations contained in the public court filings at this time,” the USMA told Military Times in a statement.
In September 2025, the lawsuit alleges Geography and Earth Sciences faculty were called to an emergency meeting, told they could no longer teach anthropogenic climate change and instructed to scrub any references to it from their courses. Faculty were also reportedly warned that speaking to the media or politicians could result in the department’s dissolution.
Court documents show that Kalkstein objected because the directive required him to omit established science. He relented but raised concerns with department leadership, West Point’s inspector general and the legal office. He sought a meeting with the school’s dean, then Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves, where he said teaching climate science without human causes was unethical, against the Army values and dishonest to students.
“We’re only telling cadets part of the story. We’re lying to them, deceiving them. It would be like trying to teach the law without being able to even mention the Constitution,” he said in the November 2025 meeting.
In response, the lawsuit says that Reeves responded with anger, yelling and suggesting Kalkstein resign before storming out.
According to the suit, Kalkstein continued teaching through the fall and into 2026. In May, the department head informed him West Point would not renew his appointment beyond December 2026, despite prior verbal and written assurances of his employment and Kalkstein having outside grant funding that he says could have continued paying his salary.
Despite having years of stellar performance reviews, the complaint says officials cited “poor character and temperament,” and pointed to the November meeting with the dean as evidence.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of political challenges to service academies under President Donald Trump’s administration. Last February, West Point shut down a dozen clubs for women and minorities amid a purge of the school’s diversity programs. In April, the Naval Academy removed hundreds of books from its library after a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to get rid of books that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
The administration has shut down diversity programs across the government, and under Hegseth, the Pentagon has followed suit.
Kalkstein’s lawsuit comes months after a federal judge blocked separate West Point restrictions on civilian professors’ free speech, ruling in a case brought by professor Tim Bakken — another longtime professor — that the academy could not restrict instructors’ classroom opinions on subjects they teach. Bakken is still listed as a professor on the school’s website.
In an interview with Army Times, Kalkstein’s attorney, Michael H. Sussman, said the professor is a conservative Republican who does not necessarily take ideological issue with Trump or Hegseth.
Rather, Sussman said, Kalkstein is “someone who believes that cadets should be educated in what’s true. He’s someone who has a very strong feeling that as a scientist, he has to follow the science.”
Sussman said Kalkstein wrote a letter to Hegseth, but it was never delivered because of the chain of command. In that letter, Kalkstein urged Hegseth to allow academy professors to teach about climate change, describing it as a matter of national security.
In a phone interview, Sussman read the letter aloud.
“Without acknowledging human influences on Earth’s climate system, we would be unable to prepare for the future,” Kalkstein’s letter reads. “For example, how can our country compete with the Russians in the Arctic if we ignore what’s causing the present-day melting? Likewise, how can we prepare our assets along the coast if we don’t know what’s causing the seas to rise?”
Eve Sampson is a reporter and former Army officer. She has covered conflict across the world, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
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