In response to President Joe Biden’s June 2021 executive order, many federal agencies—from NASA to the Department of Defense—released plans to pursue diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their day-to-day operations. In a recent comment on these efforts, one senior Defense Department official said he hopes “as many leaders and members of the total force as possible see [these] efforts as a force multiplier.”
In fact, DEI is a dangerous ideology—so dangerous that our leaders should regard it as a threat to national security, not an imperative of it. Many have already critiqued DEI as it appears in our nation’s universities. As Dorian Abbot and Ivan Marinovic recently explained, DEI violates ethical and legal principles of equality, compromises universities’ mission and undermines the public’s trust. When DEI is applied outside of higher education, such as within the federal government, these problems are exponentially worse, and for many reasons.
