Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions has a report out that everyone needs to take a moment to read and soak in the moment.
A lot of their report includes things we’ve covered here on DivThu through the last few years, but what is important here is that this information is not being put into the public space by some guy on Substack pounding out posts over breakfast and coffee breaks.
No. This is from a no-kidding actual professor from a no-kidding serious public university.
It is titled, “Civic Education in the Military Are Servicemembers More Prepared for Micro-Aggression or Macro-Aggression?“
It presents an open, clear-eyed view of the cancer we have allowed to take root in our military and how this sectarianism and division spawned by operationalized Cultural Marxist thought has manifested itself into the very highest levels of leadership.
As reported by The College Fix;
“The research reveals serious problems within our military complex. The U.S. military now has a well-developed, taxpayer-funded DEI bureaucracy dedicated to rooting out ‘white privilege’ and white supremacy, and that allows for (and sometimes teaches) the overt criticism of the United States, its founding, its founders, and its founding documents, alleging that they are all rooted in systemic racism,” the report’s executive summary reads.
Titled “Civic Education in the Military,” the 41-page report represents the culmination of findings from the year-long study led by Professor Donald Critchlow.
“I want to emphasize that DEI training is not your old time workplace sensitivity training. It is destructive and divisive,”
Let’s dig itto some of the parts of the report that focus on the Navy just to give you a flavor of what is there, but remember - there is a lot more in the report about the other services as well that we have not covered on DivThu.
The Navy Master Chief Petty Officer works with “affinity groups” based on gender, race, and ethnicity on retention, and develops performance metrics and procedures to remove any barriers to retention or promotion. Major Echelon 2 and Echelon 3 Commanders appoint DEI Practitioners. The Naval Education and Training Command is responsible for training materials for entry level up to the executive. The Navy Personnel Command ensures that DEI topics are covered in career development and that funds are available for sailors to attend affinity group national conferences. Coordination with DEI Practitioners occurs at the Command level regarding training, education, and assessment. Command Resilience Teams track demographic patterns by race, sex, and ethnicity in retention, duty assignments, promotions, and awards to alert commanders to issues that might affect climate.
…
The most recent DEI plan issued in 2022 prescribes the bureaucratic arrangement described above. The array of high-level meetings and conferences to maintain coordination and to review outcomes testifies to the priority the Navy has assigned to DEI. The Culture of Excellence Steering Council, consisting of representatives of major Echelon 2 commands and Chief of Naval Operations staff, meets quarterly. The DEI Council, chaired by the Vice Chief of Naval Operations meets semi-annually, and at times brings in “recognized DEI leaders” from business and academia for advice.
The plan calls for the creation of a four-component cycle: “development of annual engagement objectives, collaboration in production of annual DEI Engagement and Resource Plan, coordination of Senior Leader DEI Engagement Calendar and engagement assessments through return on investment (ROI) analysis.” The plan includes adherence to Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is stated as being “Designed for commanders to better understand factors impacting all command personnel through collaboration, command climate assessment and deckplate leadership engagement.” To better understand the impact of these directives, the document specifically states that all active-duty Navy personnel, both Regular and Reserve, midshipmen, and reserve personnel are subject to these rules.
The report, rightfully, spends time on what is happening at the service academies. We’ve discussed the Orwellian stew seeping into every corner of Annapolis, so let’s check in with USNA.
The Naval Academy’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity consists of:
1 Chief Diversity Officer
1 Assistant Chief Diversity Officer
1 Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist, USN Command Climate Specialist
1 Deputy Directory, Equal Employment Opportunity
1 Equal Employment Opportunity Specialist
The office supports 13 Affinity Clubs, promotes 17 awards divided by race, gender, and ethnicity, and advises the Superintendent on issues connected with sexual harassment, equal opportunity, trainings, climate assessments, and formal complaints.
We’ve mentioned the weights on the scale in hiring staff. Here it is;
…the goal for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion is accomplished with “Trained Diversity Search Advocates (DSA) consistently used for tenure track faculty searches” and an increase in the number of DSAs. In addition, the assessment states that of the faculty candidates interviewed were “40% female, 25% minority” with tenure track hires “43% female, 14% minority.”91 To provide context, according to a 2022 demographics profile of Navy Active-Duty members, 79.3 percent were men, indicating the USNA’s likely propensity to socially engineer their professoriate as opposed to taking the most qualified applicants from their likely male-dominant applicant pool.92 A step toward meeting the goals were new hires posted in 2023 in History and English, with preferences for civil rights movement history in the first and Post-Colonial Studies in the second. These positions required applicants to provide diversity statements.
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Special programs include “Civil Rights and Domestic Immersion programs focused on civil rights or themes of diversity and inclusion.”
Oberlin College on the Severn. When the correction comes, I used to think there would be a gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes that would make it difficult. However, what we’ve seen in the last year are some of our states like Florida have defenestrated their DEI nomenklatura - they’ve left with little more than a slight whimper. They know how unpopular they are … because Zampolits are never popular.
BZ to ASU, and again, give the report a full read.
When people attack the messenger and not the message, then you know the message is effective.
On page 23, in 2020
"Secretary Esper ordered a redesign of professional military education to teach service members about implicit bias, including trainings that included “scenario-based learning.” DOD also added to its violence prevention programs a crackdown on microaggressions through bias training and bystander interventions “in response to improper remarks or other communications made by peers or superiors."
The DEI bureaucracy exploded following this announcement.
In December 2020, Secretary Esper established a Department of Defense Board on Diversity and Inclusion tasked with identifying new polices and a federal advisory committee, the Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, to provide review and assessment. Many of the recommendations concerned affirmative action and equity (tracking data on performance evaluations toward an examination of potential biases, for example) and standardizing data collection and analysis to assess whether policies were producing the intended outcome. DEI material would now be integrated into the core leadership curricula in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and at the service academies, rather than treated separately: diversity leadership is a “core competency.”
[Worth noting here that Esper was previously chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation as well as an army officer and "director for national security affairs" for Senator Bill Frist. If a guy like that, with an unimpeachably "conservative" background, willingly and eagerly made DEI the cornerstone of armed forces PME, who exactly could Trump pick to reverse all this nonsense and dismantle DEI? Where do you find a guy who is willing to take on DEI if it's not a guy like Esper?]