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The Boston Globe got its hands on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s master’s thesis from his time at Harvard University—and the fact that he attended the Ivy League school does not, mind you, make him an effete elite, because that is reserved for baristas with blue hair who annoy conservatives.
But back to Pete. Did you know that Mr. Unbridled Warfighter of Woke was, uh, kinda woke when he was a Harvard grad student? Or at least was willing to write an entire master’s thesis to that effect?
Hegseth’s thesis focused on setting up a high-performing public school with a STEM focus in Minnesota, his home state. Concerned that bright young Minnesotans of all stripes were being shut out of quality science, technology, engineering, and math education, he proposed a school for the “best and the brightest” (god, he was a cliché machine even then) but also cautioned that the school would need to “ensure a balance of race, class, gender and geography.”
Poor kids? Black kids? Come one, come all to Petey’s STEM school!
Related | In the Trump administration, merit-based hiring really means lying
“Ensuring low-income and minority children have the same opportunities as more affluent majority students is an essential goal and worth pursuing with vigor and substantial investment,” the young Hegseth insisted.
Man, that is some woke shit, Pete. “Substantial investment”? As in give them money?
2025 Pete Hegseth is gonna call up 2013 Pete Hegseth and scream at him for this, isn’t he?
Hegseth interviewed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman extensively, and the thesis refers to her extensively. In fact, Hegseth’s plan to make the Pete Hegseth’s Center For Kids Who Can STEM Good school a reality relied upon partnering with Hortman, a longtime champion of the idea.
You can search high and low, and you will not find one official word from Hegseth about Hortman after she was assassinated in July, along with her husband, in a politically targeted killing. Pretty cool how you made someone do free labor for your Harvard thesis, but you can’t say one word about their murder.
Instead, Hegseth stayed mum even while President Donald Trump did his “I don’t know her” bit in excusing his failure to lower flags for her while racing to make murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk an honorary founding father or whatever.
As much as this is easy to mock or call out as hypocrisy, it isn’t quite that. Indeed, it’s in keeping with Hegseth’s worldview. His paper was based on the idea that kids like him—kids from Minnesota who were not the richest of the rich—might be left behind in STEM, so there should be programs to fix that gap.
These days, Hegseth’s worldview is still that people like him need and deserve special treatment, regardless of their qualifications. So, he’s pretending that killing programs for women or creating bigoted grooming standards designed to eliminate Black men from military service are just neutral things. But they’re not. Not only are these moves wildly discriminatory, but they are also about Pete Hegseth wanting to create an army of Pete Hegseths.
Related | Hegseth’s racism is hidden in plain sight
Hegseth can surround himself with like-minded types, all vicious, all fueled by petty grievances and a deep and abiding racism and misogyny. Lord knows the Trump administration is full of them. But they’re all, at root, painfully aware they are deeply unqualified and only there as the ultimate diversity hires.
Worst DEI plan ever.
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