WASHINGTON – Self-described “woke” Defense Department schools official Kelisa Wing, whose anti-white social media comments garnered national attention last fall, has been reassigned to an unrelated role, The Post has learned.
The Defense Dept. in October launched a 30-day review of Wing – the now-former Education Activity chief diversity equity and inclusion officer – after her Twitter posts with disparaging comments about white people resurfaced.
“I’m so exhausted at these white folx in these [professional development] sessions this lady actually had the CAUdacity to say black people can be racist too,” she wrote in one post from June 2020, using a portmanteau for “Caucasian audacity.”
While Wing’s job change came after the DoD completed its review, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros Jr. said it took place not as a “disciplinary action,” but instead “as part of a headquarters restructuring.”
But at a House Military Personnel Subcommittee hearing on the impacts of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the DoD and military, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said she was skeptical that the job change was made purely for reorganizational reasons.
“I have a feeling that has to do with the fact that we [Republicans] have shined light on this,” she said.
While she and other lawmakers had requested updates on Wing’s review months earlier, Stefanik said she received a letter just three hours before the hearing where the matter would be discussed.
“I wrote a letter to the department in September of last year and did not receive a response. It was only when I wrote a follow-up letter in November of last year [that] we did finally get a response in December stating the department was conducting an inquiry into this matter,” she said.
“Today – six months after that initial inquiry – you responded three hours prior to this hearing, which is a trend for Biden administration officials at the last minute scrambling before these hearings,” she added.
The Pentagon also repeatedly ignored The Post’s requests for updates on the review since early this year.
A congressional source close to the matter called the delayed reply “an attempt to subvert full Congressional oversight of DoDEA’s politicized activities that inhibit the ability of service member parents to participate in their children’s education.”
It’s a matter close to Stefanik’s heart as she continues her push for a “service member parents bill of rights” bill that would ensure guardians of children attending DoD schools “have the right to be involved in their children’s education, while increasing transparency and accountability in DoDEA schools,” according to her office.
The update also comes about two weeks after The Post reported that DoDEA schools saw a 1250% increase in the number of Wing’s left-leaning children’s books in their school libraries since her scandal broke six months ago.
In the six months since her racially charged tweets drew GOP criticism, the number of her far-left children’s books lining the shelves of the DOD elementary, middle and high schools under her authority increased tenfold.
In October, about 45 copies of books Wing coauthored – including titles such as “What is White Privilege?” and “What Does it Mean to Defund the Police?” – were available in 11 DOD school libraries, according to a Substack report by OpenTheBooks, a right-leaning nonprofit that tracks government spending.
As of this month, that number had grown to more than 600 books in 49 DOD schools from Quantico, Va., to Yokosuka, Japan, according to online library databases and the report.
