{"id":76023,"date":"2025-10-02T14:53:42","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T14:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/10\/02\/hegseths-style-counters-militarys-history-as-engine-of-social-change\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:41:08","slug":"hegseths-style-counters-militarys-history-as-engine-of-social-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/opinion\/commentary\/2025\/10\/02\/hegseths-style-counters-militarys-history-as-engine-of-social-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth\u2019s style counters military\u2019s history as engine of social change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Historically, the U.S. military has been an engine for cultural and social change in America. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s vision for the armed forces he leads runs counter to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In comments Tuesday to hundreds of military leaders and their chief enlisted advisers, Hegseth made clear he was not interested in a diverse or inclusive force<\/a>. His address at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, verbalized what Hegseth has been doing as he takes on any program that can be labeled diversity, equity or inclusion, as well as targeting transgender personnel<\/a>. Separately, the focus on immigration also is sweeping up veterans<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For too long, \u201cthe military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden,\u201d Hegseth said. \u201cFoolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading, and we lost our way. We became the woke department, but not anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hegseth\u2019s actions \u2014 and plans for more \u2014 are a reversal of the role the military has often played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe military has often been ahead of at least some broader social, cultural, political movements,\u201d said Ronit Stahl, associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. \u201cThe desegregation of the armed forces is perhaps the most classic example.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Harry S. Truman\u2019s desegregation order in 1948 came six years before the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation in the Brown vs. Board of Education case \u2014 and, Stahl said, \u201cthat obviously takes a long time to implement, if it ever fully is implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been a circuitous path<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Truman\u2019s order was not a short progression through American society. Although the military was one of the few places where there was organizational diversity, the races did not mix in their actual service. Units like the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo Code Talkers and the Buffalo Soldiers, formed in 1866, were segregated until the order opened the door to integrated units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women were given full status to serve in 1948 with the Women\u2019s Armed Services Integration Act. There were restrictions on how many could serve and they were generally not allowed to command men or serve in combat. Before then, they had wartime roles and they did not serve in combat, although hundreds of nurses died and women were pilots, including Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The WASPs and Tuskegee Airmen were among the first groups this year to be affected when Hegseth issued his DEI order. The Air Force removed training videos of the airmen along with ones showing the World War II contributions of the WASPs at the basic training base in San Antonio. The videos were restored after widespread bipartisan outcry over their removal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Air Force quickly moved to reinstate a course for new recruits, which includes videos on the World War II-era Tuskegee Airmen and Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, after the class was pulled for review following the Trump administration’s sweeping order barring diversity, equity and inclusion programs. (Air Force)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other issues over time have included \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell,\u201d the policy that allowed gay and lesbian service members to serve as long as their sexual orientation was not public. That was repealed during the Obama administration. Women were allowed to serve on combat aircraft and combat ships in the early 1990s \u2014 then all combat positions after a ban was lifted in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe military has always had to confront the question of social change and the question of who would serve, how they would serve and in what capacity they would serve. These are questions that have been long-standing back to the founding in some ways, but certainly in the 20th century,\u201d said David Kieran, distinguished chair in Military History at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. \u201cThese are not new questions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally the answer has come down to what \u201cthe military writ large\u201d has concluded. \u201c\u2018How do we achieve our mission best?\u2019\u201d Kieran said. \u201cAnd a lot of these things have been really hotly debated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of a larger, longer debate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kieran offered one example: changes the Army made in the 1960s when it was dealing with a climate of racism and racial tensions. Without that, he said, \u201cthe military can\u2019t fight the war in Vietnam effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same considerations were given to how to address the problem of sexual harassment. Part of the answer involved what was morally right, but \u201cthe larger issue is: If soldiers are being harassed, can the Army carry out its mission effectively?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While \u201cit is important to see these actions as part of a longer history and a larger debate,\u201d Kieran said, \u201cit\u2019s certainly also true that the current administration is moving at a far more aggressive and faster pace than we\u2019ve seen in earlier administrations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael O\u2019Hanlon, director of research in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, questioned some of the actions that Trump\u2019s Defense Department has taken, including replacing the chairman of the joint chiefs, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was a fine Air Force officer,\u201d O\u2019Hanlon said. Even if he got the job in part because of his race, \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be disqualifying in my book, unless he was unqualified \u2014 and he wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Delmont, a professor of history at Dartmouth College, said the current attitudes he is seeing toward the military suggest a misunderstanding of the armed forces and why the changes have been made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe military, for more than seven decades now, has been more on the leading edge in terms of figuring out how to put together an organization that tries to take advantage of the talents and capacities of all Americans,\u201d Delmont said. Since Truman signed his executive order, \u201cthe military has moved faster and farther than almost any other organization in thinking about issues of racial equality, and then later thinking about the issues related to gender and sexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delmont said bias, prejudice and racism remain in the military, but the armed services have done more \u201cthan a lot of corporations, universities, other organizations to try to address those head-on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it was because they were particularly interested in trying to advance the social agenda,\u201d he said. \u201cI think they did it because they recognized you can\u2019t have a unified fighting force if the troops are fighting each other, or if you\u2019re actively turning away people who desire to serve their country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professors of military history say Hegseth\u2019s actions \u2014 and plans for more \u2014 are a reversal of the role the American military has often played.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":111727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":77,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[77,101,25,14],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6798],"class_list":["post-76023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-daily-news-roundup","category-newsletters","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"NP5GADKRWZDTFFZA3IL3BKA4IA","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/commentary\/2025\/10\/02\/hegseths-style-counters-militarys-history-as-engine-of-social-change\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\nHegseth\u2019s style counters military\u2019s history as engine of social change - 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