NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — A planned congressional hearing on the handling of racial harassment at the Coast Guard Academy has been cancelled after the commandant of the Coast Guard declined to testify.
The hearing before the House committees on Homeland Security and Oversight and Reform had been scheduled for Thursday.
It was expected to address a report released in June by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, which found the academy failed to properly respond to allegations of harassment on campus. Of 16 allegations of race-based harassment at the academy between 2013 and 2018 identified by the inspector general, the academy failed to properly investigate or handle 11 of them, the report said.
The complaints investigated by the Inspector General’s Office included episodes in which cadets used racial epithets, posed with a Confederate flag and and laughed at a blackface video in a common area.
“At a time when people across this country are coming together to confront systemic racism, it is deeply disappointing that the Coast Guard’s Commandant, Admiral Karl Schultz, has rejected our invitation to testify publicly on race-based harassment at the Coast Guard Academy,” the chairpeople of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said in a written statement.
Lt. Cmdr. Brittany Panetta, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Day of New London that the service is “eager to testify at a time and venue that aligns with established executive branch and committee procedures regarding hearing notice, quorum, and question-and-answer period.”
(Copyright (c) 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)