12 September 2024

Demographic Diversity Is Not Our Strength

Phillip Keuhlen

There is an old saw in leadership circles, “You get what you inspect.” It recognizes that what you choose to measure and what you ignore conveys to your team what aspects of any situation are important to you. Nowhere is this more evident than in Navy Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs. As reflected in those programs’ origin document, the Task Force One Navy Final Report (TF1N) of January 2021, U.S. Navy DEI programs focus exclusively on demographic diversity of race, ethnicity, and gender. Likewise, the lopsidedly one-sided bias of reference material recommended to Naval Academy educators on the topic of “diversity” clearly conveys that the Navy’s Diversity enterprise does not value diversity of thought with respect to its indoctrination.

One of the earliest critiques of TF1N and its underpinning references identified four critical flaws that compromise the intellectual integrity of the study and its conclusions.

The first critical flaw was that it was an inquiry that started with its conclusion dictated by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). Its Chartered purpose was to, “analyze and evaluate factors in our society and military that detract from Navy readiness, such as racism, sexism and other structural and interpersonal biases.” The CNO continued, “TF One Navy will seek to promptly address the full spectrum of systemic racism, advocate for the needs of underserved communities, and work to dismantle barriers and equalize professional development frameworks and opportunities within our Navy.” Any Officer assigned to execute the CNO tasking could only understand it as directing a final report that portrayed the Navy as systemically racist and sexist.

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