‘No Exceptions’: Pentagon Schools Defy Hegseth by Renaming DEI Efforts

In preparation for Donald Trump’s second presidency, the Pentagon’s school system attempted to conceal its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts under a different name. 

The Department of Defense Education Activity renamed social-emotional learning as “resilience,” according to a Jan. 6 meeting recording obtained by The Daily Signal.

During his first two weeks in office, Trump issued executive orders prohibiting radical gender ideology, critical race theory, and diversity, equity, and inclusion instruction from federally funded American education. 

That includes schools on military bases run by the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity, which operates 161 schools across 11 foreign countries and in seven U.S. states and two territories, and serves more than 67,000 military-connected students. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made it clear that he would enforce the president’s ban on DEI at the Department of Defense.  

“The Pentagon will comply, immediately,” Hegseth said. “No exceptions, name-changes, or delays.”

Yet at the Jan. 6 winter planning meeting, DoDEA Director of Communications Will Griffin said that with “some of the transitions that we’re looking at” over the next year, “one of our challenges is going to be being able to continue doing what we do best, and that’s to provide a world-class education to military-connected students.”

“Unfortunately, sometimes words have the potential to get in the way of that, which is why we’ve made some adjustments or some transitions in some of the language that’s part of our lexicon,” he continued. “Building student resilience, you probably saw the new logo for [Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports], resilience is the name of the game in terms of how we can talk about what we used to say [social-emotional learning] for.”

While claiming to equip children with the ability to manage emotions, feel empathy for others, and maintain positive relationships, social-emotional learning integrates critical race theory throughout the education system. 

“It’s important to talk about resilience, that we talk about [Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports] as a whole, and unfortunately, we have to do it,” he said, “but we kind of keep the words out of the way so our world-class educators can continue providing that world-class education.”

According to Education Week, the Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports framework “offers students who have learning, social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties in general classrooms personalized instruction or support that matches the level of help they need to stay on pace with their peers.”

The framework is prone to failure in schools, often due to the program’s added demands upon teaching staff, parental rights advocate Kelly Ske told The Daily Signal.

“MTSS requires additional staff training, assessments, meetings, and data collection, which take time away from quality classroom instruction,” she said. “What’s more concerning is that the MTSS framework often pairs with Social-Emotional Learning and school mental health referrals, which serve as a Trojan horse for gender ideology and culturally responsive teaching agendas.” 

Lois Rapp, DoDEA’s Pacific director for student excellence, said DoDEA should not release official guidance on the change from referring to SEL as resilience, because it would “draw a lot of attention to it.” 

“I think our superintendents can have verbal conversations, just like I did with the students at the table to say, ‘Oh, by the way, you know,’ because it really resonates with our military families,” she said at the Jan. 6 meeting. “They understand the term of resilience.” 

Griffin told The Daily Signal that “social-emotional learning has been a pedagogical and education research term for the past 30 years.”

“More recently, it has been conflated with other terms or theories that are not part of DoDEA’s curriculum or learning strategies,” he said in an emailed statement. “Our focus has long been on building resilience in military-connected students who face unique challenges and stressors as part of being in a military family.”

“Frequent moves, parent deployments, adjusting to new environments—all of these have an impact on military kids,” Griffin continued. “It’s important that our language be clear and reflect the work we do to support students every day. Building resilience is a term that is well-understood in the military community and most representative of the work we do in support of teaching and learning to ensure our students are prepared for college or careers.” 

One of the DoDEA’s goals in the 2025 budget includes the new and improved SEL. 

“Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) digital library resources support resilience, personal readiness, quality of life, education and training, transition and career assistance, and the leisure time needs of military communities,” the goal says. 

Prior to Trump’s executive orders banning gender ideology and CRT, Pentagon schools were under fire for pornographic LGBTQ library books and age-inappropriate Pride Month celebrations. 

School libraries in the Department of Defense Education Activity offered widely banned books with sexually graphic content such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Sex: A Book for Teens,” and “This Book is Gay,” Fox News Digital reported. 

Schools celebrated Pride Month by teaching about transgender activists. 

At a 2021 DoDEA “Equity and Access Summit,” a teacher in Spain admitted to hiding a child’s transition to another gender from the military mom who worked as a substitute teacher in the same building, military mom Amy Haywood uncovered. 

Haywood removed her children from military schools in favor of homeschooling due to “poor academics” at Bahrain Elementary School in Manama, Bahrain.

“Math and English were significantly behind where my child’s class was at a private school in Arlington, VA, after our mid-year move,” she said. “But then I became aware of a DEI teachers’ conference, where our principals were presenters. When I saw that teachers in Germany and Spain were training other teachers at the summit on how to hide social gender transitions from parents, I knew the DoDEA system was unsuitable for children.”

“I didn’t trust anything coming out of headquarters,” she continued.

Haywood said military families appreciate that DoDEA schools are safe, due to being on military bases, and the other students understand what it’s like to frequently move and live overseas. 

“There are many wonderful teachers, as well,” she said. “Unfortunately, DoDEA’s politicization of these schools overshadows all of that.” 

A civilian mom based in Asia, who has been in the DoDEA system for 10 years and asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Signal that parents are often excluded from decision-making. 

“Our schools are here to serve military families, so they need to check in with the parents more,” she said. “We haven’t seen that consistently happen.” 

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