By Larry Purdy, USNA ’68

Thank you for allowing me to respond to retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair’s commentary (“Pentagon purge a sign of dangerous times ahead”) which was first published in Breaking Defense (Feb. 27, 2025) and subsequently posted on a U. S. Naval Academy Class of 1968 class-wide email on March 2, 2025.  (Note: Both Admiral Blair and I are members of the class of 1968.)

In his op-ed, Admiral Blair issues several harsh and, in my view, unwarranted criticisms of our Commander-in-Chief.  He claims, for example, that “[t]he Trump administration’s recent Department of Defense leadership changes are unprecedented in their scale and riskiness.”  He characterizes these changes as “most likely to weaken the combat effectiveness of the armed forces” and concludes these “are mistakes . . . that will endanger [our] national security . . .”

First, after Admiral Blair’s long and honorable service to our Navy and to our country, he has earned the right – held by every American – to freely express whatever opinions he may hold.  But it is equally true that his opinions, particularly when they are openly critical of the current Commander-in-Chief, deserve careful scrutiny.

With that in mind, what is initially disappointing about Admiral Blair’s criticism of President Trump’s dismissal of two of our most senior military leaders (CJCS General C. Q. Brown, Jr., and CNO Admiral Lisa Franchetti) is his decision to create classic “straw man” arguments.

For example, there was no need for Blair to point out what I assume is obvious to every member of our Naval Academy class, i.e., that “not all the best military leaders are white males.”  Nor is there any dispute that females can become exemplary military officers.

But suggesting that creating a “diverse” officer corps via the use of racial preferences – which Admiral Blair has long advocated for – with the goal of manipulating its racial demographics, is both morally and legally wrong.

The same can be said of the effort by the previous Biden administration to manipulate the gender demographics of our military, particularly in the combat arms.

These efforts, all under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies, are based on a thoroughly unsubstantiated claim that by doing so our military will achieve “higher combat effectiveness.”

It is often characterized by the soft-sounding phrase “diversity is our strength,” a popular claim DEI’s proponents routinely make; but unsurprisingly, there simply is no meaningful evidence to support it.

In response to my distinguished classmate’s commentary above, and in view of his decades-long history of advocating in favor of the use of race as a factor in college, university, and service academy admissions policies, allow me to offer a different perspective, particularly when it comes to the use of race in our military.

Admiral Blair approves of it; I oppose it.  In fact, I publicly addressed this issue directly to Admiral Blair over twenty years ago with views that, in my opinion, remain relevant today.  They can be summarized as follows:

If we have learned nothing else from our tragic history with race, we should have learned this: dividing any collection of individuals by race – whether it be a platoon, a battalion, a brigade, or an entire nation – and assigning benefits or assessing penalties to members of the resulting groups, is fundamentally destructive.

Perpetuating racial favoritism, and its opposite, racial discrimination, doesn’t heal a society.  It poisons it.

Policies that focus on race don’t lead to a cohesive and effective military; they undermine it.  (For the full discussion of my comments respectfully directed to Admiral Blair in 2003, see https://www.nationalreview.com/2003/05/operation-racial-preferences-r-lawrence-purdy/)

Immediately following his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump called for the end of DEI and the divisive use of race preferences throughout our society.  In doing so, the President paid homage to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dr. King’s never-to-be-forgotten plea that we judge one another by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin.

Once President Trump’s new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was confirmed, both the Commander-in-Chief and his new SECDEF mandated the end of DEI in our military and called for rigorous adherence to a colorblind meritocracy.

Why anyone, including a retired and highly distinguished four-star Admiral, would suggest that it would be harmful to our military is baffling to me.

And it is particularly puzzling given that large majorities of our fellow citizens and millions of our fellow veterans, reaching across racial lines, profess opposition to using racial preferences to reward some and penalize others, which is the inevitable result any time race is a factor in decision-making.

Turning to the dismissal of Gen. Brown – who no one questions was a long-serving and patriotic American officer – I would respectfully direct Admiral Blair to Chapter 14 in Pete Hegseth’s book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men who Keep Us Free.

Before ascending to his role as SECDEF, Mr. Hegseth wrote that Gen. Brown was responsible for developing various DEI “diversity and inclusion outreach” plans which sought to achieve specific (and almost certainly unconstitutional) racial quotas, particularly in our Air Force fighter-pilot community.

As Hegseth noted, “at a time when . . . all branches [were missing their recruiting goals], General Brown believe[d] that now is the time to make skin color the primary factor for who should be admitted to the Air Force Academy, who should become officers, and who should be promoted.”

It’s as if our most senior military officer was unfamiliar with our historic civil rights laws – not to mention numerous long-standing military directives – that expressly prohibit this sort of focus on a service member’s race.

(For a complete discussion of these issues, see my recent law review article, “We All Wear Green, We All Bleed Red, There is No Difference . . .,” found in Vol. 56 St. Mary’s Law Journal.

Finally, Admiral Blair rightly claims “the experience gained in a merit-based promotion system is crucial,” but then proceeds to falsely denigrate both Hegseth (described by eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson as “a decorated combat veteran who wrote a book on the Pentagon’s pathologies”) and President Trump’s nominee to be the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – former Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine – as “the least seasoned defense leadership team in modern history.”

Admiral Blair’s assertion simply isn’t true.  All I can assume is that Blair made no serious effort to familiarize himself with the reportedly exemplary background of Gen. Caine.

As for comparing Pete Hegseth’s “seasoning” with, say, President Obama’s SECDEF Chuck Hagel (a former enlisted infantryman who served in Vietnam), or even with West Point graduate General Lloyd Austin, whose tenure as President Biden’s SECDEF could not have been more disastrous for our military, Hegseth represents a significant upgrade.

As Professor Hanson recently noted, Biden and Austin bequeathed President Trump a U.S. military that is “far weaker, suffering from munitions shortages, massive recruitment shortfalls, DEI mandates, and dwindling public confidence.”  Little more needs to be said.

As Admiral Blair surely knows, whenever any President loses confidence in an officer’s ability to carry out the Commander-in-Chief’s orders, that is sufficient cause to dismiss him.

In the present case, President Trump has ordered the end of DEI in the military.  In the eyes of millions of Americans and, more importantly, in the eyes of millions of military veterans, the President’s mandate to rid our military of divisive and destructive DEI policies represents a welcomed change. 

Thus, given Gen. Brown’s full-throated support for DEI, it became clear he was the wrong individual to carry out this mandate.  That, and that alone, warranted his dismissal.

In my humble opinion, our military will be made stronger, and our Nation will be made safer under the leadership of our new SECDEF and a new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who will carry out the President’s mandate.

It is on these simple points where I strongly and respectfully disagree with my distinguished classmate’s contrary views.

Mr. Purdy is a 1968 graduate of the United States Naval Academy.  After completing his military service obligation (which included a year-long tour in Vietnam), he graduated from William Mitchell College of Law (St. Paul, Minnesota) in 1977.  While in private practice, he served as part of the pro bono trial and appellate team representing the plaintiffs in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003) and Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).  These cases challenged the race-conscious admissions systems at the University of Michigan’s Undergraduate College of Law, Sciences & the Arts (Gratz) and the University of Michigan’s Law School (Grutter).  He has been an invited guest lecturer at colleges, universities, and bar associations across the country.  He is the author of “Getting Under the Skin of ‘Diversity’: Searching for the Color-Blind Ideal” (2008), several law review articles, and numerous published essays.  Between 2020 and 2024, Mr. Purdy served as a federally appointed member of the Minnesota State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.  Today, Mr. Purdy is a retired lawyer living in Minnesota.

First published on Real Clear Defense