Veterans Combat Racism and Radicalism in the Military Academies
Last updated 10:18 PM EST • Read time: 5m
Veterans Day honors those who have served in our armed forces. One quality that has made our military strong over the years is that it was apolitical, and today, that quality is under threat and veterans are standing up.
Rather than promoting unity and military cohesiveness, our military is increasingly embracing a divisive political ideology detrimental to military readiness. A retired Air Force general, I have paid particular attention to my alma mater, the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA).
Over the past 18 months, USAFA has introduced leftist politics. For example:
- All incoming cadets are required to watch an indoctrination, diversity and inclusion “training“ video that promotes a woke agenda. One cadet told me, “This training just made me so sad, as I have a number of black friends and I had never thought about them as anything else but ‘friends’ before.”
- An unquestionably political book by leftist activist George Takei was given to every incoming first-year cadet on day one. Takei advocates for open borders.
- A USAFA political science professor bragged in the Washington Post about teaching critical race theory right after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin publicly declared the Department of Defense was not teaching CRT.
- Lt. Col. Matt Lohmeier was relieved of his Space Force command for writing a book and articulating how this divisive training is harming unit cohesiveness.
- USAFA created a diversity and inclusion reading room of mainly left-wing books (Black Panthers, BLM, and Malcolm X). In a Zoom call with concerned veterans, Lt. General Richard Clark, USAFA superintendent, agreed the room should be “balanced” with conservative authors. We sent him a suggested reading list. Despite asking three times for a list of reading room books and submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, we haven’t received a response from Clark. The law requires at least a response to a FOIA in 20 days.
- USAFA football coaches produced a video and shouted “Black Lives Matter” multiple times in 2020 while many cities were burning at the hands of the BLM organization, which was founded by self-declared Marxists. We love the sentiment of "black lives matter.” We strongly object to the Marxist organization. This video also used the term Jim Crow, which was outlawed in the 1960s, and there is scant evidence it exists in today’s America. After hundreds of emails and calls over nine months, Superintendent Clark finally removed the video from USAFA football’s Facebook page. The video is still on YouTube.
- Likewise, a former superintendent submitted allegations of systemic racism in a 2020 letter, and we submitted a FOIA request for data supporting the claim. A response six months later did not answer our questions but provided enough information that did not support the systemic racism claim.
We have submitted 13 additional FOIA requests seeking evidence. As of October 29, 2021, none has been answered properly. The lack of documented systemic racism evidence leads us to question USAFA’s recent decision to hire diversity and inclusion officers because of “discrimination embedded in long-standing practices and beliefs.” What are those practices?
8. Many of these activities have been done in the absence of Board of Visitor oversight, which the Secretary of Defense “suspended” without authority in 2021.
In a seemingly unprecedented abuse of power, President Biden terminated 18 BOV individuals appointed by President Trump. BOVs and their term lengths are grounded in Congressional statute. The matter is in court.
How have cadets responded to this politicization? When 50 cadets were recently asked to name their biggest challenge, their first response was COVID-19, but their second response was “all the politics.” An upperclassman admonished them and said, “be careful, you never know who is listening!”
Cadets have told me the politics during boot camp training were “pervasive and subliminal” and that “diversity and inclusion are overused.”
Another cadet said: “The USAFA is the worst place to be as a ‘white male Christian.’ I have wanted to come to USAFA my entire life—now I’m telling all my high school friends to go someplace else.”
As Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness explained, this indoctrination threatens the intangible but essential element of military cohesion because it inspires resentment, suspicions, and negative assumptions about others based on their skin color. It threatens the horizontal bonds of trust between individuals in a unit who rely on each other for survival and mission accomplishment.
“Accusations of ‘white supremacy’ and ‘systemic racism’ are as toxic and harmful to horizontal cohesion as racial discrimination and racism itself. How can a cadet sit through a class that divides everyone by race and leave the class with bonds of mutual trust and respect intact?” Donnelly said, noting that vertical cohesion depends on trust up and down the chain of command. “Commanders who insist on such instructions have forfeited the trust of troops they lead, and that weakens morale and military readiness.”
Cohesion and military readiness cannot be taken for granted without horrible consequences, especially after China tested hypersonic space missiles and our Navy lost a capital ship to arson allegedly by a disgruntled sailor and inadequate fire control, revealing the failure of the chain of command.”
Several veterans and I founded STARRS—Stand Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc.—to educate Americans about this Marxist march in our military. STARRS supports our founders’ vision, our Declaration of Independence and Constitution’s wisdom, patriotism and unity over divisiveness in our military.
This Veterans Day, veterans can renew their oath to the U.S. Constitution on STARRS.us. Visit and once again be a part of something larger than yourself alone.
Whether one is a Democrat, Republican, or an Independent, we all need to come together as AMERICANS to stand and say--”we do not approve of this politicization of our military! Stop it!!”
Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop (U.S. Air Force, Ret.) is president of Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc. (STARRS.US).
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