The Military Led Diversity Efforts. West Point’s Club Ban Is a Shift.

West Point leaders complied with President Trump’s D.E.I. ban by ending a dozen student clubs. Critics say the move contradicts decades of efforts to diversify the nation’s fighting force.

Vincent Vu helped found the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association at the United States Military Academy at West Point while he was a cadet, in 2015. West Point’s culture could be difficult for someone like him, who did not come from a military background, he recalled this week.

And the academy’s affinity groups were far from discriminatory, he said. Rather, they helped people like him assimilate into the ranks of West Point cadets and the Army, and made him a better officer.

“West Point was probably the first place where I had a supportive environment for my identity and who I am,” said Mr. Vu, a former air defense artillery officer and now a second-year law student at Wake Forest University.

Now affinity groups having to do with race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation at West Point are under assault by an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day in office.

The order called for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government and in federally funded projects, as Mr. Trump promised to forge a “colorblind and merit-based” society. His administration has moved aggressively against people who are perceived as promoters of such policies.

In an attempt to comply, the academy said on Tuesday that it was disbanding 12 affinity groups immediately, including the one serving Vietnamese American cadets, and reviewing others.