Cadet Simone Askew, USMA ‘18
Current Position: Senior at West Point, West Point First Captain (leader of all 4400 cadets).
Honors: 2018-20 Rhodes Scholar, selected as one of Teen Vogue Magazine’s “21 under 21”, Commander of Summer Training, Top Female Cadet in zSummer Field Training, Black Engineer Award as the top overall cadet in the US for service, leadership, and scholarship.
CHGS Programming: Courses – HI 498-99 Senior Honors Thesis on Mass Rape during the Kenyan Mau Mau Uprising, XH 415 “Genocide and Mass Killing.” Programs – 2017 American Service Academies Program for Holocaust Studies in Poland, Co-creator of the Joint Service Academies Mass Atrocity Prevention Symposium, 2016 summer research in London.
Simone Askew is the first African-American woman to be selected as First Captain (leader of all 4400 cadets) in West Point’s history, and she has been associated with CHGS projects and programs since her plebe (freshman) year. As a plebe, Cadet Askew traveled to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for a day of specialized programming overseen by the CHGS. After this event, she and her best friend, Nette Monaus, approached CHGS Director Dr. Frey and expressed a desire to organize a conference at West Point on the Holocaust. After a series of conversations, this plan evolved into the first Joint Service Academies Mass Atrocity Prevention Symposium (JSAMAPS). Simone was the lead planner and organizer of this groundbreaking three-day symposium, which included presentations by 17 students from West Point and the Naval, Air Force, and Coast Guard Academies, as well as speeches by scholars and policymakers working on genocide studies and atrocity prevention. The keynote speaker at the event, then Acting Secretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, gave special recognition to Simone and the two other student organizers. Cadet Askew also received an Army Achievement Medal for her efforts. The JSAMAPS, after only two iterations, is now a signal event for the academies and for the Civic and Defense Initiatives program at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which co-sponsors the event with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at West Point.
Recognizing her talents and interest, the History Department and the CHGS supported Simone during the summer after her sophomore year in order that she conduct research in newly opened colonial archives in England. She is currently converting that research into an honors thesis, conducted with Dr. Frey, in which she is examining the use of sexual violence by the British and their colonial proxies as a deliberate strategy of mass atrocity. Her work will consider the long-term ramifications of gender-based violence in Kenya.
In her time as a Rhodes Scholar, Cadet Askew will pursue a Master’s in the study of Forced Migration, continuing her work on gender-based and sexual violence and mass atrocity. Thereafter, she will resume her Army career in the Engineering Branch.
© 2026 · West Point Resnick Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies