AIR FORCE ACADEMY — Retired Lieutenant General Rod Bishop isn’t backing down from his controversial motions to honor the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk through the Air Force Academy Association of Graduates.
In October, Lt. Gen. Bishop introduced three motions in the Association of Graduates (AOG) Board of Directors meeting that triggered a massive outcry from Air Force Academy (AFA) graduates, parents, and family members.
The motions included naming Kirk an honorary member of the AOG, recommending him for an honorary AFA degree, and finding a way to recognize Kirk at a future meeting.
Charlie Kirk was named to the AFA Board of Visitors this year by President Trump and had attended his first meeting in August, just weeks before he was assassinated at an event on Utah Valley University’s campus in September.
Lt. Gen. Bishop said a misconception since the public outcry against his motions began was that he came up with the idea himself. He said “tens of graduates” had reached out to him, asking to honor Kirk in some way since he was on the Academy’s Board of Visitors.
“People reached out to me via email, text, phone call, ‘Hey, Rod, what do you think of this idea?’ And then I took those ideas and as I say, I socialized each one of them with recent graduates, with cadets,” said Bishop. “I did not hear one negative comment. Now, admittedly, I probably travel in somewhat conservative channels, so every case I asked, ‘Well, what do you think the rest of your unit would think? What do you think the rest of your squadron in the case of cadets, would think?’ ‘Oh, we'd love it, we'd love it.’”
The Academy AOG does have an honorary graduate program that can make someone an honorary member, but it does not have the ability to actually grant an honorary degree.
Bishop said only the Air Force Academy itself can grant one, and he’s hopeful the Secretary of the Air Force will consider the option with or without the AOG board vote.
Bishop said the October board of directors meeting played out as he expected.
“I went into that day with a plan again to bring the board together. Being an honorary grad, that's a high bar. According to our bylaws, it's 80%,” Bishop said. “That initiative would not have 80% with our current board. So in a gesture of grace, I was going to withdraw that.”
He said he had planned to table the second motion, recommending Kirk for an honorary degree, but was pressured to withdraw it as well.
Bishop said there was also pressure from the AOG board chair and other board members to withdraw his third motion to honor (which was changed to “recognize”) Charlie Kirk in some way, but Bishop refused.
“I said I can't do that. I would be disenfranchising the voters and the people, the graduates and the cadets that I've heard from that say, ‘Hey, we would like our Board of Visitors member who was assassinated honored in some way,’” said Bishop. “So that's the way it turned out. I amended my motion on the spot and um that one passed 9 to 4, but that's not unfortunately the impression that was left in the media.”
Bishop said the third motion will be discussed and possibly voted on in their next meeting in February. Meantime, the AOG will receive input from the graduate community, and he hopes enough people will be swayed to vote and honor Kirk in some way.
According to an October statement from the AOG, several hundred AFA graduates, parents, and family members reached out about the Kirk motions.
Bishop said he was somewhat surprised by the blowback, but said he sees it as a coordinated campaign against Kirk by “groups that lean left” and mused it’s perhaps because Kirk was an ardent supporter of President Trump.
Critics of Bishop’s motions have said Kirk was too politically divisive and had no military record.
Retired Brigadier General Marty France, an AFA alum and former professor and department head at the Academy, was one of the more outspoken critics of the motions. He wrote on his Substack that he had helped coordinate a “pressure campaign of conscience” against the votes.
“As far as I know, and to the best of my internet and AI search capabilities using Google, the US Air Force Academy has never granted an honorary degree to anyone,” France wrote in his October Substack post the day before the AOG meeting.
“I’m unaware of any previous visits by him to USAFA or even any mention by him of the service academies besides the fact that he was rejected by the US Military Academy (Army-West Point) out of high school. At times, he has sarcastically claimed that a less qualified person of a different race and gender was chosen instead of him.”
Lt. Gen. Bishop acknowledged the criticism that Kirk had no military background and the arguments that it would be inappropriate to grant an honorary service academy degree to such an individual.
“I'd love to have that dialogue with people, but I would say, based on what I've seen of the videos where Charlie has engaged, what do we hope that a graduate from the Air Force Academy walks away from?” Bishop said.
“A deep love of country, a deep understanding of what our forefathers envisioned, a deep understanding of the Constitution. I bet in any one of those measures that Charlie was far ahead of any other graduate from the Air Force Academy right now,” he said.
Email Senior Reporter Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@koaa.com. Follow @brettforrestTV on X and Brett Forrest News on Facebook.
Brett can also communicate via encrypted apps like Signal. Due to the sensitive nature of ongoing reporting from federal actions, he is willing to take steps to protect identities.
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National accrediting agency gives USAFA 30 days to respond to complaint
The national agency responsible for accrediting the the Air Force Academy is giving them 30 days to respond to a complaint.
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