Air Force veteran and Cambridge doctoral candidate Rob Henderson is speaking out about the treatment of veterans on U.S. college campuses.

Appearing on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday with host Brian Kilmeade, the Yale graduate said that the military does a "very good job of building bonds" between all service members. He argued that characteristics such as gender and race "aren't so important," but college campuses put a focal point on these issues.

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"These are continual points of discussion," Henderson explained, "and I was very disturbed at how focused these elite institutions are on these characteristics. To me, the military was proof that we could get beyond those superficial features and unite around a common purpose."

He told Kilmeade that other veterans on campus approached him and asked if he felt like he was "duped," because he had served the country, "defending the Constitution and American values" while the "richest kids in the country at these elite institutions are constantly attempting to undermine freedom of speech, freedom of expression, the First and Second Amendments."

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday, titled "Cold Welcome for Veterans on Campus," Henderson wrote that "students at elite colleges seek to undermine the values that service members signed up to defend."

"On campus we learn to blend in, even at the cost of feeling betrayed. We keep our love for America to ourselves. We don't want to give veterans a bad reputation...We want to make friends. We try to understand campus protesters, to see where they're coming from," he continued.

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"There is this view on many of these campuses among people [that] things like patriotism or love for the country, these are kind of tacky or just something that educated people don't engage in," he told Kilmeade.

"I just want to say that a lot of the faculty and administrators [have] done a decent job of recruiting veterans onto campus but, when they allow the campus activists to dictate the culture and establish the tone, they haven't created a welcoming environment for these veterans," said Henderson.

"It does sometimes cause a feeling of betrayal," he said.