Harriet Tubman posters, origami paper cranes and rainbows have been disappearing from the halls of the American schools at NATO headquarters in Belgium, a response to the Trump administration’s rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Teachers were worried that they would be seen as signs of Black, Japanese and gay culture — and thus run afoul of the new rules from Washington.
But the rush to comply with the administration’s directives intensified this week, after educators learned that the wife of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth planned to visit their campus on Thursday, according to four people involved in the preparations for her visit, who all asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, including job loss.
While her husband met with NATO leaders, Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth was originally scheduled to visit several schools across the campus, which is part of the Department of Defense’s education system and teaches students who are largely from U.S. military and NATO families. She ultimately trimmed down that schedule, visiting just the elementary school and a nearby Canadian school.
But the mere expectation of her visit was enough to send educators scrambling to implement directives, according to the four people involved in the preparations — an example of how the flurry of decisions emanating from President Trump’s Washington is sending ripples around the defense department’s education system, and the world.
Changes had already been made in schools across the department’s system. A Feb. 7 email sent by the department to instructors at its schools and seen by The New York Times put a halt to “cultural observances,” instructed teachers to drop pronouns from their email signatures, and offered a broad overview of which books to remove from classrooms.
