In a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the Class of 2026 — described in the transcript as 998 graduates — to uphold high standards and focus on cohesion, arguing that recent emphasis on race and gender had weakened discipline.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth opened his West Point commencement speech with a passage from the Bible — Isaiah 6:8 — using the verse to frame military service as answering a call to be “sent.”
In remarks delivered May 23, 2026, at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York, Hegseth told cadets they had witnessed what he called a “slow slide” in the Army, including “standards lowered” and an “obsession with race and gender,” and said the period he described was “over.”
He singled out the slogan “Our diversity is our strength,” calling it “the single dumbest phrase in military history,” and said such ideas “cannot be tolerated in our formations.” Hegseth argued that “diversity is not our strength” and that “unity is our strength,” warning that debates he associated with DEI initiatives could have deadly consequences in combat.
The transcript describes Hegseth addressing “the 998 great Americans of this class,” though official academy reporting on the graduating class size was not independently confirmed in the available sources.
