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

The same man who now scoffs at the phrase “diversity is our strength” once wrote a 45-page thesis at Harvard arguing for just that. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, now an anti-DEI attack dog, wrote as a master’s candidate at Harvard in 2013 that closing racial achievement gaps was a “laudable goal” supported by “equality, diversity and accessibility,” the Boston Globe reports. That kind of language is what Hegseth has vowed to rid the Pentagon of in 2025, telling top military brass in a speech on Sept. 30 that he will no longer tolerate “more identity months, DEI offices, guys in suits.”