If there is a title on the list of 381 books recently pulled from the library shelves at the U.S. Naval Academy that best exemplifies the direction that the U.S. Department of Defense is taking on the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion at the direction of its secretary and President Donald Trump, it might be “The Hate U Give.”

Sound familiar? It’s a best-selling 2017 YA novel chronicling the life of a 16-year-old Black teen who witnesses a longtime friend wrongly killed by a white police officer. It explores racism, classism, microaggressions and police brutality as the protagonist straddles a life torn between her low-income neighborhood and her wealthy suburban private school. The book, written by Angie Thomas who has personal experience in matters of race and class growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, was even made into a 2018 film nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award.

Should such adult fare be offered to youngsters before high school? That’s a reasonable argument to make. Its presence in school libraries has certainly been debated for “inappropriate language” in places like Katy, Texas (where it was banned but eventually put back on school library shelves). And the issues of police brutality and racism remain the subject of fierce debate, including over the extent to which they should feature in young students’ education curriculum.

But we’re not talking about children here. “The Hate U Give” was on the list of books banned at the direction of the U.S. Department of Defense secretary’s office because it touched upon the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion, an issue that has come under scrutiny in the education sphere and the workplace across the United States. While there’s a case to be made for shielding children from content that might unduly influence their political views at a young age, doing the same for members of our military is an entirely different matter. We ask: Are future U.S. Naval officers better off being shielded from controversial topics such as matters of race and class raised by Maya Angelou’s 1969 autobiography, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” (another banned book), while learning about calculus, physics, history and literature, all parts of the USNA “core curriculum?”

Remember that the Naval Academy is, at its heart, a university and a pretty exclusive one at that. It has just a 9% acceptance rate putting it in the category of “highly selective.” It may come off as a little insulting to think that future Navy officers can’t read “The Hate U Give” or any of the other books on the banned list without a critical eye.

Educating this nation’s military leaders is too important an exercise for broad book banning to be excused. It may harm recruitment as future plebes question why a nation that claims to want to trust them with national security can’t trust them with popular fiction.