Tim Bakken, a civilian professor, and the longest-serving law professor in West Point’s history, filed a lawsuit recently in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, challenging a new U.S. Military Academy policy regulating faculty speech, which he alleges violates the First Amendment.  You may recall that Professor Bakken was on our podcast a few years back promoting his book, “The Cost of Loyalty,” in which he describes how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and has catastrophic consequences.  In 2012, he won that case against West Point before the U.S. Merit System’s Protection Board, which found him to be a legally protected whistleblower, after he complained of wrongdoing at West Point and suffered retaliation. As a result, he became one of the few federal employees to win a lawsuit against the U.S. military. The new lawsuit challenges the new “Academic Engagement Policy” requiring faculty members to seek and obtain prior approval from their department heads before they may speak to external audiences or publish articles or essays on matters within their spheres of disciplinary expertise while on duty and when speaking or writing as a citizen and mentioning their affiliation with West Point, the U.S. Military Academy.  On this podcast, Tim Bakken spoke as a citizen and did not indicate his institutional affiliation in accord with a requirement of his employer.  Any reference to that status was mine, and mine alone.