The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) announced a fellowship via email on September 14 that excludes “cisgender” men and instead is explicitly open to “undergraduate women and gender minorities interested in aerospace.”
As Fox News reports, the Brooke Owens Fellowship is only available to candidates from the Air Force who are “a cisgender woman, a transgender woman, non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, or another form of gender minority.” The application adds, “If you are a cisgender man, this program isn’t for you.”
The academy, which is located in Colorado, said the 2023 Brooke Owens Fellowship application deadline was October 10 and that it is a “nine-week paid internship at a leading aerospace company.”
There are two “spinoff programs” for “cisgender men,” the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program. Of those two the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship is only for black men.
Fox News was alerted to the program from a cadet who wrote, “It’s a little worrying that we have more briefs about D&I (diversity and inclusion) than briefs about foreign adversaries, emerging technologies or current events across the world.”
The cadet’s revelation comes after reports that the Air Force Academy has implemented diversity trainings that include telling cadets to use gender-neutral language and drop the word “colorblind.”
In a slideshow titled, “Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do,” the school tells its Air Force cadets to use “person-centered” and gender-neutral language when describing people.
Hellbound and Down 