Forbes contributor Eric Tegler wrote an outstanding article explaining D&I instruction, programs and culture at the US Air Force Academy. Much of the information presented was obtained from the office of Rep Mike Waltz, R-Fla.
The article discusses:
- the mandatory recent training session titled “Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do”;
- the lawsuit STARRS filed against the Department of Defense for not responding to Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the academy’s diversity training;
- signs of discontent among service members and cadets about the training and emphasis on D&I;
- the new D&I minor program of instruction now offered;
- affinity groups focused specific “identities”; and
- the incorporation of D&I cadet positions in the squadron, group and wing staffs (identified by a purple rope they wear across their left shoulder) that are guided by USAFA’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
A very recent development is also explored, the academy is advertising and encouraging cadets to apply for identity-based fellowships that restrict application to specific identity groups and minorities, specifically stating that cisgender men not apply; apparently not even cisgender minority men are allowed to apply!
ABOVE PHOTO: Cadets pose for a photo after graduating from the Cadet Wing Diversity and Inclusion Program this summer, allowing them to advise students on diversity at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Each cadet wears a purple rope across their left shoulder symbolizing their position as a diversity representative. (U.S. Air Force Academy photo)
Those who go through the program are given a purple rope to wear across their left shoulder “symbolizing their position as a diversity representative” so that they can “advise students on diversity,” according to an Academy press release.
From the Forbes article: “To those of us who are a little bit older, it reminds us of what the Soviets used to do or what the Chinese do today, where they literally have political commissars inserted at every level end of the chain of command, but they have a separate reporting chain to ensure that the military is abiding by their ideology and their political doctrine.” — Rep. Mike Waltz
Political Commissars (Wikipedia)
Air Force Academy’s ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ Training Angers Conservatives (Forbes, 9 NOV 22)
By Eric Tegler
The recent controversy that arose over leaked content from the U.S. Air Force Academy’s diversity and inclusion training has not dissuaded it from pressing ahead with such training.
In September, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., a Green Beret and Afghan War veteran, received material from an Air Force Academy presentation titled, Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do” forwarded to the congressman’s office by concerned cadets and their families according to a spokesman for Rep. Waltz.
The presentation advised cadets to use person-centered and gender-neutral language when describing individuals. The material reportedly recommended refraining from use of the terms “mom” and “dad”, asserting that; “Some families are headed by single parents, grandparents, foster parents, two moms, two dads, etc.: consider ‘parent or caregiver’ instead of ‘mom and dad…”
It further suggested using verbiage like “Folks” or “Y’all” instead of “You guys” or using “partner” vs. “boyfriend or girlfriend” and advocated that “Cadets be Color Conscious”, adding, “We see Color/Patterns AND VALUE people for their uniqueness.”
Air Force Academy (USAFA) leadership subsequently denied that there is any prohibition on using words like “mom “and “dad” and generally downplayed the leaked content with USAFA Superintendent Lt. Gen. Rich Clark maintaining that the diversity briefing had been taken out of context.
The debate about diversity within the U.S. military has been alive for several years. In 2021, Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley defended teaching “critical race theory” to U.S. Army cadets at West Point. Citing CRT and other culture initiatives as harmful, a number of students at the Air Force, Army and Naval academies have elected to leave and there has been an undercurrent of discontent connected with various diversity programs and instruction at these institutions.
It continues to simmer with the recent filing of a lawsuit against the DoD by a veterans’ group called Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS). Led by retired Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop, a 1974 Air Force Academy grad, the suit demands redress from the Pentagon for not responding to Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the U.S. Air Force Academy’s diversity training and teachings.
The kerfuffle comes as a recent Heritage Foundation report ranked the Air Force’s strength, morale and fighting capability as “very weak” and notably as the service barely managed to meet its FY’22 recruiting goal for the Active-duty Air Force while missing goals for the Reserve and Guard by some 1,500 to 2,000 recruits each. Accompanying the recruitment struggle is a loss of experienced pilots to the commercial sector.
Air Force Recruiting Service commander Maj. Gen. Edward W. Thomas Jr recently laid part of the blame on a growing trend of discontent with the “woke” prioritization of diversity and inclusion over readiness and lethality, citing surveys showing military parents have become less likely to recommend service to their children. Thomas said those concerns are not accurate but the presentation leaked to Rep. Waltz suggests that some cadets believe otherwise.
USAFA’s own disinclination to discuss the issue likewise signals a reticence to acknowledge internal resistance to so-called “D&I” training. It took the Academy two weeks to respond to a series of questions on its D&I instruction and the school declined to provide anyone from its leadership for a live interview.
The Air Force Academy began offering a minor in diversity and inclusion in 2021 as did West Point. In 2019 the Air Force started requiring D&I training to commission its officers as per Instruction 36-7001, Diversity & Inclusion. The Instruction directs the Academy to provide 16 hours of D&I leadership training across a cadet’s four-year experience.
The training relates to “leadership traits and operational effectiveness” according to an emailed response from USAFA Director of Strategic Communications, Lt. Col. Brian Maguire. The service’s focus on operational effectiveness would seem to be key. But when asked how D&I training positively impacts warfighter effectiveness, USAFA did not provide any data-based studies or empirical evidence to back up claims that diversity equates to combat efficacy.
Instead, Lt. Col. Maguire said that the Air Force (and presumably USAFA) has seen “in more than 20 years of deployed combat operations, our Airmen and Guardians will lead diverse teams in multi-national environments.” He also cited a Department of the Air Force posture statement which maintains that Airmen and Guardians are its competitive advantage, a future force with the human-capital capabilities and competencies required to win.
“By recognizing, respecting, attempting to understand and incorporating the different perspectives and experiences each Airman and Guardian bring to the fight, we are better positioned to find new and better solutions to the complex challenges faced as a warfighting force in the 21st Century,” Maguire added.
USAFA’s oblique response suggested putting the questions to Headquarters, U.S. Air Force in Washington DC and specifically to Air Force Chief of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown. No answers from Gen. Brown were forthcoming but Ann Stefanek, chief of media operations for the Air Force, said that the service is working “to increase its in-house data analysis capabilities associated with our Diversity & Inclusion efforts.”
Ms. Stefanek added that the Air Force had looked to industry and research partners for data on which to base human capital efforts. She cites a 2022 RAND Corporation study, the findings of which “show that there are significant opportunities for leveraging workforce diversity to enhance military effectiveness across a wide spectrum of Defense activities.”
While the Air Force may have provided general guidance on D&I training at the Academy, the question of how it is executed at the school, who creates and teaches the curriculum is an important one. According to Lt. Col. Maguire, “Several offices within the U.S. Air Force Academy staff train the D&I cadets to lead difficult conversations. Those D&I cadets lead discussions with their respective squadrons using approved material.”
The lack of specificity about what sources the content of the curriculum was derived from and which specific offices generated it is notable. Maguire did explain that as part of four-degree onboarding (Academy arrival/start of basic cadet training), the Academy provides 30 minutes of inclusive leadership briefings to cadets.
“This includes the Department of the Air Force definition of Diversity and Inclusion, a discussion on how to treat people with dignity and respect, and some Department of the Air Force and Academy resources [reading list, online TED Talks, Academy Affinity Groups, the Academy D&I minor, and the related Air Force Instruction]. Per AFI 36-2014 Pre-Commissioning, all students are also required to complete a commissioning education [CE300] lesson on Diversity and Inclusion [taught by their Air Officer Commanding].”
In addition to the minor in D&I, USAFA has a “Cadet Wing Diversity and Inclusion Program” now in its second year. Maguire says that the program is voluntary. Cadets who join “act as advisors to cadet squadron commanders and promote fair and equitable treatment for all cadets. They educate fellow cadets on the positive outcomes of D&I, advertise/manage cultural-awareness activities, facilitate unit climate conversations, and work with cadet leadership to inspire/encourage a culture of dignity and respect.”
Those who go through the program are given a purple rope to wear across their left shoulder “symbolizing their position as a diversity representative” so that they can “advise students on diversity,” according to an Academy press release. That release provides detail that Lt.Col. Maguire did not.
USAFA has a dedicated Office of Diversity and Inclusion led by retired Col. Joseph Looney. A former Command Space and Missile Operations Officer, Col. Looney spent the bulk of his active-duty career in various USAFA and staff assignments including a stint as Director, Diversity & Inclusion, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington D.C. from 2013 to 2015. He also earned a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Arizona State University and has a Diversity and Inclusion Certificate from Cornell University.
The diversity and inclusion office has an apparent counterpart in the cadet wing’s “culture and climate chief”, Colonel Theodore Breuker, whose background lies in Air Force security forces. His role is not described but is likely connected with the Cadet Wing Diversity and Inclusion Program. The program is cause for concern according to Rep. Waltz who told Fox News Digital that it appears to create a separate, parallel chain of command.
“To those of us who are a little bit older, it reminds us of what the Soviets used to do or what the Chinese do today, where they literally have political commissars inserted at every level end of the chain of command, but they have a separate reporting chain to ensure that the military is abiding by their ideology and their political doctrine.”
The Air Force Academy says the program does not create a parallel chain of command. “No, the D&I cadets operate within the established cadet chain of command and serve as advisors to cadet commanders at the squadron, group and wing level. There is only one chain of command in the military.” Lt. Col. Maguire said.
There may be only one chain of command at USAFA but there is quite a number of sub-culture groups within the cadet body including “identity-based groups”. The Academy names ten such student affinity and culture groups open to all students regardless of “identity”.
These raise eyebrows among some academy veterans given that they include a Chinese Diversity Club, Hispanic Heritage, Italian Club, Korean-American Student Association, Native American Heritage, Pacific Rim, Schulte Assembly (gender issues forum), Secular Cadet Alliance, Spectrum (LGBTQ) and Way of Life (Black community).
“These groups,” Maguire says, “help support cadets, as well as educate all cadets on leading their future Airmen/Guardians across these identities. The groups are cadet initiated and supported by faculty or active-duty officers in charge.”
Promoting racial, ethnic and gender-based affinity groups inside the student body seems counterintuitive and a remarkable departure from the classic all-as-one, all-for-one military organizational model. Just 15 years ago, the Air Force spent nearly $1 million hiring private research firms to help refine the service’s identity. The chief recommendation from the research was that the focus of the identity be the vital mission the Air Force performs around the world.
That has receded far into the background as diversity has become a major theme at USAFA with Lt. Gen. Clark stressing “the warfighting imperative of leveraging diverse perspectives to solve our nation’s most difficult national security problems,” in response to controversy over D&I training.
The diversity and identity theme has gone so far that USAFA not only directs cadets to apply for identity-based fellowships, it promotes fellowships which intentionally restrict application to specific minorities.
In September the Academy sent an email on informing cadets that the 2023 application deadline for the Brooke Owens Fellowship for “undergraduate women and gender minorities interested in aerospace” would soon pass. The fellowship application specifically stated that cisgender (individuals whose identity corresponds with their biological sex) men, ethnicity or race notwithstanding, should not apply, explaining that applicants should include a “cisgender woman, a transgender woman, non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, or another form of gender minority.”
Such parsing of identity has generated pushback from cadets outside Academy channels according to Rep. Waltz’ spokesman who said, “Congressman Waltz’s concern is that the cadets uncomfortable with the content and emphasis of this training are not comfortable raising their objections with the AFA chain of command. They feel as though there will be blow back on them or they will be cancelled. This is why the cadets are bringing the concerns to members of Congress.”
USAFA says cadets needn’t go outside the Academy to express discomfort or dissatisfaction with the D&I training.
“Our cadets are always encouraged to provide feedback,” Lt. Col. Maguire maintains, “and, if they have any concerns, are encouraged to use their chain of command or any other agency we have to address issues – as would be expected in the active duty force. The [D&I] conversations were focused on providing an open, candid dialogue about these topics. As an accredited, degree-granting university, we seek to teach our cadets how to think, not what to think.”
Rep. Waltz’ spokesman emphasized the congressman’s concern that, “This training is a distraction from Warfighting skills and will be harmful to morale and unity by training young cadets to look at their units through the lenses of race and gender identity. This training emphasizes cadets’ differences rather than what they have in common in their values and the freedoms they are being asked to defend.”
“We have not seen any justification in warfighting capabilities for this,” Rep. Waltz spokesman reiterated. “One point the Congressman has repeatedly made is that the enemies’ bullets and missiles don’t care about race, religion, or gender and therefore neither should we.”
Leave a Comment