Task force on bias faulted for scope

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 21, 2005 | by PAM ZUBECK THE GAZETTE

An Air Force task force due to report Monday on religious bias claims at the Air Force Academy had not interviewed key critics as of Friday.

Among them is a pastoral care expert who said she observed religious bias at the academy during an invited visit and reported it immediately to the academy chaplain corps.

The task force report, to be given to acting Air Force Secretary Michael Dominguez, was ordered May 3 after increasing reports about religious bias and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State threatened to sue over alleged constitutional violations.

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., on Friday delivered a letter signed by 45 House members to Dominguez, asking him to take charge of the investigation to ensure it's thorough and public.

"It cannot be a whitewash," Capps said, adding she wants to know why a chaplain who disagreed with the academy's handling of religious issues was relieved of some duties.

The Air Force said the task force's final report will be open to the public "in a few weeks" and will identify "general groups of people" interviewed.

It apparently won't include Kristen Le- slie, a Yale University Divinity School professor who reported "stridently evangelical themes" after observing a week of basic training at the academy's request.

Leslie's July 30, 2004, report, disclosed last month, said a chaplain urged cadets at a Protestant worship service to return to their tents and proselytize bunkmates. Leslie also said cadet trainers used religion to motivate basic cadets.

"When things were physically demanding and they needed the cadre to support them, a lot of it was done with faith language -- 'let God, faith, Jesus help you,'" she said, calling it inappropriate in a pluralistic environment.

The task force also skipped Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 graduate who is Jewish and has sent two sons to the academy where they've been subjected to religious slurs.

Weinstein, who has been quoted criticizing the academy's religious climate, said he's been contacted by 117 people with knowledge of academy religion problems.

"I don't understand, given the fact that so many have come to me, that not even one (task force) person would want to contact me, other than the low-ranking member who called last week and asked me to stop speaking to the press because I was 'hurting their feelings,'" Weinstein said.

The panel spent four days last week at the academy and has continued its work in Washington, D.C.

An academy chaplain who said she lost her executive job for speaking out on religious bias wasn't interviewed while the task force was at the school but received a call Friday.

"They were interested in my knowledge of specific incidences which had occurred on campus, primarily in the last two years, and they were interested in my understanding of how in particular the chaplaincy and other leadership organizations had responded," Chaplain Capt. Melinda Morton, a Lutheran minister, said of the hourlong telephone talk.

The official did not quiz her about her removal and assignment to Japan in March after she was told in December she'd stay through summer 2006.

Personnel matters often are investigated by other Air Force offices, but Morton called the actions against her punishment, which she said makes it pertinent to the investigation.

The academy's questionable religious climate is nothing new, said Rabbi Joel Schwartzman of Denver, who worked at the academy from 1983 to 1986.

One Easter morning, he said, Christian cadets erected a wooden cross on the hill bordering the Terrazzo, a cadet common area, and slipped fliers under cadets' doors saying "He is risen."

After several Jewish cadets complained to Schwartzman, he consulted with then-Maj. Charles Baldwin, who was a Protestant chaplain at the academy. Baldwin, now a major general, is the Air Force's chief chaplain; a person from his office serves on the task force, whose members have not been identified.

Schwartzman said Baldwin was dismissive and ended the conversation abruptly.

Through an Air Force spokeswoman, Baldwin said proper permission was sought and granted to erect the cross.

"They (academy officials) agreed that this was an appropriate celebration of the Easter Holy Day," he said. "The cross was put up before dawn, and taken down immediately following the worship services."

The spokeswoman said Baldwin doesn't recall the fliers.

More recently, Baldwin helped shape the academy's religious sensitivity training. At his suggestion, sections dealing with other religions, such as Buddhism and Judaism, were removed and the focus shifted from religion to respecting diversity, Morton said.

Schwartzman also said while he was at the academy, Jewish cadets were forced to attend a football game on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Things changed after he complained, but several years later mandatory game attendance was reestablished.

Today, Jewish cadets aren't automatically excused. "We accommodate whenever we can within the constraints of the mission," academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker said.