WASHINGTON – After the Defense Department schools network reassigned — but didn’t punish — a self-described “woke” former equity chief who made headlines when her racially charged tweets resurfaced last fall, Rep. Elise Stefanik wants answers.
“DoD officials can no longer cover up for the Biden administration’s far-left woke indoctrination in our military children’s schools,” Stefanik (R-NY) exclusively told The Post on Thursday.
Kelisa Wing, previously Defense Department Education Activity’s chief of diversity, equity, and inclusion, was recently reassigned to “chief of assessment” as the agency eliminated her prior position following GOP scrutiny.
Despite Pentagon denials that Wing’s job change was related to the outcry over her social media, the timing and procedure of the hiring process have raised suspicions.
The chief of assessment job was listed on the federal hiring website USAjobs.gov in October and November of last year. Afterward, eligible candidates were contacted and notified that DoDEA would reach out for interviews – but that never happened, The Post has learned.
Instead, DoDEA “ghosted those people,” a source told The Post and the job listing was then removed from the site. Wing was ultimately announced as chief of assessment in early March, but DoDEA whistleblowers have said they knew the controversial administrator had the position well before then.
Now, Stefanik wants to know everything about the reassignment – including when Wing switched roles and the original job description for the “chief of assessment” position.
“Did the appointment of Kelisa Wing to chief of assessment follow the normal [federal hiring] protocol?” the No. 4 House Republican asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a letter this week, The Post has exclusively learned.
Those questions come after Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros Jr. said during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on March 23 that Wing’s reassignment was not a “disciplinary action” but “part of a headquarters restructuring.”
DoDEA hired Wing for her prior job in the wake of President Biden’s day-one executive order mandating each federal agency develop plans to improve “equity.” But just a year before, Wing had posted anti-white comments on Twitter.
“I’m so exhausted at these white folx in these [professional development] sessions this lady actually had the CAUdacity to say black people can be racist too,” she tweeted in June 2020, using a portmanteau for “Caucasian audacity.”
Stefanik has been seeking information about Wing’s leftist influence on DoDEA schools since September 2022 when Wing’s controversial Twitter posts were unearthed, but few of her questions have been answered.
“For too long, DoD has delayed my requests for transparency in our DoDEA schools on behalf of our service member families,” she told The Post. “I’m continuing to push for answers on behalf of our servicemembers who deserve to know what radical ideologies that the far left like Kelisa Wing are forcing on our military children.”
In her Tuesday letter, Stefanik asked once again whether DoDEA was aware of Wing’s tweets before she was hired.
“Will the department commit to making the findings of this now-competed review [of Wing’s tweets] available to Congress, service members, and the American public?” she further asked.
It’s not only Wing’s social media presence that has ruffled the GOP’s letters.
Since the scandal broke last fall, DoDEA school libraries have seen a 1,250% increase in the number of books on their shelves that Wing coauthored – including titles such as “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?” and “Racial Justice in America: Topics for Change.”
“Is the divisive ideology expressed by Ms. Wing in her [children’s] books, including “What is White Privilege’ and ‘What Does It Mean to Defund the Police,” and her subsequent statements consistent with the educational curriculum of DoDEA?” Stefanik wrote.
In October, there were about 45 copies of books in 11 schools, according to a Substack report by OpenTheBooks, a right-leaning nonprofit that tracks government spending.
By March, there were more than 600 in 49 DOD schools from Quantico, Va., to Yokosuka, Japan, according to online library databases and the report.
“Through the proliferation of her books in DoDEA schools, has Mx. Wing’s radical ideology been integrated into DoDEA’s educational curriculum?” Stefanik also asked in her letter.
Ultimately, Stefanik hopes her queries will be answered as she continues to advocate for parental control over their children’s education, following the March 24 House passage of the “Parents Bill of Rights” legislation.
“[Defense Department Education Activity’s] mission is to educate the children of our service members,” she said, “not to use their budget of $3.1 million to promote racially divisive rhetoric and support employee use of their government title to improperly endorse their personal products.”