As the US-Iran war risked reigniting in recent weeks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded a Navy ship for what was supposed to be a routine visit with sailors.
The trip was marred by facial hair: Hegseth noticed multiple sailors sporting beards, apparently violating a stricter policy restricting beards in most instances that he issued last year, according to a defense official and emails seen by CNN referencing the defense secretary’s requests for action to be taken.
Hegseth left the ship wondering if the Pentagon rank-and-file paid attention to his beard policy and other policy changes he has made to the workforce.
Shortly after the visit in June, Pentagon officials held a series of meetings in which they told subordinates that Hegseth was closely monitoring agencies’ progress on the beard policy and other workplace changes, and that there was pressure from political appointees to move faster on the directives.
“Want to bring to your attention that the SecWar is paying close attention to the progress of the EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] reforms,” a Pentagon official focused on civilian personnel policy emailed colleagues in June. “In fact, the push is to move faster … there is a need to revamp some of our timelines.”
The episode shows how Hegseth intensely focuses on personnel policies, including those with culture war undertones, even as the US military conducts operations from Iran to the Caribbean. The 46-year-old Iraq war veteran has also brought Christian prayer services to the Pentagon and threatened to cut ties with Scouting America over its “woke” policies.
CNN could not determine which ship visit prompted Hegseth’s crackdown. He visited the USS Carl Vinson in San Diego in June and the USS Boxer in Singapore in May, according to the Pentagon.
Asked for comment, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement: Hegseth “maintains the highest expectations for our service members to uphold the professional standards of appearance, fitness, and discipline that define our warfighting force, and he continues to emphasize consistent enforcement of hair, weight, and grooming standards across all ranks.”
Commanders “will be held accountable for delivering results as the Department works to restore a culture of excellence and readiness,” Parnell said.
The changes that Hegseth made to Pentagon EEO policies include requirements that workplace complaints be dealt with in a timely manner and that the subject of a complaint be presumed innocent unless evidence showed otherwise. A questionnaire sent recently to Pentagon employees asks them about the number of dismissed workplace complaints.
Those EEO reforms are a welcome effort to improve a process that has long been plagued by delays, according to Katherine Kuzminski, a scholar at the Center for a New American Security think tank.
“For those filing a substantiated complaint, long timelines delay appropriate intervention; those who have an unsubstantiated claim filed against them have a cloud of suspicion hanging over them until the process is complete,” Kuzminski told CNN.
Facial hair has been a more visible measure of how Hegseth is reshaping the military.
In September, he issued a memo that tightened restrictions on beards and the granting of medical-based exemptions to grow them, reversing years of policy. “No more beardos,” Hegseth said in a speech to hundreds of top military officers. “The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”
The military had in recent years gradually become more accommodating of beards, granting thousands of medical and religious exemptions. But Hegseth’s memo argued that beards were a national security issue because they could prevent service members from safely donning protective equipment in response to chemical or biological threats. (The Army has done extensive studies of the effects of beards on gas masks and approved exemptions in the past.)
Critics of the policy say it fails to adequately account for a painful medical condition that disproportionately affects Black men. Pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, occurs when shaved hair curls back into the skin. Under the new policy, commanders can kick out military personnel who require a shaving waiver after a year of medical treatment for PFB.
That policy “allows for an environment of hostility to our Black troops in uniform in part because it opens them up to greater harassment from their senior enlisted,” said Richard Brookshire, co-founder of the nonprofit Black Veterans Project. “It opens them up for … disciplinary action for a treatable condition that the military had been adequately treating for well over a decade.”
“You’re talking about getting rid of well-qualified, patriotic, lethal soldiers at a time our country is propagating new and complex wars, after spending quite literally millions of dollars to train these men and women,” Brookshire told CNN.
Hegseth’s changes to grooming and personnel standards coincided with a speech he gave in September before hundreds of the nation’s senior officers and enlisted leaders that he summoned to a military installation in Quantico, Virginia. Hegseth hammered home the need for change on things like physical fitness and stricter grooming standards — issues that typically fall to more junior leaders to enforce. The issue of threats to the homeland and deterring China, he said at the time, was “another speech for another day.”
The day before the US and Israel began their war with Iran in February, Hegseth released a video on social media about the Scouting America (formerly Boy Scouts of America) and his “deep concerns” about diversity, equity and inclusion efforts within the organization. The same day, he signed a memorandum discontinuing participation by military officers in select fellowships and at elite universities like Yale, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, accusing the schools of propagating “leftist ideology.”
CNN’s Haley Britzky contributed reporting.
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