West Point Renames “Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity”… Why?

A reader alerted us to the recent-ish (Nov ’24) FOIA lawsuit that Judicial Watch filed against West Point:

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the United States Military Academy at West Point (a component of the Defense Department) failed to respond to an August 28, 2024, FOIA request for:

1. All documents related to the renaming of and/or elimination of West Point’s “Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Equal Opportunity” (ODIEO).
2. All documents related to the creation of West Point’s “Office of Engagement and Retention.”
3. All emails related to the matters addressed in Bullets 1 and 2 sent to and from the following USMA officials: Superintendent LTG Steve Gilland, Dean BG Shane Reeves, Commandant BG R.J. Garcia, and Chief Diversity Officer Lisa Benitez.

Reporting in August 2024 detailed the name change:

The West Point Office of “Diversity, Inclusion and Equal Opportunity” is now called the “Office of Engagement and Retention”…. On the West Point page, there’s not much change beyond the title …

We tried to go to the source and look at the web-page:

But alas, the URL “https://www.westpoint.edu/about/west-point-staff/office-of-diversity” just redirected to the Military Academy leadership page.

Hilariously, the URL “https://www.westpoint.edu/about/office-of-engagement-and-retention” for the engagement and retention page also redirects to the leadership page, even though it did exist at one time:

There Aren’t Many Reasons To Change And Hide It

Why would West Point do this?

Changing the office name should be defensible. A literal office of DEI is a typically careerist military-political thing to do. Undoing it, or deciding to change it, makes sense.

So what happened? Where did the department and its people go? Is there a statement from the Superintendent about this change? We’d hope so, given the politically-charged nature of the office itself.

Given the lack of any acknowledgment of the change and its consequences, we have to wait for the FOIA to come out. And given the same lack of acknowledgment, transparency, and communication, we are confident that the findings from the FOIA are nothing for West Point and the Superintendent to be proud of.