Middle schoolers protest Pete Hegseth's DEI takedown at US base in Germany
Dozens of students at a U.S. military middle school in Germany walked out of class in protest of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's dismantling of DEI policies during his visit to the country this week.
Around 55 students at Patch Middle School in Stuttgart, Germany, staged the walkout on Tuesday afternoon, the same day Hegseth visited Kelley Barracks, a U.S. military installation in the city. The school is one of five military-operated schools that serve the more than 24,000 people living on the base, according to its website.
"Students entered and exited the building in an orderly fashion and gathered outside in the courtyard for 50 minutes before returning to class," the school's assistant principal told the school's families in a letter obtained by the Washington Post.
The walkout was in response to Hegseth's push against military DEI programs – demonstrators booed and repeatedly chanted "DEI," according to NBC footage.
Hegseth pledges to wipe out military DEI
Hegseth has laid out the total elimination of the Pentagon's DEI initiatives as central to his agenda, saying they take away from the military's "warrior culture" and battle readiness.
On Monday, as Hegseth left for Europe, the Pentagon effectively barred transgender people from the military – in a memo filed in federal court, Hegseth banned people suffering from gender dysphoria from enlisting and paused treatment for the condition among servicemembers. President Donald Trump also banned transgender people from serving in his first term.
He also renamed Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg – after a World War II hero, not the Confederate general that inspired the name originally. And last week, he axed the Pentagon's cultural awareness months, including Black History Month in February and Pride Month in June.
A directive sent to administrators of Defense Department schools last week ordered educators to purge books and lessons related to race, gender and sexuality from schools and curriculums.
At a meeting last week, Hegseth also said he told the leadership of the top military academies that "Social Justice and DEI are OUT; History, Engineering, and War Studies are IN," according to his post to X.