Three U.S. Senators Demand Answers from USAFA Based on MRFF’s Client Advocacy & Exposure of Religious Bias in Scheduling of Critical Training

October 24, 2022

MRFF Founder/President Mikey Weinstein reported in The DailyKos on October 4, 2022 that the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) had scheduled the ‘Commandant’s Training Day’ (…the most important USAFA military training event of the semester) on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar).  This ‘scheduling conflict’ on October 4-5, 2022, occurred despite the date being:

(1) fixed by the lunisolar calendar and, 
(2) can be easily determined years in advance.  

The USAFA ‘Commandant’s Training Day’, by contrast, is neither.  

In response to MRFF’s criticism, a USAFA Press Release on October 6, 2022 claimed that:

“A training event was unintentionally scheduled [emphasis added] this week during the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur.”  

This official claim had also been made in an email from the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Dean of the Faculty, Brigadier General, USAF, Linell A. Letendre sent ONLY to USAFA faculty members under her command Tuesday, Oct. 4th. At 5:40 pm about an hour before Yom Kippur was to start at sundown MDT:

I also want to take a moment to recognize a serious scheduling oversight for this evening and tomorrow. [emphasis added]

In response to these formal claims by USAFA, MRFF immediately filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) demand with USAFA seeking: 

“All internal documents or communications, electronic or otherwise, between any USAFA faculty or staff regarding concerns, warnings, and/or objections to the scheduling of the ‘Commandants Training Day’ on October 5, 2022, a date which coincided with the Jewish high holy day of Yom Kippur.”

On October 7 , 2022, Mikey/MRFF received the following email from the parent of a cadet directly affected by USAFA’s claimed “scheduling oversight”:

Hello Mr. Weinstein and all of the fighters at the MRFF.

I am the parent of an Air Force Academy cadet. We are a Jewish family and cannot thank all off you enough for all of the work you do every day to prevent Christian religious extremism and especially nationalism from afflicting our service members.  Our daughter just went through the difficult decision to not attend Yom Kippur services at USAFA because it fell on the “Commandant’s Challenge” day this week.

She is doing very well academically and athletically but her military performance rating needed improvement and she was afraid she would suffer there irreparably if she opted to go to Yom Kippur services and not participate in this “Commandant’s Challenge” day.

In making this decision something horrible happened to her. She was asking a senior USAFA cadet in her chain of command for his advice as to what to do and he told her that the issue was her “being Jewish”. He suggested she at least “make an effort to try Christianity” and invited her to one of their cadet squadron twice-weekly bible studies which he apparently operates with others. Our daughter was shocked and immediately told him that she had no interest in changing her Jewish faith. The senior cadet told her in reply that she shouldn’t think of it as “converting away from Judaism” but rather that “Christianity is just enlightened Judaism”! [emphasis added]

Our daughter was insulted and humiliated beyond description. This is USAFA’s idea of “Spiritual Fitness”?  This person is in her direct chain of command at USAFA so she politely excused herself from the meeting and went back to her room. She called her dad and me shortly thereafter and was more despondent than we’d ever heard her before.  We were naturally enraged. We asked our daughter to call you as we have signed up to be MRFF clients even before our daughter started at USAFA.  She was afraid of causing more trouble if she did so but approved of us contacting you on her behalf to make sure that the MRFF knew what had happened.  We don’t want the MRFF to do anything other than knowing that matters of Christian religious bullying and antisemitism still happen all the time at USAFA.

Telling our daughter that “Christianity is enlightened Judaism” is but one outrageous example. We can only wonder what my grandparents would think of this as they were both Nazi holocaust survivors of the Dachau and Mathausen concentration camps.

Her father and I wanted Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF staffers to know that we so very much appreciate the public stand you all took on behalf of Jewish cadets and their families during this Yom Kippur scheduling mess with USAFA’s “Commandant’s Challenge”.  USAFA’s excuses as to how this happened are pathetic and only serve to further the aims of wrongful Christian proselytizing at the Academy.

(name of and location of USAFA cadet’s parent withheld)

In response to MRFF’s ongoing advocacy on behalf of MRFF’s clients and their families along with national exposure of this “scheduling oversight”, three U.S. Senators are seeking additional information from USAFA leadership.  On October 24, 2022, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ben Cardin

(D-MD) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) wrote U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall regarding this matter.  In their letter, the senators quote from an email sent to MRFF by the parent of one Jewish cadet [see email above] who was not only forced to choose between her religion and this key training day, but was told by a senior cadet in her chain of command that the problem was her “being Jewish,” and that she should “make an effort to try Christianity,” describing Christianity as “just enlightened Judaism.”

Mikey’s response to these senators’ action and questions posed to USAFA leadership:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is obviously very pleased to see that three courageous United States Senators, not all of them Jewish by the way, have hammered the Air Force and the Air Force Academy over the egregious, deliberate scheduling of the “Commandant’s Challenge” mandatory military training day on Yom Kippur of 2022. 

In their letter to the Air Force Secretary, these three United States Senators ask very good questions. But none of them would be as important as asking the following question; During a USAFA Cadet’s four years of taxpayer-funded education at the Air Force Academy, exactly how much time is spent providing direct education on Air Force instruction 1–1, section 2.12?

The relevant language of that instruction is “Leaders at all levels … must ensure their words and actions cannot reasonably be construed to be officially endorsing or disapproving of, or extending preferential treatment for any faith, belief, or absence of belief,“ and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation was extremely instrumental in getting that regulation passed a decade ago. That regulation is not “advisory” but is indeed “directive,“ therefore the violation of it can be prosecuted as a felony under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  

MRFF presumes that the honest answer by the Air Force Academy to this seminal question would be absolutely “ZERO“!  These U.S. Senators, the entire United States Congress, the executive branch of government, and specifically the Department of Defense and Department of the Air Force should ask the simple question of the United States Air Force Academy and the Air Force itself: “WHY“!?…

MRFF will continue to monitor USAFA’s reply to these 3 senators as well as MRFF’s FOIA request regarding this “scheduling oversight”.