By Phillip Keuhlen, USN (Ret.)

During a tour of duty at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) as a Company Officer in the 1980s, I served as a member of the Admissions Board in the Winter/Spring of 1983-84. At that time, the Naval Academy had already abandoned strict meritocracy for affirmative action. I have watched with alarm for years as the Armed Forces subsequently embraced Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and have published about it extensively, most recently in Real Clear Defense. I firmly believe that equality of opportunity, accomplished through the colorblind application of meritocracy, is one of the key foundations of military effectiveness.

Although information concerning DEI on publicly available websites at USNA has largely been scrubbed, there remain strong indications that USNA DEI efforts have merely gone underground. See for instance:

1.) The USNA Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has been responsible for instructing USNA faculty on how to incorporate DEI principles into USNA curriculum. The CTL is led by Dr. Karen Z. Sproles, the Dean of Faculty Development, a scholar who has “published extensively on pedagogy and faculty development as well as in the field of British Modernism and critical theory, including Desiring Women: The Partnership of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (Toronto UP 2006) and Reflective Reading and the Power of Narrative (Routledge 2019), which integrates literary theory with learning theory in order to interrogate the effects of reading on the unconscious of the reader.”(Emphasis added)

CTL’s link to its extensive and one-sided information on Faculty Diversity Resources has been removed from public view, as have links to previous annual conferences, workshops, and training on DEI that may also be accessed via the web archive. The Departments of Defense and Navy should determine if such material remains available for internal distribution. Additionally, the CTL’s site still actively recommends that faculty read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a work that is foundational to Critical Pedagogy, a complementary discipline of the Critical Race Theory that underpins DEI. Critical Pedagogy teaches how to connect the concepts of critical theory to politicize education. Critical pedagogy overlaps with pedagogies such as feminist pedagogy, anti-racist pedagogy, and inclusive pedagogy. These three pedagogies strongly pull from key theories introduced by critical pedagogues such as Dr. Sproles.

Given the background of its director and the continued recommendation for faculty reading of foundational work on how to incorporate DEI into classroom instruction, it is highly likely that USNA’s CTL will continue to sponsor faculty insertion of DEI indoctrination into classrooms at USNA.

2.) Independent of the efforts of the CTL, the USNA Office of the Provost still publicly provides its faculty recommendations for Diversity Resources.

3.) While the 2021 USNA Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan has disappeared from public view at USNA, it is not clear that it has been canceled. Irrespective, the current USNA Strategic Plan 2030 indicates that DEI principles and objectives remain embedded in USNA planning for the future. See, for instance, Objective 6 of Goal 3 of the Strategic Plan:

• Objective 6: Identify and address the traditions, policies, and practices at USNA that support systemic biases. (Emphasis added)

Also, consider the associated Institutional Effectiveness Report provided in the 2030 Strategic Plan that reflects monitoring and action to manage admissions to Diversity objectives:

“The diversity of the applicant pool and those selected for admission continues to increase

• Female representation in the Class of 2027 was 31.5%, the highest in USNA history and comparable with the percentage of female applicants (30.5%).
• Minority representation (44.5%) was the highest in USNA history, and comparable with the percentage of minority applicants (43.1%).”

The long-standing USNA commitment to DEI is made painfully explicit in the current Strategic Plan’s link to a 2017 presentation discussing USNA’s Proportional Outcomes Index that states,

Proportional Outcomes Index (POI): An index of 1.0 means proportional representation (i.e., “equity”) for the educational outcome being analyzed (e.g., graduation completion) does exist for targeted group in comparison to the overall population. (Emphasis added)

These elements of USNA’s currently effective Strategic Plan 2030 strongly indicate that USNA continues to violate DODINST 13222.22, “Military Academies” in admissions where DoD instructs,

3.) NOMINATION AND APPOINTMENT OF CADETS AND MIDSHIPMEN….
c.) Appointments will be offered on a competitive basis to nominated candidates having the strongest potential for success as cadets or midshipmen and ultimately as commissioned officers.“

4.) Commandant of Midshipmen Instruction 1500.5 established a Diversity Peer Educator Program staffed by Midshipmen selected by, and reporting outside their normal chain of command to the Chief Diversity Officer on the Superintendent’s staff. While the instruction is no longer publicly available on the USNA website, The Departments of Defense and Navy should determine whether the instruction has merely been removed from external viewing, has been canceled, renamed, or subsumed into other programs such as the recently revised Midshipmen Training Program CMDTMIDNINST 1600.4L.

Although CMDTMIDNINST 1600.4L is no longer publicly available, previous versions of the Midshipmen Training Program instruction pointed to the Officer Professional Core Competencies Manual, stating that it, "….delineates the knowledge, skills, and abilities that basically trained Naval Officers must possess upon commissioning.” The most recent version of this manual, promulgated by the current USNA Superintendent, contains a requirement to “Know the core MyNavy Coaching skills.” The current MyNavy Coaching Leader Handbook contains an entire chapter entitled “Improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” (Emphasis added)

5) USNA renamed the position formerly known as the Chief Diversity Officer as the Chief Engagement Officer in 2024 and now refers to the efforts of that officer and staff as “Engagement, Retention and Equal Opportunity.” The incumbent civilian staff appear to be unchanged, while military staff reflect normal rotational assignments.

Of note, the website states that its Mission is,

To support, foster, and leverage the unique and diverse talents of faculty, staff, and future Navy and Marine Corps officers through an inclusive Naval Academy campus and community environment free from discrimination or harassment of any kind.

The Engagement, Retention, and Equal Opportunity directly supports the Naval Academy’s Strategic Imperative One: To recruit, admit, and graduate a diverse and talented Brigade of Midshipmen.

The Engagement, Retention, and Equal Opportunity website links to the current USNA 2030 Strategic Plan discussed in paragraph 3 above as still intrinsically linked to DEI. It also contains a list of race and ethnicity based USNA Affinity Clubs that other service academies have reportedly moved to disband in response to E.O. 14173.

Considered as a whole, there is strong indication the leadership of the U.S. Naval Academy (that recently publicly defended its use of race in its admissions process) remains committed to DEI, to achieving demographic parity in its student body, and to the indoctrination of Midshipmen in DEI via Critical Pedagogy. The Department of Defense and Navy should prioritize the examination of USNA compliance with Executive Order 14173 at the earliest opportunity.

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Phillip Keuhlen is an alumnus of the United States Naval Academy, a retired nuclear submarine Commanding Officer, and a retired Nuclear Field Executive. He writes upon topics of National Defense and Governance.