Pentagon admits to mistakes in campaign against 'DEI' content
The Pentagon is conceding it made mistakes as it rushed to remove articles and images celebrating diversity from its social media and websites, a campaign that resulted in moves such as deleting tributes to Jackie Robinson and the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.
"Some content was archived that should not have been," the Department of Defense said in a statement Friday.
The Pentagon said it would be reviewing the material that was purged as part of a campaign to remove content celebrating diversity, equity and inclusion — an effort that has sparked widespread criticism and ridicule.
As part of the effort, the department removed articles and images of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, the Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen. It also pulled pulled the historic photos of six Marines hoisting a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in 1945 because it was on a page celebrating Army Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian.
A biography of World War II veteran and civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in 1963 and whom President Donald Trump called a 'great American hero" in 2017, was erased from the Arlington National Cemetery website.
The purge followed Trump's executive order ending diversity programs across the federal government, including the Defense Department, which he has criticized as too 'woke.'
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a video statement Thursday that 'some important content was incorrectly" removed. He blamed 'AI tools' for the errors and said purged material would be reviewed.
'When content is either mistakenly removed or if it's maliciously removed, we continue to work quickly to restore it,' Parnell said.
The Pentagon says it aims to honor service members based on merit rather than 'immutable characteristics' like race, ethnicity, or gender.
Some of the deleted tributes — such as those for Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers — were reinstated after public backlash. But many tributes to non-white service members remain unavailable, often leading to 404 error messages.
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