On May 9, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent a memorandum to the entire Department of Defense prohibiting the military service academies from using race in admissions, which they had been doing for decades. Effective immediately, offers of admissions to the highly selective military service academies must be based “exclusively on merit.”
Hegseth justified this directive, which is clearly within his plenary authority as the secretary, noting that selecting future officers on anything but merit “erodes lethality, our warfighting readiness, and undercuts the culture of excellence in the Armed Forces.”
His policy is common sense and will result in the military service academies focusing their recruiting efforts and admissions decisions on measurable attributes critical to a strong officer corps like academic excellence and physical readiness.
As one would expect, those in the diversity industrial grievance complex have overreacted, claiming that by banning the use of race in admissions, Hegseth has handicapped the ability of the officer corps to benefit from diverse applicants. They claim, without any peer-reviewed evidence or studies, that a diverse officer corps is a national security imperative and that it improves unit cohesion and combat effectiveness.
Hegseth is merely following the logic from the Supreme Court’s holding in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and ridding the academies of discriminating against applicants on the basis of race.
The sad irony of this whole saga is that it has been the federal government itself, and the Department of Defense in particular, which has failed to implement two-thirds of the recommendations from a 2011 Military Leadership Diversity Commission, according to a 2022 Department of Defense Inspector General’s report. If stakeholders, including senior leaders in the Defense Department, had followed up on and implemented the recommendations (discussed below) from this report 14 years ago, that would have vastly increased the number of qualified minority applicants to the service academies, arguably nullifying the “need” to use race in admissions.
Over 80% of officers in the United States armed forces do not graduate from the military service academies. They graduate from colleges and universities across the country. Some officers get their commissions via a Reserve Officer Training Corps program associated with their college or university. Others go to college and then go to Officer Candidate School. Others get what are called “direct commissions.”
Since colleges and universities now are forbidden from using race in admissions because of the holding in Students for Fair Admissions and over 80%% of officer candidates graduate from those institutions, over 80% of the officer corps across the services will now be selected based on academic or other nondiscriminatory criteria.
The remaining officers come from the military service academies.
As I wrote in a law review article last year with two colleagues, the United States service academies are more than just academic institutions; they prepare men and women to lead their fellow citizens into life-threatening circumstances to defend America.
They are institutions where talented men and women go to learn the profession of arms in order to serve something larger than themselves: their country.
It’s difficult to think of institutions more steeped in American history, tradition, patriotism, selflessness, and excellence than our military service academies (Army, Navy, and Air Force) and federal service academies (Coast Guard and Merchant Marine).
Even though the military service academies only produce around 18% of all commissioned officers in the U.S. armed forces, there is something distinctive about being a graduate of West Point, the Naval Academy, or the Air Force Academy; it shows a dedication and desire to serve.
That’s not to say that officers who graduate from our military service academies are more proficient, more intelligent, better leaders, or are better officers than the men and women who get their commissions from OCS or ROTC programs. They aren’t.
As a retired Navy captain who was a direct commission, I served with outstanding leaders for 30 years, some of whom were ROTC grads, some were OCS grads, some graduated from the Naval Academy, and some were direct commissions.
Graduates from the military service academies do, not surprisingly, make up a decent percentage of flag and general officers in the services.
The military officer corps is a closed personnel organization, distinct from the corporate or other nonmilitary world. In the military, officers are trained in pre-commissioning programs and then advance in their careers and rank in due course over decades. You can’t create an effective professional Navy captain or Army colonel, much less an admiral or general, simply by parachuting her into the Navy or Army at a senior rank. The making of a great officer requires time in grade, positions of increasing responsibility and leadership, leading larger and larger units, and more.
That means that whom you commission as an entry-level officer matters, as he or she is one of a finite pool of officers available for promotion and leadership roles in the future.
In the corporate world, there is much more flexibility in the leadership ladder. How often have we seen a twenty or 30-something year old lead a corporation? It’s not uncommon.
In the U.S. military, that doesn’t happen.
During the Obama administration, Congress took up the issue of finding ways to increase the diversity of the officer corps in the armed forces. In the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress created the Military Leadership Diversity Commission. Their charge to the commission was to evaluate and assess the policies and practices related to diversity among military leaders and make recommendations for improvement.
It’s much easier to just use race in the admissions process and claim that its use is “non-determinative” yet critical to the national security of the country, than it is to increase the pool of qualified minority applicants to the service academies. Why? The former involves putting your thumb on the scale during the admissions process and admitting minority candidates, in part, because they are minorities. The latter is much harder as it involves an all-hands effort, described below, as recommended in the commission’s final report.
The Military Leadership Diversity Commission final report, issued in 2011, contained 20 recommendations, 18 of which were addressed to DoD, the military services, reserve components, and the National Guard. The remaining two recommendations were directed to Congress to update Title 10 of the United States Code.
According to a 2022 Report by the DoD Inspector General, of those 18 recommendations, DoD and the military services implemented only six of the recommendations, or 33%. The six recommendations that they implemented were the easiest, and the ones that required the least amount of work.
They are:
Noticeably absent from full implementation was Recommendation Seven, which focused on improving recruitment from the currently available pool of qualified applicants. In layman’s terms, improve outreach and recruiting of minority candidates for officer slots in the military service academies.
The exact language of the recommendation reads:
DoD and the Services should engage in activities to improve recruiting from currently available pools of qualified candidates by
- Creating, implementing, and evaluating a strategic plan for outreach to, and recruiting from, untapped locations and underrepresented demographic groups.
- Creating more accountability for recruiting from underrepresented demographic groups.
- Developing a common application for Service ROTC and academy programs.
- Closely examining the preparatory school admissions processes and making required changes to ensure that accessions align with the needs of the military.
Additionally, the commission recommended the DoD and services explore recruiting at two-year colleges, expand ROTC hosts to more demographically diverse locations, develop goals for qualified minority applicants, coordinate enlisted and officer recruiting, improve congressional academy nominations, develop a “Common Application” for service ROTC and academy programs.
According to the DoD IG report, the Army and Air Force made some progress toward meeting “the intent” of six recommendations, while the Navy and Marine Corps “diversity and inclusion” offices did not implement the recommendations, eleven years after they were directed to do so.
But it’s actually worse than that.
After their Supreme Court victory against Harvard and UNC, Students for Fair Admissions sued the United States Naval Academy in federal court to stop them from using race in admissions.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Bennett held a bench trial in Baltimore last year, and heard from a number of witnesses. One of the government’s star witnesses was Stephanie Miller, who was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy, a position she held for two years by the time she appeared in court.
Her duties included working with the military services and providing “oversight to maintain the all-volunteer force.” Her office oversaw the service academies. The accession division is within her office. That division is responsible for “recruiting, qualification standards, medical standards,” and also “marketing and advertising, and other incentives.”
Before her promotion to the post, Miller served for six years as the director of accession policy, one year as director of officer and enlisted personnel management, and one year as a director of general and flag officer management.
The director of accession policy, according to her trial testimony, “has everything to do from marketing and advertising, working with the services for broad programs to increase propensity and willingness to serve.” The office is also responsible for managing entry requirements, including “moral, medical, conduct, dependent status.”
The government called Miller as an expert, no doubt, to prove to the judge that the military had done everything in its power to increase minority recruitment at the United States Navy Academy.
But during cross-examination, Miller’s testimony fell apart and proved the exact opposite: that the DoD and Navy had not done everything they were told to do 13 years earlier in the Military Leadership Diversity Commission Report. And to add insult to injury, Miller couldn’t answer basic questions that, as the “expert” in the area, she should have known.
When quizzed about two-year colleges, Miller flubbed it. She didn’t know how many programs the Navy had at two-year colleges, how many two-year colleges the Navy partnered with, what percentage of ROTC officers start out through two-year colleges, the number of two-year colleges that DoD had partnered with, or whether DoD had expanded the number of partnerships with two-year colleges since 2011.
With respect to expanding ROTC hosts to more demographically diverse locations, as called for by the commission report, she flubbed that also. She deflected at first, stating that DoD’s ability to “close or move an ROTC unit was statutorily constrained for a number of years.” But after she noted that Congress passed a statute years ago to give DoD “legislative relief,” she didn’t know how many ROTC units had been established since the statute was passed or even what year the statute was passed. She conceded that the “overall number hasn’t necessarily changed in a number of years.”
With respect to the report’s recommendation that the services develop formal processes for coordination between officer and enlisted recruitment, she didn’t know what the Navy did, if anything, to accomplish that goal.
With respect to developing a “Common Application,” Miller conceded that DoD and the services have failed to do so, but added, “that’s something that we continue to work on as we have lessons learned from other universities that have used the common application.” She conceded that the DoD has been working on the common application since 2011, and that it “likely will take a little bit more time.”
Finally, with respect to the recommendation that DoD and the services examine military preparatory schools’ admissions policies and make required changes to ensure that accessions align with the needs of the military, Miller didn’t know what, if anything, the prep schools have done to accomplish that goal. She didn’t know, as the government’s top expert, if there had been any adjustment to the admissions process at prep schools in response to the commission’s recommendations.
This was a key admission, as all graduates of military prep schools are guaranteed admission to their services’ academy, and a large percentage of students at those prep schools are enlisted personnel. The fact that the senior Pentagon official in charge of the academies did not know this information, in a trial of this magnitude, was stunning.
Service in the United States military is not just another job. It is a profession of arms. Our military is designed to defend the country, and fight and win wars if called to do so. And to accomplish that mission, we need officers and enlisted men and women who are the best of the best.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and members of the Space Force (called Guardians) come from every state, all walks of life, numerous religions, backgrounds, educations, and traditions. But once they graduate from boot camp as an enlisted person, or get their commission as an officer, they become part of the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen, the United States military. Their strength as a fighting force does not come from their “diversity,” however defined. It comes from their unity of purpose and mission; the nobility of their cause; and their devotion to duty.
By banning the service academies from using race in admissions, Hegseth has given the DoD and the services the opportunity to do what they should have done years ago: increase outreach and recruiting for qualified minority candidates consistent with the Military Leadership Diversity Commission recommendations 14 years ago.
There are, no doubt, thousands upon thousands of otherwise qualified minority candidates for officer slots across this great country. It is high time DoD, the services, and Congress (if necessary) lean in and get the job done once and for all.