The Pentagon has ordered all military leaders to pull and review all library books that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues by May 21, 2025. (Katharine Winchell/U.S. Air Force)
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has ordered senior leaders to pull and review all library books at military educational institutions that address diversity, critical race theory or gender ideology by May 21.
“The sole focus of the [Defense] Department’s military educational institutions … is to train and educate the world’s finest military leaders in support of that core mission,” Timothy Dill, who is performing the duties of the defense undersecretary for personnel, wrote in a memorandum signed Friday.
In a separate memo Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced there will be “no consideration of race, ethnicity, or sex” in admissions to military service academies. The focus will be “exclusively on merit.”
The memo ordered the service academies to rank candidates, starting with the 2026 admissions cycle, by using “merit-based scores” within each nomination category. Hegseth wrote the goal is to accept the highest-ranking candidates in each category.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provides a keynote speech on May 6, 2025, during the kickoff of Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa Bay, Fla. (Marleah Miller/U.S. Air Force)
The orders issued Friday are the latest efforts in a campaign that began in January by the Trump administration to rid the military of diversity and equity programs, policies and instructional materials.
Educational materials at institutions such as war colleges and military service academies “promoting divisive concepts and gender ideology are incompatible with the department’s core mission,” Dill wrote.
Additional guidance will be provided on how to cull that initial list and determine what should be removed and “determine an appropriate ultimate disposition” for those materials. The memo does not say what will happen to the books.
A temporary Academic Libraries Committee, or ALC, set up by the Pentagon will provide information on the review and decisions about the books.
The ALC provided a list of search terms to use in the initial identification of the books to be pulled and reviewed. Some of the search terms include affirmative action, anti-racism, critical race theory, discrimination, diversity, gender dysphoria, gender identity and transition, transgender, transsexual and white privilege.
Last month, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., removed nearly 400 books from the Nimitz Library because their subject matter was seen as being related to diversity, equity and inclusion topics.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January that banned DEI materials in kindergarten through 12th grade education. Hegseth’s office, however, informed the Naval Academy on March 28 that the defense secretary intended the order to apply to the academy as well, The New York Times reported.
The Naval Academy’s purge led to the removal of books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism, and Maya Angelou’s autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
Weeks later, the libraries at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., were told to go through their stacks to find books related to DEI content.
Students in schools run by the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DODEA, have staged walkouts to protest the Pentagon’s decision to pull books based on DEI content.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion Wednesday for a preliminary injunction on behalf of six families with students enrolled in DODEA schools. They have a lawsuit pending against DODEA that accuses the Trump administration of “system-wide censorship” in violation of their First Amendment rights.
The new motion contains a list of 233 books that the families contend have been removed from circulation.
