Letter to the Editor by Larry Purdy, USNA ’68 to the Baltimore Sun regarding the article: “Military academies review curriculum, clubs as Trump moves to eliminate DEI”:
If we recognize, as DoD’s Human Goals Charter explicitly does, that “each individual has infinite dignity and worth,” and this uniqueness transcends simple physical characteristics such as skin and hair color, eye shape, height, weight, body type, etc, etc., ad infinitum., then it goes without saying that whenever there is more than one individual in a room, or in a military unit, you will have “diversity.”
Diversity simply IS. We don’t need to artificially create it. It is, in fact, impossible not to have it for the reasons just stated.
Thus, the new SECDEF, Pete Hegseth, is right. Unity, notwithstanding our natural and broadly diverse individual characteristics, is our strength.
It is why we have “Basic Training,” and “Plebe Summers,” sport shaved heads and wear the same uniforms, and march in step . . . where participant’s immutable characteristics don’t mean a thing. There is a single, often increasingly rigorous, standard (think BUD/S training) that must be met by every individual if we are to achieve unity.
And that unity has nothing to do with any individual’s immutable characteristics.
We erred in the past when we discriminated against clearly capable individuals based on race. (Think of the Tuskegee Airmen.)
It is why, in recent years and under different administrations, we erred when we permitted so-called “progressives” to employ soft-sounding euphemisms like “diversity, equity, and inclusion” to camouflage a return to racial discrimination (i.e., unequal treatment based on race, color, or national origin).
As I wrote in my recently published law review article:
“If we have learned nothing else from our history surrounding race, we should have learned this: dividing any collection of individuals by race — whether it be a platoon, a battalion, an airwing, a Corps of Cadets, or a Brigade of Midshipmen — and assigning benefits or assessing penalties to the resulting groups is fundamentally destructive.
Perpetuating racial favoritism and its opposite, racial discrimination, does not heal a society; it poisons it.
Policies that focus on race do not lead to a cohesive and effective military; they undermine it.
Such policies have no place in our military.”
See R. Lawrence Purdy, “WE ALL WEAR GREEN, WE ALL BLEED RED , THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE”: RA CE-CONSCIOUS ADMISSIONS POLICIES HAVE NO PLACE AT OUR MILITARY ACADEMIES , 56 ST. MARY’S L.J. 113, 115 (2025).
To achieve Unity, DEI must end; and this is particularly true when it comes to our military.
Article:
Military academies review curriculum, clubs as Trump moves to eliminate DEI
15 Feb 25 – The Baltimore Sun – James Matheson
The Trump administration is moving to eliminate race and sex-based considerations within the military, raising questions at the service academies and across the numerous branches.
While taking aim at systems the military uses to promote diversity, President Donald Trump has left experts concerned changes will deplete the strength of the U.S. armed forces.
Supporters of the move say removing DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs will stop discrimination against people on the basis of race or gender.
“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is, ‘Our diversity is our strength.’ I think our strength is our unity,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at his first Pentagon town hall recently. “Our strength is our shared purpose, regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race.”
Hegseth ordered the restriction of learning materials covering subjects like psychology and immigration in Defense Department schools. He also banned trans people from joining the military in a memo dated Feb. 7.
“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday, firing service academy boards of visitors. “We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”
The dismissal of the presidential nominees sitting on these boards, tasked with overseeing academic programs and student life at service academies, came amidst an onslaught of executive actions targeting DEI initiatives.
Notable orders include:
– “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” terminates all DEI programs in the federal government.
– “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” eliminates racial or gender preferences in the military.
– “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” makes medical conditions like gender dysphoria inconsistent with the requirements of military service.
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point said it was shuttering 12 cultural and gender-focused affinity groups for cadets to comply with executive orders. Among them were the Society of Women Engineers and the Latin Cultural Club.
The Naval and Air Force academies said they are reviewing cadet clubs for compliance with applicable executive orders, although neither has said any clubs have closed as of Friday.
West Point graduate Geoffrey Easterling, who was a member of one of the now-disbanded clubs when he was at the academy, said the groups were open to all cadets.
“It was just community. There wasn’t any teaching of all these things people are worried about,” he said. “You could find help with your homework from upperclassmen, get help to know the military.”
The Department of Defense’s K-12 schools are also being affected. Department of Defense Education Activity, which oversees 161 schools across 11 countries, educates more than 64,000 military-connected students. Clubs, extracurricular activities and library books are all under review.
Baltimore is hosting the annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a conference that draws potential military applicants in science, technology, engineering and math. The Defense Department has ordered its organizations to cancel participation in the event, eliminating a pool of highly qualified candidates who frequently serve in the Pentagon and other key military positions.
“Unit cohesion is the absolute minimum for an effective fighting force; that’s your starting point,” Michael I. Meyerson, a University of Baltimore Law School professor and constitutional law expert, said. “Allowing politics to step in is painful for [the Naval Academy]. If the rules are so broad that what they need they cannot do, they’re going to have to rethink both what they do and what they call it.”
Angi Porter, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law who specializes in higher education law and African studies, said because “DEI office” is defined as offices established to influence hiring and employment practices with respect to race, sex, color or ethnicity or that promote differential treatment of people based on those characteristics, the curriculum at the academies could be affected.
Porter anticipates the Trump administration attacking admissions at the academy, too.
After the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, a federal district court in Maryland allowed the Naval Academy to continue considering race during the admission process to ensure a diverse military force in accordance with the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.
The case, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. United States Naval Academy, was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Trump’s aim at removing the systems the U.S. military has implemented to promote diversity, leaves further questions about the academies’ admissions processes.
“It is unclear what the new leadership at the Department of Defense will do concerning the SFFA litigation challenging race preferences at our nation’s military academies,” Students for Fair Admissions President Edward Blum said.
SFFA argued the Naval Academy’s admissions violate the Fifth Amendment by giving an advantage to racial minority students.
While Meyerson said Trump’s executive actions cannot affect the constitutionality or necessity of diversity in the military, they can change how it promotes cohesion and unity.
“One thing to remember is that DEI is separate from admissions,” Porter said. “ ‘DEI’ is essentially a blanket term that the Trump Administration is using to encapsulate not only hiring practices that seek to target bias favoring white male candidates but an entire ideology that critiques White supremacy and amplifies non-Western-centered historical narratives.”
If Trump bans race-conscious admissions in an executive order, the next president could simply reverse his action, Porter said. But if Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. United States Naval Academy is appealed to the Supreme Court, then a decision to ban race-conscious admissions at the military academies would become law.
“Diversity is not the opposite of merit, it’s how you find merit,” Meyerson said. “To pretend that we are a race-neutral or gender-neutral society, or that women engineers are viewed when they walk into a room the same as a man, that’s just counterfactual. The military has tried to recognize [diversity] for only one reason: if we have a battle, or a fight, or a war, we want to win.”
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