Rep. Mike Waltz: West Point Cadets Required to Attend Seminar on ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’

West Point, the preeminent institution for training future Army leaders, is requiring cadets to attend a seminar on critical race theory, according to Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), a Green Beret colonel in the Army National Guard.

“Information has recently come to my attention from unsettled soldiers, cadets, and families that raises serious concerns about the U.S. Army’s introduction of elements of critical race theory into cadet instruction,” Waltz said in a letter on Thursday to Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, superintendent of West Point.

Waltz said he was told West Point cadets were required to attend at least one seminar on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” and obtained slides from one of the seminars that were titled “White Power at West Point” and “Racist Dog Whistles at West Point.” He said another slide depicted a lecture by Dr. Carol Anderson of Emory University with the title “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage.”

“Additionally, I understand that on September 24, 2020 the entire corps of cadets was required to report to Michie Stadium for your address as Superintendent and to hear from a cadet panel.” He continued, “In this session, an active duty female colonel described to the Corps how she become [sic] ‘woke’ to her white privilege, and felt guilty for the advantages of her race.”

Waltz’s letter added:

At this same assembly, white police officers were described as murderers with no context or court documents provided to corroborate the anecdotes of police brutality. While this session may have been well intended to invoke awareness and understanding, I am hearing forcefully that this session and others like it are instead breading insult and resentment.

Waltz said these critical race theory teachings “pit cadets against one another through divisive indoctrination under the pressure of ‘wokeism.'”

“In a combat environment, where every soldier must equally share the burden of danger, I cannot think of a notion more destructive to unit cohesion and morale,” he added, requesting all materials from the seminars, presentations, assemblies, and related curricula on these teachings.

Read the letter here.

Waltz also appeared on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Thursday to explain why critical race theory hurts combat effectiveness. He said:

As a Green Beret, I can’t imagine being in a situation in combat, and I’m ordering a soldier to charge the machine gun, and he now has a seed planted in the back of his mind: Am I sending him because he’s African American? Should I feel guilty because of white privilege? That is absolutely destructive to morale, to unity, to everything that I know from a military…that, by the way, integrated way before the rest of the country in 1948.

Look, Tucker, we’ll deal with all these things as a society, but the military has to stay a very special place, focused on having the best of the best to defeat the nation’s enemies and China, Russia and Iran and others if we have to:

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