“I will look forward to the numbers, we see Sept. Gilbert Cisneros Jr., under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said: “I think DEI is going to give us a larger pool to pull from.” ![]() “So why haven’t we made our numbers?” Bergman asked.Īfter a short period of silence, Bergman pressed the panelists on the question, asking whether diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are solving the problem. They all answered “positive” or “very positive.” He asked the committee witnesses whether diversity programs have a positive or negative effect on recruitment. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., said readiness needs to be the primary focus of the military. The Army recently dropped physical and aptitude requirements to bring in more recruits. The armed services face a severe recruitment crisis, the worst since the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973. “Our diversity and inclusion initiatives are focused on talent acquisition and development and informed by science and business best practices, congressional mandates, data-focused policy reviews and assessments and the lived experiences of airmen and guardians working together every single day.” “Intentional diversity and inclusion efforts allow us to tap into the full talents of the American people and then leverage those talents to defend the nation,” Wagner said. Recruitment Challengesĭiversity programs are necessary to boost the military, Alex Wagner, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, said in his opening statement. “That is a lot of training hours spent away from honing warfighting capabilities, knowledge, and skills,” Banks said. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said in a Senate hearing that the Defense Department “expended 5,359,311 man hours for Secretary Austin’s extremism standdown and an additional 529,711 man hours for DEI-specific training.”ĭEI is an acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Yet the Department of Defense and the services have embraced DEI training full cloth.”īanks then noted that Gen. “And even in the few studies that showed any effect at all in reducing bias, those effects disappeared over a short period of time. “In a review of 418 prejudice-reduction experiments, Elizabeth Levy Paluck and co-authors concluded that much of the anti-bias training is, quote, misguided,” Banks said. The Indiana Republican then said this growing effort is based on “faulty science and misguided principles,” and that anti-bias training used by the military in fact may be causing more bias. “We are now in danger of losing those meritocratic principles to the politicization of our armed forces, thanks first and foremost to the ever-expanding bureaucracy of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, regulations, and trainings,” Banks said. ![]() However, he warned, this ethos may be waning under Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Biden’s appointee. Jim Banks, R-Ind., chairman of the Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, spoke about the problems with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in his opening statement.īanks said that the meritocratic nature of the military, which allows people of diverse backgrounds to succeed, is an important principle to uphold. Rise of DEI Administration, Fall of Meritocracy ![]() ![]() Here are four takeaways from the hearing. The House Armed Services Committee held a subcommittee hearing Thursday to address whether these programs are making the military stronger or actually are wasting resources, creating more division, and contributing to record-low recruitment numbers. President Joe Biden has extensively promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion as the focus of government agencies, including the Defense Department and its armed services.
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