Things have only gotten worse at Chicago's Marine Academy

New report finds a “deep-rooted culture of racism and sexism” at nation's military academies.

Here’s a follow-up to my Nov. 20th post about Chicago’s Marine Leadership Academy, where multiple cases of sexual abuse involving at least 13 teachers and staff members stunned the school community.

The story transcended the sexual abuse and cover-up scandals that have plagued CPS going back to the days when Paul Vallas ran the system. It also raised questions about the increasing militarization of our public schools and the culture of misogyny and racism long embedded in military academies. CPS, with 90% students of color, has more military academies than any other school district in the nation. There are no military academies in any of the state’s wealthy or predominantly-white school districts. That should tell you something.

This particular Marine Academy was forced on us over the protests of parents and community members, resulting in one disaster after another. Ten days after the sexual abuse story broke came the news that Col. Lawrence Kaifesh, a high-ranking school official, had been removed from his post after he was caught spreading right-wing anti-vaxer propaganda through emails to school parents and telling them not to vaccinate their children.

Kaifesh is a retired Marine Corps colonel who previously worked as a commandant at CPS’s Rickover Naval Academy. Just the idea of teachers, staff, and children working under the direction of a commandant is enough to send chills up the spine of any progressive educator.

Confederate symbols dot the campus at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This building is named for Civil War General Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate who led the Confederate Army. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

I’m just reading several new reports that shine a light on how racism is plaguing the nation’s Military Academies.

At Virginia Military Academy (VMI), a state-funded investigation into one of the nation’s oldest military academies found “patterns of institutional racism and sexism within the school's hallowed walls.”

In an AP story, current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services describe a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it.

The Department of Defense sponsors Junior ROTC programs at high schools around the country where students can learn the values of the armed services, run drills and wear the uniforms. According to a 2017 study sponsored by the Secretary of Defense, the programs are often located at high schools with larger-than-average populations of students of color.

But former Junior ROTC instructor Cardelle Anthony Hopkins said little was done after one of his students at Lake Brantley High School in Florida alerted him to social media posts by her fellow cadets making racist comments about Hopkins, a retired Black master sergeant. The language was crude and threatening: One comment said he needed to be “tar and feathered.” “No n------ in my corps,” read another.

Hopkins said his ordeal leaves him unsettled about the future of the JROTC and, ultimately, the U.S. military.

“It just feels like a breeding ground for hatred,” he said of JROTC. “And it’s not being checked.”

Among the report’s conclusions:

Although the academies play a big role in the diversity of military leadership, some have argued that the pipeline begins even earlier, at the high school level.

No thanks. Your “deep-rooted culture of racism and sexism” is just what we don’t need here in Chicago.

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