Hegseth Strikes Two Black and Two Female Officers From Promotion List; The New York Times, March 27, 2026

 Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Adam Entous , The New York Tiimes; Hegseth Strikes Two Black and Two Female Officers From Promotion List

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove officers from a one-star promotion list has spurred allegations of racial and gender bias.

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some senior military officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consists of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men, senior military officials said.

Mr. Hegseth had been pressing senior Army leaders, including Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, for months to remove the officers’ names, military officials said. But Mr. Driscoll, citing the officers’ decades-long records of exemplary service, had repeatedly refused.

Earlier this month, Mr. Hegseth broke the logjam by unilaterally striking the officers’ names from the list, though it is not clear he has the legal authority to do so. The list is currently being reviewed by the White House, which is expected to send it to the Senate for final approval. A few female and Black officers remain on the list, military officials said.

It is exceedingly rare that a one-star list draws such intense scrutiny from a defense secretary. The battle highlights the bitter rifts opened by Mr. Hegseth’s campaign to reverse policies that he says are prejudiced against white officers.

Mr. Hegseth has said repeatedly that he is determined to change a culture corrupted by “foolish,” “reckless” and “woke” leaders from previous administrations. But his heavy scrutiny, especially of female and minority officers, is eroding confidence in a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit based, his critics have said.

This article is based on interviews with 11 current and former military and administration officials who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters."

Navy set to rename ship honoring Harvey Milk amid DEI purge; Politico, June 3, 2025

GISELLE RUHIYYIH EWING and PAUL MCLEARY, Politico;  Navy set to rename ship honoring Harvey Milk amid DEI purge

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to rename a naval vessel named after gay rights activist Harvey Milk, with several other ships honoring civil rights activists and women also potentially being rechristened.

The move targeting the ship named after the gay rights icon comes as LGBTQ+ communities kick off pride month celebrations across the country. The step furthers Hegseth’s agenda to stomp out DEI initiatives at the Pentagon, which has included removing books from service academies and scrubbing some mentions of women and people of color in the armed services from DOD websites."

Nasa drops plan to land first woman and first person of color on the moon; The Guardian, March 21, 2025

 Richard Luscombe  , The Guardian; Nasa drops plan to land first woman and first person of color on the moon

"Nasa has dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, in response to Donald Trump’s directives to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices at federal agencies.

The promise was a central plank of the space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027 for the first time since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.

The Artemis landing page of Nasa’s website previously included the words: “Nasa will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.”

The version of the page live on the website on Friday, however, appears with the phrase removed...

The move by Nasa is particularly notable because the creation of the Artemis program, and decision to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, were made in 2019 during the first Trump administration, according to the science journal Ars Technica.

The agency has made strides in recent years to embrace diversity and move away from its reputation as being staffed by old, white men. All 12 people who walked on the moon during six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 were white men aged between 36 and 47.

The first spaceflight by a US woman did not take place until 1983, when Sally Ride flew on the space shuttle Challenger. Nasa’s first Black astronaut in space was Guion Bluford, who flew a mission on Challenger later the same year."

Enola Gay Aircraft—And Other Historic Items—Inaccurately Targeted Under Pentagon’s Anti-DEI Purge; Forbes, March 7, 2025

 Conor Murray, Forbes; Enola Gay Aircraft—And Other Historic Items—Inaccurately Targeted Under Pentagon’s Anti-DEI Purge

"References to the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan during World War II have been flagged for removal in Pentagon documents as the Department of Defense purges references related to diversity, equity and inclusion—in this case, presumably because of the word “gay.”"

The future will not be interrupted; The Ink, October 17, 2024

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink; The future will not be interrupted

"Did you watch that interview on Fox News? I did. And maybe you saw what I saw.

What I saw was an extended metaphor for the condition of the country itself.

A woman, a person of color, representing a new generation and a kind of voice that hasn’t always been heard in American life, but more and more is being heard now, trying to speak — and a barrel-chested, pomade-glazed relic of the “Mad Men” era, interrupting her and interrupting her some more and interrupting her some more still, and then adding to his interruption some interruptions, and then also interrupting.

Fox News’s Bret Baier wasn’t just trying to stop Vice President Kamala Harris’s words. He seemed offended at the notion that her vocal cords actually make sounds. He invited her voice on his show and was upset that it had a volume.

I doubt there is any woman, any person of color, in this country who has not been in a meeting and experienced this kind of bulldozing. And some of them watch Fox News and still don’t like being interrupted.

Last night’s interruptionism, elevated almost to an art form, is a metaphor for the state of the country because a minority of Americans like Baier, an encrusted old guard, wants to interrupt the future itself. But the future will not be interrupted.

They don’t want to hear voices not their own. But those voices are growing louder."

Pitt researcher’s work featured by U.S. Patent & Trademark Office; Trib Live, November 12, 2019

Patrick Varine, Trib Live; Pitt researcher’s work featured by U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

"Rory Cooper, who was recognized earlier this year by the office with a trading card created to honor U.S. inventors, holds more than two dozen patents related to mobility-improvement research. Cooper is the director at Pitt’s Human Energy Research Laboratories, a U.S. Army veteran and also serves as director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America Research Foundation...

Cooper was recognized in the patent office’s SUCCESS report, an update on progress achieved through the 2018 Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS) Act. The act aims to promote patent applications by women, minorities, veterans, the disabled and other underrepresented classes.

“Without diversity of thought, potentially life changing work for wheel chair users and others with disabilities might not be possible,” Cooper said. “We have a world-class team at our labs that is committed to helping people with disabilities and older adults live full lives and contribute to society as much as they can and they like.”"

Can Higher Education Make Silicon Valley More Ethical?; Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2018

Nell Gluckman, Chronicle of Higher Education; Can Higher Education Make Silicon Valley More Ethical?

"Jim Malazita, an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, hopes to infuse ethics lessons into core computer-science courses."...

"Q. You mentioned you’ve been getting some pushback.

A. I’ve had to do a lot of social work with computer-science faculty. The faculty were like, This sounds cool, but will they still be able to move on in computer science? We’re using different, messier data sets. Will they still understand the formal aspects of computing?

Q. What do you tell faculty members to convince them that this is a good use of your students’ time?

A. I use a couple of strategies that sometimes work, sometimes don’t. It’s surprisingly important to talk about my own technical expertise. I only moved into social science and humanities as a Ph.D. student. As an undergraduate, my degree was in digital media design. So you can trust me with this content.

It’s helpful to also cast it in terms of helping women and underrepresented-minority retention in computer science. These questions have an impact on all students, but especially women and underrepresented minorities who are used to having their voices marginalized. The faculty want those numbers up."

The big problem for Uber now: Attracting talent; Washington Post, June 14, 2017

Elizabeth Dwoskin and Todd C. Frankel, Washington Post; The big problem for Uber now: Attracting talent

[Kip Currier: Uber's ongoing travails provide an illustrative case study for the critical importance of organizational culture and core values. For an upstart start-up company betting the corporate house on developing paradigm-shifting self-driving technology, there's an ironic sense that the leadership and Board were asleep at the steering wheel (or revved up on too many Red Bulls!) for a very long time. Whether Uber can now shift out of "off-roading" bro-culture mode, institute tangible "cultural guardrails", and make lasting transformational change is anyone's guess.]

"Last year, software engineer Elizabeth Ford got what many young engineers in Silicon Valley once considered the dream job pitch: Would she be interested in working at Uber?

Ford was blunt with the Uber recruiter, telling her the company was immoral and asking not to be contacted again. “As an engineer in the Bay Area, I feel we’ve pretty much turned on Uber,” Ford, 27, who works at restaurant start-up Eatsa, said.

On Tuesday, Uber said it would be taking 47 wide-reaching steps to address a recent string of controversies about its anything-goes, cutthroat corporate culture, including allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior — accusations that have made Ford and many other tech workers, particularly women, skeptical of joining the company.

Ford said Tuesday’s actions did not change her views.

“The company still has so much toxicity,” Ford said by e-mail Tuesday evening. “They would need to change everything about their culture and how they operate to make me want to work there."

Uber board member resigns after making a joke about women at a company meeting on sexism; Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2017

Tracy Lien, Los Angeles Times; Uber board member resigns after making a joke about women at a company meeting on sexism

"Biillionaire businessman David Bonderman resigned from Uber’s board of directors Tuesday evening after making a joke about women at a companywide meeting aimed at addressing the harassment of women and unprofessional conduct at the company...

Bonderman’s remarks came earlier in the day when Uber held a staff meeting to discuss recommendations from a months-long investigation into allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination and employee misconduct."

Why Your Diversity Program May Be Helping Women but Not Minorities (or Vice Versa); Harvard Business Review, 8/8/16

Even Apfelbaum, Harvard Business Review; Why Your Diversity Program May Be Helping Women but Not Minorities (or Vice Versa) :

"When it comes to issues of race, gender, and diversity in organizations, researchers have revealed the problems in ever more detail. We have found a lot less to say about what does work — what organizations can do to create the conditions in which stigmatized groups can reach their potential and succeed. That’s why my collaborators — Nicole Stephens at the Kellogg School of Management and Ray Reagans at MIT Sloan — and I decided to study what organizations can do to increase traditionally stigmatized groups’ performance and persistence, and curb the disproportionately high rates at which they leave jobs.

One tool at any organization’s disposal is the way its leaders choose to talk (or not to talk) about diversity and differences — what we refer to as their diversity approach. Diversity approaches are important because they provide employees with a framework for thinking about group differences in the workplace and how they should respond to them. We first studied the public diversity statements of 151 big law firms in the U.S. to understand the relationship between how organizations talk about diversity and the rates of attrition of associate-level women and racial minority attorneys at these firms. We assumed that how firms talked about diversity in their statements was a rough proxy for their firm’s approach to diversity more generally.

Two findings were particularly intriguing."

Why So Few "Diversity Candidates" Are Hired; Harvard Business Review, 6/24/16

[Video] Harvard Business Review; Why So Few "Diversity Candidates" Are Hired:

"Finalist pools can reinforce the status quo. For more, read "If There's Only One Woman in Your Candidate Pool, There's Statistically No Chance She'll Be Hired.""