There is a “vast DEI bureaucracy” that has pervaded the everyday operations of the Pentagon and the nation’s military academies and has created a culture of “race- and sex-based scapegoating and stereotyping,” according to a yearlong study released on Tuesday by the Arizona State University Center for American Institutions.
The 80-page study, which is a brutal excoriation of the military under the Biden administration, “calls for an immediate end to the Pentagon’s multimillion-dollar DEI bureaucracy.”
The report evaluated “the history, evolution, and implementation of diversity and equity programs across all branches of the military and military academies.”
Professor Donald Critchlow, director of the Center for American Institutions, explained to AZ Free News that “our research reviewed DEI policy in the military starting in the 1970s to the modern day and concluded there are far more effective ways to promote unity and respect among military ranks than by spending millions annually to divide servicemembers by their gender or race.”
Critchlow said in the report that "given its importance, the U.S. Armed Forces should not be a laboratory for social experimentation, especially one based on Critical Race Theory, a contentious and abstract social theory."
However, he emphasized that the study "shows in great detail [that] Critical Race Theory is promoted within Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training throughout the military from the Pentagon through the ranks and in our service academies.”
Among the most egregious findings was that “DEI themes dominate the training and education that members of the armed forces receive about their country. As ‘white supremacy’ and racism have become a central focus of DEI trainings, white supremacist racism is assumed to be the core problem of the nation and of the military.”
Among the recommendations on how the DOD can fix the situation and start to undo the damage, the report suggested to "immediately end the DEI bureaucracy or pursue alternative avenues to affect positive change despite existing policies” and to "return to the military’s outstanding tradition of merit-based selections and promotions and nondiscriminatory equal opportunity.”
Researchers wrote that “Americans are rapidly losing confidence in our fundamental social and political institutions, including the military. Critical to restoring trust is a restoration of civic education focused on foundational principles upon which America’s founders created the experiment of our democratic republic.”