# @denverwestword on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DN6oOy4iSHN
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/33861203-denverwestword-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/7e4e599b2c.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-08-28T22:50:19.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Denver Westword (@denverwestword) — https://gondola.cc/denverwestword

## Caption

On Tuesday, the Colorado Springs Gazette broke the news that officials at the United States Air Force Academy cancelled an upcoming lecture by a Utah author and poet due to critical social media posts about President Donald Trump.

Paisley Rekdal is the bi-racial author of The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam, a book-length essay that explores the cultural legacies and intergenerational trauma of American veterans and Southeast Asian refugees of the Vietnam War. Her talk at the Air Force Academy was to be an installment of the annual Jannetta Lecture Series, funded by Academy alumnus David Jannetta.

“When I spoke to them on the phone, they said that a supervisor had done some research on me and found some things he didn’t like,” Rekdal tells Westword. “They never told me exactly what it was.” But she says Jannetta and the Gazette both told her the cancellation was specifically due to posts that were critical of President Donald Trump.

On her Facebook page, Rekdal advocates for First Amendment freedoms as head of the Utah chapter of PEN, a nonprofit institute devoted to freedom of expression. She fights book banning in Utah (the state has banned eighteen so far, she says), and one of her posts asks potential attendees of an event, “Do you hate fascism?”

✍️ Read the full story by Brendan Joel Kelley at westword.com or at the link in our bio.

#airforceacademy #coloradosprings #donaldtrump #denver #denvercolorado #denvernews

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 362
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 165

## Tags

denver, denvernews, denvercolorado, coloradosprings, airforceacademy, donaldtrump

---
Copyright (c) Gondola