Shawn Fleetwood of the Federalist highlights needed reforms for American service academies.
Intended to educate and train the next generation of warfighters, these once-premiere military schools have been caught up in some of the biggest cultural battles of the modern era. Much like the U.S. armed forces under former President Joe Biden, producing capable future service members took a backseat to unhealthy fixations with leftist ideologies and upholding the academies’ “image” among the American public.
Speaking with The Federalist, former West Point and Naval Academy officials explained how the DEI “decay” at these institutions runs deep. They also described how Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can restore these previously coveted schools to their former glory, bringing meritocracy and lethality back to America’s military.
“You need leaders that are going to go into those academies and prioritize the academies’ mission instead of protecting [their] reputations,” former West Point instructor and retired Army Green Beret Ken Segelhorst told The Federalist.
Like with any academic institution, a military school is only as good as the students it enrolls. But what happens when these academies make their admissions policies based on anything other than merit?
Speaking with The Federalist, former Naval Academy professor Bruce Fleming claimed that military institutions like the Naval Academy often took factors such as an applicant’s race or sex into consideration during the admissions process. The former English teacher was on staff at the Naval Academy for 30 years, during which he briefly served on the school’s admissions board.He noted how “the academy [went] on about how it lets in the ‘best’ and the ‘brightest,’” but “as it turns out, that’s not the case.”
“By our own standards, [the Naval Academy accepted] less qualified applicants merely because they self-identified as non-white,” Fleming said. “We [got] people filling slots who are guaranteed to be the officers [and] who will defend taxpayers who come in as less qualified.”
