While in town for USAFA graduation, Secretary Meink should rethink Air Force Academy cuts (Letters)

Air Force Academy graduation chance to rethink cuts

Re: “Bauernfeind wants warriors from the Air Force Academy, so he’s cutting ‘education,‘” May 25 guest commentary

The academic heart of the U.S. Air Force Academy is under threat.

On Thursday, we honor the USAFA graduating class of 2025. U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink will be giving the keynote address, and the situation warrants his intervention to reverse the damage being done.

The ongoing, indiscriminate cuts of USAFA’s experienced (and cost-effective) Ph.D. faculty are putting the academy’s academic excellence — and its mission to forge leaders who think critically — at risk. These cuts are not strategic; they are politically motivated and overtly based on “anti-woke” notions that jeopardize the core of what makes USAFA a world-class educational institution, without increasing lethality.

The academy is not merely a military training camp with classrooms. Rather, it is a premier university where future Air and Space Force officers learn to think critically, act ethically, and lead decisively on complex problems in a rapidly changing, increasingly autonomous battlespace. Decimating academic departments by cutting 30% of their veteran faculty demoralizes both faculty and cadets, threatens even basic accreditations (not to mention academic excellence), and sends the wrong message about the kind of leaders we value.

There must be a reasoned reassessment, discussed openly by USAFA’s many stakeholders, that protects the Academy’s academic and research core, not as an afterthought, but as a central pillar of officer development.

If we lose USAFA’s academic strength, America loses a key part of its war-fighting and peace-keeping edge.

May 29, 2025, Denver Post
Thomas Bewley, Colorado Springs