Vincent Vu helped find Vietnamese-American Cadet Association at the United States Military Academy in West Point while it was Cadet in 2015. West Point’s culture could be difficult for someone like him who does not come from a military Background, recalled this week.
And the Academy’s affinity groups are far from discrimination, he said. On the contrary, they helped people like him to assimilate the ranks of the lower west points and the army and made him a better officer.
“The West Point was probably the first place where I had a supportive environment for my identity and who I am,” said Mr Vu, a former artillery officer of the Second Year Law Law at Wake Forest University.
Now the affinity groups related to race, nationality, gender and sexual orientation in West Point are under attack by an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day.
The order called for the diversity, equality and integration policies in the federal government and federal projects, as Mr Trump promised to create a “pigmentation and value -based” society. His administration has moved aggressively against people who are regarded as candidates for such politicians.
In an attempt to comply, the Academy said on Tuesday that there was immediately 12 affinity groups, including the one serving the Vietnamese Americans and the revision of others.
The move met with the tide of criticism, and on Thursday, the Academy suggested that it could try to restore at least some of the clubs, if not all.
Military historians noted that the army often has in front of the rest of society to push for racial equality and that removing the tools for what is now called Dei threatens this progress.
“You will have a much more effective army when the Army demographics represent the demographics of society,” said Diane M. Ryan, retired Colonel, now a dean partner at Tufts University. Dr. Ryan taught Psychology at West Point and was the responsible for his Corbin Forum officer, a club for promoting female leadership for many years.
The federal government has supported the same point in recent years to prevent legal challenges for examining the race from the Academy to Imports. The government said the system was necessary to recruit and build a different body of officers that reflects the troops they run.
The conservative majority in the Supreme Court found that the argument was so urgent to chart an exception to military academies in its ruling in 2023, caused a positive action in colleges across the country. The decision stated that academies could have “potentially separate interests” in examining the race of their applicants and let this question be decided by future disputes.
But the landscape seems to have shifted quickly under the new administration.
Within 24 hours of the inauguration of Mr Trump, the commander of the US Coast Guard, ADM. Linda L. Fagan, the first female officer to drive a branch of the Armed Forces, was fired. In the list of reasons given by the administration to end it was the claim that it had “excessive focus” on diversity, equality and integration.
Mr Trump ordered the termination of all Dei government offices in a January executive order, suspending the policies carried out by Biden’s administration to prevent discrimination and promote diversity and equality within the government. Days after the order, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth, in a note, called dei “incompatible” policies with the values of the Defense Department.
Mr. Hegseth called on the creation of a work group dedicated to the elimination of the Department’s Dei offices “and to any remnants of such offices that undermine meritocracy, perpetuate unconstitutional discrimination and promote radical ideologies related to systematic racism ”.
Mr Hegseth also declared months of identity – such as the month of black history and the month of women’s history – “dead” in the Department of Defense.
It prohibits the use of official resources for months of cultural awareness, a move that also applies to 160 schools serving children of military families around the world.
The Department of Defense Schools, a high -level school system run by the Pentagon serving 67,000 students from the Kindergarten at Gymnasium for military bases in the United States and internationally, will no longer celebrate the months said on Friday. The news was reported earlier than the stars and stripes.
The organization that manages schools also evaluates how students and club groups can be influenced by new Trump administration orders and review libraries for possible violations.
The Naval Academy said it was revising the clubs, but had not dissolved anyone. It was not clear whether the other military academies had taken similar steps. After the news came out to move the West Point to close the teams down, the Academy came in to do the damage control.
West Point Deputy Commander, who signed the mandate, Chad Foster, wrote in the positions of the Social Media that the Academy worked to change club fares or place them within the academic departments to continue to operate.
“Of course, I liked being called Nazi and the threats of death during this standard frenzy on the internet,” he wrote, adding, “to be sure we are creating a process for deliberate review and possible restoration of these organizations.”
The dozen clubs were separate because they were directly linked to the office of diversity, equality and integration before closing last year, he said.
Many of the clubs have hosted meals, a series of lectures and trips outside the campus. Although the clubs focused on different groups, participation was open to every captain, regardless of race, gender, nationality or sexuality. Men often constituted about 20 percent of the audience for Corbin Forum events, Dr. Ryan said.
Colonel Foster’s note, dated 4 February, said the clubs were “dissolved” and had not been authorized to continue even informal activities using government times, resources or facilities.
Historical information provided by the West Point Communications Office said that according to the guidance of the Department of Defense, the Army section would not use official resources for cultural traditions or awareness events. He said that the inferior could participate in such events with unofficial ability other than working hours.
The official list of 12 forbidden clubs included the Asia-Pacific Forum Club, the Seminars Association of Contemporary Cultural Affairs, the Latin Cultural Association and the National Society Black Engineers Club.
The Academy stated that more than 100 clubs remained available to its inferior and that no religious programs or activities were affected.
Alex Morey, Vice President of Campus Support at the Institute for Individual Rights and Expression, a group of freedom of speech, said her team was watching orders such as the West Point to see if they were breaking the right of first amendment to students to express personal views.
Molly Shannon, a 2016 West Point graduate, said she had found advisers through the Women’s West Point Capital. Mrs Shannon said she was destroyed when she saw that she was in the list she had to cut: “Because I know how important this community was to me.”
The Corbin Forum was also closed. The team has a historical appeal for women’s inferior because it was created with the first class of women to be appointed to West Point in 1976. Dr. Ryan was the team responsible from 2008 to 2017.
“The way this has been politicized is:” We cannot do these things because they are divisive, “Dr. Ryan said.” And I argue that the opposite of the divisor is. We don’t call people out. We call people. ”
Dr. Ryan said he had entered the army through the Education Corps of stock because he did not know that women could go to West Point at that time, in the early 1980s. “Therefore, representation issues,” he said, he said .
As for West Point officials, they took a somewhat apologetic attitude. Colonel Foster said that they were “working hard to properly align things” so that the inferior had professional and personal opportunities.
“No one enjoys telling young bad news, trust me,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Sarah mervosh and Crown They contributed reports.
