Anti-Trump historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is scheduled to lecture midshipmen on “authoritarianism” next week at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, an event that is part of the Bancroft Lecture series but, in a break with tradition, will not be public.
We know of Ben-Ghiat’s scheduled Oct. 10 speech only because she announced the event, as well as a problematic partisan political agenda for her lecture, via a Substack post.
“I will be speaking about what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule, touching on Fascist Italy, Pinochet’s Chile and the Russian military during the war on Ukraine,” Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, writes in the Sept. 4 post.
The historian abruptly transitions, writing “that brings us to today’s post, on why Donald Trump insults the military,” and drawing an…
