In a parting shot at Republican lawmakers who tormented him for the military’s shift to the left, Gen. Mark Milley denied that America’s armed forces are woke.
“This military is a lot of things, but woke, it’s not. So I take exception to that,” Milley, who exited as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is also retiring from the U.S. Army at the end of the month, told CNN earlier this week.
“I think that people say those things for reasons that are their own reasons, but it’s not true. It’s not accurate. It’s not a broad-brush description of the U.S. military as it exists today.”
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Yet as Milley maintained the military was not kowtowing to radical leftists on ideas about race and gender, the Army’s premier factory for churning out leaders was being sued for its alleged “anti-racist” policies.
The Western Journal reported on Friday that the U.S. Military Academy was being sued for alleged race and ethnicity discrimination in its admissions decisions.
A group called Students for Fair Admissions, which recently convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Harvard University’s four-decade-old race-based admissions program, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, just two days after Milley denied the wokeness infesting the Pentagon.
The Hill reported that the lawsuit was filed on behalf of two anonymous white male high school students who want to apply to West Point within the next few years.
Politico, which also reported on the West Point case, noted that SFFA identified as defendants the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, U.S. Military Academy Superintendent Steven Gilland and West Point Admissions Director Rance Lee.
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SFFA maintained in court records that race is often the critical factor for West Point to decide who gets in. By that metric, West Point is violating the equal-protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.
“Instead of admitting future cadets based on objective metrics and leadership potential, West Point focuses on race,” the lawsuit claimed, noting that the academy’s own website says, “the United States Military Academy is fully committed to affirmative action.”
“In fact, it openly publishes its racial composition ‘goals,’ and its director of admissions brags that race is wholly determinative for hundreds if not thousands of applicants,” the lawsuit says.
“Because skin color can be — and often is — a decisive factor for successful applicants who are chosen from those congressional nominee pools, it is equally dispositive for the other qualified nominees who are turned away.”
“Put differently, because race is a ‘positive’ factor for some West Point applicants, it is necessarily a ‘negative’ factor for others,” SFFA argued.
The group noted that West Point essentially sets quotas for admitting students who are black, Hispanic, or Asian.
SFFA also maintains that the Naval and Air Force academies utilize the same policies.
In a statement, SFFA President Edward Blum told Politico, “Over the years, courts have been mindful of the military’s unique role in our nation’s life and the distinctive considerations that come with it. However, no level of deference justifies these polarizing and disliked racial classifications and preferences in admissions to West Point or any of our service academies.”
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