Pentagon pushes ahead on diversity as new Trump executive order halts bias training

The military’s top leaders said Thursday they remain committed to addressing racism and discrimination in the ranks, just two days after President Trump signed an executive order banning what he called “divisive” diversity training.

The new executive order prohibits every federal agency and contractors that do business with the federal government from carrying out workplace training that suggests a person may consciously or unconsciously carry racial or sexist biases based on their own race or background.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the Pentagon’s senior leadership launched a rigorous effort in July to address discrimination in the ranks, after the death of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed.

“We need to keep the pressure on to get to that state where we fully embrace diversity, inclusion and there’s equal opportunity for all,” Esper said at a virtual town hall for service members, their families and defense civilians.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Army Gen. Mark Milley and the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman, Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Ramón Colón-López, also said the Pentagon must emphasize diversity and inclusivity.

“If we remember back in 1968, we had something called the ‘Times of Troubles,’ to when we had over 300 racial incidents across the Department of Defense, including 71 killings inside bases because of racial issues,” Colón-López said. “We have learned quite a bit since those days. And whatever we do today, whatever actions we take, we cannot regress back to that,” he said.

Part of the July initiative included a directive from Esper to develop educational requirements “to educate the force on unconscious bias.”

The executive order signed by Trump on Tuesday may force the Pentagon to halt some of that unconscious bias training, said attorney Jennifer Levi, a co-counsel of the federal lawsuit Stockman v. Trump, which is challenging the military’s transgender ban.

“The military is going to have to figure out just those kinds of questions,” Levi said. “The executive order is fairly specific in terms of what it defines and describes as being prohibited with regard to training.”

At the town hall, Milley said the military was moving ahead on another aspect of preventing unconscious bias, removing all identifying information, including photographs, from a service member’s records when they are considered by military promotion boards.

The decision to remove photographs is part of a long-term plan by the Pentagon to improve racial and gender diversity among its top officers and in key roles like pilots, positions which despite decades of military integration continue to be held primarily by white men.

“We have to essentially sterilize the board files without any identifying characteristics so that you’re removing unconscious and conscious bias from the system,” Milley said.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it would need to adjust either its training or promotion board procedures because of the new executive order.

“I want to be clear that in my view, we have challenges to be sure. But the military has been, and remains the largest meritocracy in the world,” Milley said. “We know, internally, all of us, about the saying of e pluribus unum and the idea that we are stronger together. The idea that diversity builds a better team.”