Response to USAFA Professor

This is a response the STARRS Chairman gave to a long post on Facebook written by an assistant professor of English at USAFA regarding the possibility of decreasing the amount of civilian professors at the military academy. You can read this professor’s post at the bottom of this page. In this email chain, other grads chimed in.

By Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret, USAFA ’74
STARRS Chairman

Dr Couch–first of all, permit me to express empathy for the angst you are experiencing–when one’s livelihood is in the balance, I think anyone can understand the stress that causes. Secondly, permit me to thank you for your dedication to my alma mater and cadets you are serving. With those opening comments, I would like to add some other context to your post.

#1. Facts not listed but certainly applicable to this issue.

Your post fails to mention:

–USAFA had approximately 187 more civilians than authorized a few months back (down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 118 now I believe.) The civpay account was up to $7.8M in the hole. Our country voted last November for change–I know one of the things I voted for was to stop this crazy overspending we seem to have a penchant for. We can’t keep spending $7T dollars a year while only taking in only $5T. This will/has already put an unbelievable burden on our children and grandchildren.

–Our Secretary of Defense has ordered Service Academy Superintendents to reduce the number of civilian instructors. That is a direct order, so I wouldn’t put the blame on General Bauernfeind as your posting seems to do.

#2. Comment on Civilian Instructors.

It was refreshing to read what you teach in your classes. Your focus on the founding documents is highly laudable and certainly in keeping with the President’s Executive Order which requires “these institutions …to teach that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.” Thank you for that!

However, we know with great clarity (unless cadets are breaking the honor code) that other civilian instructors have differing views and have been taken in by the Marxist-based DEI movement, which anyone who does a modicum of research knows, has an intent to create division.

Take Professor Cassandra Benson, for example, who we are told–on the first day of class a few semesters ago–called her white male students “White Boy 1, 2, 3” adding “all you white boys look alike.” This at an institution which is supposed to be building cohesiveness and unity and a “one team one fight” mindset.

Or the female instructor who asked the white males in the class to give examples of their “white privilege.” This is how DEI has been manifesting itself across our DOD.

Or how about the introduction of politics into an institution that is supposed to be apolitical? You probably have heard of the geospatial engineering instructor that was/is under investigation for going on a “F Trump, F Hegseth, F these anti-transgender policies…”rant? No place at a military institution IMO.

I do know that we have an issue with some military instructors letting their politics into the classroom as well. Geez, even your dean crossed a major line in the sand by:

a.) Introducing an over the top politically charged book, “They called us Enemy” that sent some pretty obvious extreme leftwing messages. At one point in the book it has a picture of an immigration officer kicking a Muslim woman out of the country with a caption “you can’t come in due to Trump’s Muslim Ban” (or words to that effect). If that isn’t a leftwing talking point and a lot of BS–then what is? Trump’s ban, as I remember had 13 countries on it–only 7 were Muslim majority and the two largest Muslim nations (Egypt/Saudi Arabia) were no where to be found. But VZ, North Korea, Myanmar, for example were. The intent, we know, was to put a temporary hold on letting people into our country who couldn’t vouch for the background of the people trying to immigrate. We were intentionally misleading cadets with that book. Thankfully, many told me, “I wasn’t going to waste my time reading that BS.”

b.) Doubling down on the leftwing message with a Convocation built around the book.

c.) Tripling down on the message by inviting George Takei to be the premier keynote speaker at the NCLS.

You would not believe the negative input STARRS (a non-profit I helped found to combat our military’s embrace of DEI) received from parents, cadets, and graduates on account of a. b. and c above. Despite our best efforts to get DF to correct the messages in Takei’s book with cadets by instructing them on ground truth, the Dean and even the Supt refused to do. so. That is not developing critical thinkers. That is not teaching cadets how to think–that is clearly “teaching them what to think!” Hopefully in your classroom, you took a different tact!”

#3. I could go on and on–but finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest concern of all: the Service Academies exist to develop warfighters to serve our nation for hopefully a career of at least 20 years.

We seem to be failing in that regard. If they want to take a five and dive approach to life and go on to serve in other capacities–let taxpayers put them through ROTC or OTS at a fraction of the cost.

Civilian instructors who have no experience in the military or military operational stories to share are not in a position to motivate in this regard.

As you most probably know, grads from ’59, the 60s, 70s and 80s had few if any civilian instructors–and I think we all did just fine. In fact, I can’t remember even one divisive or political moment like the ones cadets are experiencing today–and from where I sit–EVERY ONE of these “political injections” have come from leftist elements in our society.

Also PhDs, I think, are overrated. My daughter is a Professor at a prestigious university on the West Coast–she only has an MA, but continues to lead in student-written positive evaluations among her more highly “degreed” colleagues. But if PhDs are important in your mind, here is some input shared with me by a double PhD civilian professor (and a STARRS BOA member) in response to your post–she was an instructor of mine at the National War College before, as she says, “It became the National Peace College.” She also has great military experience having flown F4s for the Israeli Air Force and served as the Chief policy advisor to the CSAF and CJCS:

“This is the height of arrogance! LT’s across our military deal daily with PTSD, suicide, spousal/child abuse, addiction, disciplinary problems. Few of them had the privilege to study American poetry/literature at USAFA. My son was one of them—commissioned out of Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets.”

Our military is blessed with engineers, nurses, chemists, physicians, historians, lawyers , ethicists, etc who could and should teach their successors. A PhD isn’t required to be a great instructor. The reverse is equally true: a PhD doesn’t make you a great instructor.

Teaching is a privilege and a responsibility. Teaching at a military institution carries a “product liability” professors at civilian institutions don’t have.”

Thanks for listening! Again, our family shares in your angst as our daughter (with only an MA) is fearing for her job as well, despite her superior performance as a teacher.

VR, Rod

ROD BISHOP
Lt Gen USAF (Ret)
Chairman of the Board
Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc
STARRS.US

From STARRS Exec Vice President Mike Rose, USAFA ’69:

Thank you for forwarding us the comments of the AFA Ph.D. professor below.

The Professor leaves out some important points:

Having mostly military professors teaching at the AFA does not mean the cadets cannot be taught by Ph.D’s. My recollection is that nearly all – certainly more than half – of the professors teaching courses to my AFA class were Ph.D.s and active duty military. The civilian Ph.D’s can be replaced by military officers with civilian Ph.D’s.
Some of the civilian professors AFA are woke and have taught CRT to cadets. One AFA professor bragged about teaching CRT at the AFA in what became an infamous Washington Post op ed.
DoD is requiring changing the ratio of military to civilian professors; the AFA Superintendent is merely implementing that policy change as ordered.
Some of the adverse publicity about this change contains inaccuracies. The Gazette article, for example.

Mike

From a female USAFA grad:

I somehow don’t think my education was shortchanged in any way shape or form because I had almost all military instructors. In fact the only civilian instructor I remembered having was my German teacher. I imagine you two both had all or mostly military instructors also. His holier than thou attitude is flawed if he thinks that civilian instructors are smarter/better than military instructors. USAFA is a military school – not a LIBERAL ARTS College. What is wrong is exactly why we need to get back to a military institution with military instructors! Our military needs a war-fighting mentality – not socialistic thinkers.

Subject: Facebook post by USAFA instructor

Post on Facebook by assistant professor of English at USAFA – Daniel Couch:

“Hi everyone, I don’t often post on here but things at your US Air Force Academy are not going well. Recently, our superintendent (3-star general) has established a plan (just a plan, of course, it’s all “pre-decisional”) to cut roughly 50% of the PhD-holding civilian faculty across the institution. He’s also hoping to replace a portion of these faculty with MA-holding military faculty while shrinking the overall size of the teaching faculty. Finally, the goal is to have the minimum number of PhD-holding faculty that will still allow for accreditation.

It’s hard for me to convey how much distress this is creating for me and Sarah. We have poured the last eight years of our life into this institution, into our department, into our colleagues, and into our students. The prospect of losing both of our jobs and our colleagues losing theirs is heartbreaking. Both of Beatrice’s godparents are civilian faculty in our department. There is a community here that we have built and that we love. But the consequences go far beyond our small circle.

The loss of 50% of PhD holding faculty would be disastrous for the education of our cadets. Certain majors would not be granted because civilian faculty members teach key, required courses that are specialized knowledge. Certain career fields for our cadets (e.g. engineer, chemist, nurse) would be made immediately unavailable to cadets because, again, civilian faculty members teach key, required courses that are highly specialized.

I admire and respect my MA-holding military colleagues. I collaborate with them, I rely on them, I am close friends with them, and many are my own former students. But because they arrive at the Air Force Academy with only 1-year of graduate school experience and zero experience teaching, they rely heavily on their experienced civilian colleagues for readings, syllabi, pedagogical training, career advancement, and institutional knowledge.

We don’t really know what the motivation is behind this. It seems to amount to something like a desire for greater military training for the cadets. I’m not against military training in any way whatsoever. The cadets need it and they get it on a daily basis, on weekends, and over the summer. But in addition to this technical knowledge, they need to be able to think critically, to make good decisions, to deal with ethical dilemmas, and to provide sound advice to their leaders and to lead the enlisted airmen serving under them.

Here are some of the problems that officers have told me they’ve dealt with in ways that are hard to prepare for but so very necessary: suicidal airmen, physical and emotional abuse in the household, lying under oath, addiction, mental health issues, PTSD from deployments, stress from relocations, and the list goes on. There are also the kinds of decisions they will have to make that don’t have answers, that can’t be looked up in a manual. Preparing for these eventualities does not make our military officers weak, it makes them resilient, analytical, capable, creative, and empathetic problem solvers. As leaders, our cadets will inevitably face these things and need to be equipped with a healthy serving of character, morality, and knowledge.

I’m certain that many, many people will celebrate this news and will say that the superintendent is eliminating woke, DEI-indoctrinating faculty from our institution. I have never heard a comment that is more detached from reality. Do you want to know what I teach my students? I teach them the Declaration of Independence. I teach them the Constitution—a document, that, incidentally, myself, my colleagues, and all of my cadets swore an oath on. And we build on those foundational documents by analyzing early American literature that depicts the cultures, values, ideas, and philosophies that shaped and followed the founding generation.

We examine how Elizabeth Cady Stanton cited the Declaration of Independence as her inspiration for women’s rights, how Frederick Douglass viewed the Constitution as “a glorious liberty document” in his quest for the abolition of slavery, and how writers across eighteenth and nineteenth century America dealt with the extraordinary complexities, paradoxes, achievements, and beauties of this nation. I tell every one of my classes on the first day that if they don’t care about the literature we’re reading—and the associated history, culture, and values—then I think they should think hard about why it is they want to serve. I hope that by the end of the semester they get what I mean.

I’m sorry that I’ve written an essay at this point, so if you’re still reading I’ll wrap up. After I heard snippets of this news yesterday, I didn’t want to come to work today. What got me through was one thing: I was teaching Walt Whitman to my cadets and I wanted to hear what they had to say. Over the course of an hour, we discussed how Whitman wrote that the “United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem,” a statement that turns our nation in an act of beauty, an act of artistic creation. And we went on to think about how, in “Song of Myself,” he inverts that statement, working to express his deep, passionate love for the nation in ways that represent its diversity of people, its ideals, and its shortcomings, warts and all. My goal every day is to have conversations with my cadets like this. I don’t always succeed—no teacher has a 100% success rate. But I think that they come away from my classes with a better sense and understanding of what it means to live a life of service to the nation as a citizen, a leader, and an officer in the Air Force.

I know there is so much going on, but please, call your congresspeople. They hold a unique relation to the service academies in that they nominate students to attend our school. Let folks know about this rash, unfounded, and damaging plan. This is your taxpayer-funded Air Force Academy. Let them know what you think.”