By Max Eden | American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
Two years ago, when such things still surprised some people, investigators at Open The Books revealed that the Department of Defense’s first-ever diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) education chief had a history of making flagrantly anti-white racist statements and profited from selling her far-Left books to schools serving children of America’s military servicemembers.
After significant congressional pressure from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), among others, the Department of Defense sent its under-secretary for military readiness, Gil Cisneros, to Congress to announce that the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) was dismantling its DEI division and re-assigning its chief DEI officer.
But as it turns out, that didn’t signal the end of DEI in DoDEA schools, but rather the adoption of a new policy: don’t ask about DEI, because we won’t tell.
Rightly skeptical that the Biden administration would truly pull the plug on indoctrinating children of American military service members in left-wing ideology, investigators at Open the Books followed up with a Freedom of Information Act Campaign.
As they recently revealed, even though DoDEA officially dismantled its DEI department, DoDEA school chief Thomas Brady has still been integrating DEI specialists into all major administration divisions and forming a DEI “Steering Committee.”
Who is involved in the Steering Committee, and what do they do? In an apparently flagrant violation of federal transparency laws, the Department of Defense has treated its new DEI committee and operations as though it were a top-secret military campaign.
They have refused to provide the names of virtually anyone involved in their DEI operations.
And when Open the Books got its hands on a PowerPoint deck presented at an internal DEI team meeting, 12 out of the 14 slides were entirely redacted. (The only slides the censors let through were the title page and the slide defining DEI.)
Open the Books was able to confirm, however, that the Department of Defense removed the videos from its 2022 DEI school summit after they were featured in a Claremont Institute report titled “Grooming Future Revolutionaries.”
The Claremont report featured things that were still shocking to some people then, but should be old hat to anyone paying attention these days.
In the name of DEI or, as they called it “REDI” (Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion), the Department of Defense encouraged its teachers
- to talk to 4-year-olds about “gender identity”;
- to facilitate child gender transitions and keep them secret from children’s parents;
- to deliver lesson plans about “privilege” that it knew were reasonably likely to make children cry;
- told teachers that the path to being “anti-racist” was to follow all the teachings of far-left ideologue Ibram X. Kendi;
and so on.
Despite the redactions, Open the Books was able to identify that one likely member of the DEI Steering Committee was a DEI specialist named Michelle Woodfork, who presented a slide at that summit promoting a metaphysical, near-religious DEI-affirmation statement:
“My name is ______, and I have been impacted by systemic discrimination in society, and am committed to the lifelong journey of dismantling my own bias(es). I strive to thrive in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion every day!”
The Department of Defense would not have taken these videos down if they thought that the public or their servicemembers would like what they saw. Nor would they risk losing public records litigation by covering up the most basic info on their DEI activities.
They know, or certainly should know, that they’re offering a terribly raw deal to the men and women brave and patriotic enough to risk their lives for our country: join the military, and if you stick around, we’ll indoctrinate your children with left-wing ideology.
Congress can and should do more to ensure transparency on this front.
Obviously, any further sunlight would likely have a negative effect on American military recruiting and, therefore, military readiness, but our elected officials owe would-be service members the truth.
No matter its consequences, the Biden administration will clearly not give up on infusing DoDEA schools with DEI ideology.
The surest way to uproot this ideology would be to put a Republican in the White House. While the next Republican president will have many top priorities, firing DoDEA school chief Thomas Brady, dismantling DoDEA’s DEI apparatus, and frankly issuing an apology letter to American military service members should be something that happens within the first 100 days.
The American military should not be carrying out a covert operation to indoctrinate the children of its servicemembers.
Grooming Future Revolutionaries: Woke Indoctrination at K-12 Schools on America’s Military Bases (Claremont Institute)
The American military is peddling critical race theory, white shaming, queer theory, and left-wing activism to children in its K–12 military schools.
Pentagon Secretly Institutionalized DEI In Its K-12 Public Schools
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