The defense secretary said closing racial achievement gaps was a “laudable goal” backed by “equality, diversity, and accessibility.”

The same man who now mocks the phrase “diversity is our strength” once wrote a 45-page dissertation at Harvard arguing exactly that. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, now an anti-DEI attack dog, wrote as a Harvard Master’s candidate in 2013 that closing racial achievement gaps was a “laudable goal” supported by “equity, diversity, and accessibility,” the Boston Globe reported. That kind of language is what Hegseth has vowed to eliminate from the Pentagon in 2025, and he told top military officials in a Sept. 30 speech that he would no longer tolerate “more ID moons, DEI offices, men in dresses.”