By John Hughes, USMA ’96
On 27 January 2025, President Trump made good on his campaign promise and officially ended DEI in the military by signing two Executive Orders.
Titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” and “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” they were self-explanatory and were to be implemented immediately by the Secretary of Defense.
After working through the specifics and a fixing some mistakes that were made, the SECDEF superficially appeared to have resolved the DEI problem.
Then, additional cases of DEI-embracing personnel emerged.
On 8 May 2025, USMA professor Graham Parsons published an op-ed in the New York Times called “West Point is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate.” He later left USMA.
In July 2025, CDMedia reported that yet another professor, this time in the West Point English Department, was bragging on his public West Point page about editing a modern version of a Shakespeare work through a lens of Critical Theory.
This week I went to a military installation’s military hospital and saw a research poster in the waiting room for patients. It was a poster for the same DEI trial concerning racism in healthcare that was there three years ago under Biden’s administration that pushed DEI. The original trial poster that was posted in the same waiting room 3 years ago is attached.
Apparently the Army medical units are disregarding the executive order and continuing to pursue DEI.
Ending DEI will require some work, to be sure. It was so fully integrated into just about every part of DoD that totally eliminating it took some researching and redesigning of the DoD’s policies and public face.
However, a troubling question keeps arising: nearly 6 months later, why is DEI still visibly present to the public?
It has been nearly 6 months since President Trump and SECDEF Hegseth have taken over DoD. Both now own the DoD and are responsible for what it does and/or fails to do.
Changing a culture is a leadership issue. SECDEF Pete Hegseth needs to finish the job and hold the military senior leadership accountable and replace those who are still non-compliant.
This would include the Superintendent of West Point, the commander of the military hospital in question, and any other ‘holdouts’ across the Department of Defense.
DEI was a problem under the previous administration but not “the” problem. The problem was poor general officer leadership.
DEI was able to take hold so quickly due to this weak senior military officer leadership. Better generals would have likely been able to resist the worst effects of DEI. These were the same military leaders that brought us defeat in Afghanistan and the COVID debacle.
If DEI is allowed to continue to fester, it will perpetuate and enable the ongoing weak leadership. Worse, the newest generals are being educated to believe that personal courage and integrity amongst the general officer class are not important for promotion.
DoD didn’t really need an overhaul. It just needed better military leadership and this critical task has yet to be performed. Until then, no amount of money will ‘fix’ our military.
DEI needs to be eliminated once and for all and the US military’s general officers need to be screened for retention or retirement ASAP.
_
John Hughes: Emergency Physician. United States Military Academy c/o 1996. #1 graduate. 3rd Generation West Pointer. USUHS Grad c/o 2002. Four combat tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Author – American Doctor – Coming Home to War Author – West Point’s Cult of DEI www.americandoctor.org
First published on Armed Forces Press
Leave a Comment