The Military Academies Have Turned Into Woke Wastelands
Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are teaching cadets to oppose — even hate — our nation’s founding values.
by FRANCIS P. SEMPA
July 7, 2023, 1:01 PM
Bill Wilson/The American Spectator
In 1962, General Douglas MacArthur said to the Corps of Cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point: “Your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication.” No longer is this the case. Sixty years later, the “very obsession” of America’s military service academies is not Duty, Honor, Country but Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — DEI.
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The rot of educational priorities at US military academies begins at the top and extends far beyond those educational institutions. In February and March of 2021, the Biden administration resumed DEI training efforts throughout government institutions, including those on “critical race theory and white privilege” subjects begun during the Obama administration, that had been curtailed to some extent by the Trump administration, which labeled such training as “un-American propaganda training sessions.” On June 25, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order “advancing” DEI throughout the federal workforce, including in our armed services, to end “the enduring legacies of employment discrimination, systemic racism, and gender inequality.” (READ MORE: School Choice Is Empowering Students and Teachers — And Devastating Unions)
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in February 2022 praised the president for his “commit[ment]” to diversity and inclusion in our armed forces, and in September of that year Austin announced the formation of a Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, upheld West Point’s policy of teaching critical race theory during a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, defended the recommendation of Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist — which equates capitalism with racism — to sailors. In May 2021, the acting Navy secretary directed the Navy’s chief diversity officer to “develop an action plan to promote DEI in Department-wide policies, programs and operations.” Barbara Barrett, then secretary of the Air Force, in June 2020 created a “Diversity and Inclusion Task Force.” This task force expanded to become the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in January 2021, which is dedicated to promoting a “diverse and highly inclusive environment” throughout the Air Force. The Coast Guard, too, has institutionalized DEI training led by so-called “change agents” to “develop an organizational culture that values respect, diversity, equity and inclusion.”
https://spectator.org/the-military-academies-have-turned-into-woke-wastelands/
