The results:
The Air Force Academy failed to accommodate the diverse religious needs of cadets and staff, although there has been no overt discrimination, a military investigative panel concluded Wednesday.
The Air Force investigation, released by the Pentagon, required academy leaders to clarify their policies on appropriate and inappropriate religious expression. But it also credited them with moving to confront these issues.
The investigation also cited a perception of intolerance among some cadets and staff.
“The (Air Force) team found a religious climate that does not involve overt religious discrimination, but a failure to fully accommodate all members’ needs and a lack of awareness where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs,” the report says.
What did they find:
The Air Force report cites some incidents but does not go into details: religious slurs and disparaging remarks between cadets and statements from faculty and staff with strong religious beliefs that some cadets found offensive.
There is a lack of awareness on the part of some faculty and staff, and perhaps some senior cadets, as to what constitutes appropriate expressions of faith,” said Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel, in a press conference at the Pentagon.
Brady said he was unsure whether many of the incidents qualified as intolerance, but said “there’s certainly insensitivity” at the institution.
“Yes, I think there were cases where people said some things perhaps from a lecturn that were overreaching, forgetting their position, that put cadets perhaps in an untenable position in terms of, ‘Gee, am I going to pass Physics 101 if I don’t agree with this guy?,'” he said.
Which sounds pretty overt to me, but, hey. Just glad it was looked into and they are going to address the issue.
The actual report can be found here– the appropriate way to view this is to not pretend that the AFA was exonnerated, but that many of the specific allegations are credible and that the Air Force is doing something. They did find that there is no ‘established’ religion, which is what would be required for ‘overt’ discrimination. Sentiments, as expressed here, that this was a clear defeat for ‘lefty secularists’, are just simplistic and wrong.