By J.A. Cauthen
America, it would seem to some, is irredeemably racist, bigoted, and guided by hate. Those fighting against these pervasive evils have experienced a great “awokening” and are on a noble crusade to perfect American society by transforming its centers of power and influence. In doing so, many of our nation’s institutions are attempting to redefine what is acceptable thought, speech, and behavior by creating formal structures of control. Thus do they reprimand and publicly castigate the fallen.
The U.S. Naval Academy (USNA), the nation’s premier institution through which future Navy and Marine Corps officers are educated and trained, has now embraced this ideology. Willing collaborators all too eager to appease their political masters are accomplishing this transformation through directives, policy, training, and the creation of new offices and positions staffed to advance the agenda of wokeness. Under a benign-sounding scheme known as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), wokeness is given a formal structure with the force to entrench itself. As emeritus professor John Ellis of UC Santa Cruz recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “These administrative divisions don’t merely act as gatekeepers; they also affect the speech and conduct inside [institutional] gates. DEI divisions are the driving force of cancel culture on campus, which limits the free inquiry that is essential to a university’s mission.”
The Navy’s “diversity” plan will erode the competency of future officers and imperil our national security.In early 2021, the Naval Academy published a Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, a complementary compendium to its 2030 Strategic Plan. This vision, if achieved, will erode the competency of future officers and imperil our national security. Endorsed and signed by all senior Naval Academy leadership, from the superintendent to the academic dean and provost, the plan will set the tone and tenor of forthcoming DEI initiatives and programs, with enforcement centralized through the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI). Drafted and promulgated by ODEI, some of the published objectives and actions read like bygone Soviet and Maoist slogans. To describe these as troubling is charitable; pernicious and punitive are more apt descriptors.
Read the full piece at The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal here.
