As Dartmouth students continue to be concerned with the future of diversity, equity and inclusion programs under the Trump administration, our nation's top military official has launched yet another attack on what he describes as “identity months, DEI offices [and] dudes in dresses.”
On Sept. 30, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that he was bringing the nation’s top generals and admirals to Quantico, a U.S. Marine Corps Base in Virginia, just days after the Department of Defense was renamed the Department of War. The agenda of the meeting was unknown, and many military leaders expressed frustration that they were not permitted to join remotely. Instead of focusing on the renaming of the department or deliberating on
matters of actual war, Hegseth used the gathering to rant about women.
Hegseth did more than deliver a policy address — he promoted intimidation. Amid calls to retreat from DEI protocols, he announced a return to service requirements set at “the highest male standard only.” In the same breath that he claimed to “value the impact of female troops,” he added “if women can make it, excellent — if not, it is what it is.”
The administration’s message was clear: In Hegseth’s War Department, women’s voices are discounted, their protection treated as a distraction and their service quietly erased under the guise of “restoring standards.”
Hegseth’s insistence on “male-level” benchmarks is not about fairness; it’s about exclusion. Every Marine who graduates from the Infantry, every Ranger-qualified soldier and every Navy SEAL has already met some of the most strenuous requirements in the world — and women are not flooding these pipelines. In fact, women make up only 10-30% of combat personnel, depending on the branch, a reminder that entry is anything but easy for them in the status quo.
Further, research shows that the integration of women into the forces had negligible, if any, impact on troop readiness. A RAND study found that the greatest threats to military strength are not gender diversity but leadership, training and unit workload. Hegseth’s approach, which shrinks an already small recruitment pool, risks weakening the military far more than he claims diversity ever could.
Through his rhetoric, inclusivity is reframed as weakness, and any acknowledgment of difference is seen as causing “standards [to be] lowered.” By invoking “male” rather than “neutral” benchmarks, he encodes masculinity as the only legitimate measure of strength.
Even more alarming than Hegseth’s fitness rhetoric was his promise to dismantle desperately needed reporting protocols. Hegseth vowed to end what he called a “walking-on-eggshells policy” when it came to reporting and complaints.
“No more frivolous complaints,” he stated. “No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers.”
But the data belies Hegseth’s claims. The Pentagon’s 2024 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military documented over 8,000 reports of sexual assault in 2024. Women are disproportionately affected: one in five active-duty women report unwanted sexual contact annually compared to one in 29 men. To frame those who are brave enough to navigate an already fraught reporting system as “repeat complainants” or career saboteurs is institutional gaslighting that keeps others silent. His reforms will reverse years of bipartisan progress and suggest that survivors’ experiences are an inconvenience — one that the new War Department intends to ignore.
The reality is worse still: retaliation is rampant. The same 2024 report found that two-thirds of women who reported assault experienced retaliation. RAND research further confirms that fear of retaliation is the primary reason service members choose not to report. Hegeseth’s language is not just insensitive — it is dangerous. It arms abusers with cover and strips survivors of the limited protections they now have.
None of this can be separated from politics. Hegseth’s speech was not a neutral policy briefing; it was a partisan loyalty test. He told generals and admirals that if his words do not “make [their] hearts full,” then they should resign — a demand that redefined loyalty as ideological conformity rather than constitutional duty. This is the most dangerous form of politicization. Culture-war slogans are repackaged as defense policy. Diversity and equity are characterized as “woke decay.” Sexual assault survivors become liabilities. Grooming standards and “warrior ethos” are reduced to partisan dog whistles.
Critics might dismiss Hegseth’s rhetoric as bluster, but words matter. When the “secretary of war” labels complaints as “frivolous,” commanders hear that disbelief is acceptable. When he sets “male-only” standards, women hear that their service is unwanted. When he demands ideological loyalty, generals understand that their careers depend on silence.
The tragedy of this speech lies in its willingness to discard years of incremental, hard-won progress for servicewomen. The reforms of the past decade alone — prosecutorial independence for sexual assault cases, expanded victim services, calibrated occupational standards and data-driven strategies — were not “woke” experiments. They were evidence-based corrections to long-standing failures that this administration seems keen to repeat. There is nothing unserious about ensuring women can serve in combat roles with properly-fitted gear, and nothing partisan about recognizing that military strength comes not from exclusion but from harnessing the talents of all who are willing to serve.
The real threat to the power of our military is not women in the ranks; it is leaders who prioritize ideology over readiness, silence over accountability and exclusion over inclusion. This attack on the Department of Defense should make the Dartmouth community wary — it reflects a broader cultural project to roll back pluralism under the guise of restoring discipline, whether in classrooms or in combat units.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
