Broomfield – The superintendent of the Air Force Academy will speak today to one of the country’s most prominent Jewish organizations about recent efforts to change the religious climate on the campus.
The briefing to the Anti-Defamation League’s national executive committee will be the first time Lt. Gen. John Rosa Jr. has met with a religiously affiliated group about the recent controversy over religious- tolerance issues at the Colorado Springs-based military college.
Problems of intolerance were revealed in a 2003 cadet survey that found half of the cadet respondents had heard religious slurs and jokes and unwelcome proselytizing at the academy.
Many non-Christian cadets also reported a perception that Christian cadets were getting better treatment.
In March, the academy started a program called Respecting the Spiritual Values of All People, or RSVP, to teach tolerance.
On April 27, the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter offering to help the academy with training on issues of diversity and religious freedom.
Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, said in an interview Thursday that it is vital for the academy to quickly respond to the religious-intolerance issue.
The academy is the epitome of a government institution, he said. And the controversy is “the epitome of the struggle between an individual’s faith and how far one can take it in the structure of a government institution.”
People must not use a government institution as a way to project their views of religion, Foxman said.
“It has the danger of projecting that government or the Air Force favors one faith over the other. That is a concern.”
Cadets, he said, have every right to have religious beliefs.
“A cadet who comes into this institution – he doesn’t throw away his background,” Foxman said. “But he is not entitled to utilize the institution to propagate that faith. Certainly, people have a right to share their faith. We believe it belongs in the home, the church and in the synagogue. It does not belong in a government institution.”
Foxman commended the Air Force for its quick response to the survey’s findings and looks forward to hearing how the academy is fighting the intolerance.
“We are in a period of polarization on religious issues, social issues, and what that does is, it permits a greater tolerance for intolerance,” he said. “We hope that cycle will be dampened. But there is a greater harshness of debate. You see it politically. It spills over in behavior and respect of people. (The ADL) won’t go out of business. I don’t see a vaccine out there against bigotry, racism, hate, prejudice, anti-Semitism.”
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.