This Is What Criticism of the President Cost Me

Opinion|This Is What Criticism of the President Cost Me

Well before my lecture scheduled for this Wednesday at the United States Air Force Academy, I suspected it would be canceled.

My planned lecture, on how the United States memorializes — or forgets — the costs of war, couldn’t have come at a more fraught time. As a former Utah poet laureate and PEN America’s Utah chapter leader, I’ve watched with distress as book bans proliferate, often targeting titles that focus on race and history. I’ve seen firsthand the evaporation of grants to support initiatives the government deems “woke” — including the study of the Great Basin Indigenous nations I work with as director of the University of Utah’s American West Center.

I worried that, as a civilian humanist, my presence at the Air Force Academy might — for some attendees — invalidate my arguments; I wouldn’t be heard because of what I represent to the right.

I had planned to talk before the cadets about my book “The Broken Country,” which explores the complex, often traumatic intergenerational legacies of the Vietnam War. In the book, I write about the histories of American veterans and post-1975 Vietnamese refugees. I’d been invited to present the book for the academy’s annual Jannetta Lecture, which features writers and artists who, through their words, “have contributed to our understanding of war.”

Imagine my shock when I learned that the talk was canceled not because of my book’s subject matter but because the academy, under its superintendent, Lt. Gen. Tony D. Bauernfeind, had discovered that some of my comments on social media “were disparaging of the commander in chief,” and so having me speak would violate the academy’s “non-partisan obligation,” it said in a statement.

You could call the decision economically punitive, since I lost income from the vanished book sales. You could also call it an attempt to suppress free speech, though that’s not exactly accurate. I had the right to say what I liked on social media; the academy had the right to determine whether I spoke on its campus.