A word of advice for Christian college presidents

“Are you going rogue?”

I still remember the email. Jesus and John Wayne hadn’t yet released, but I’d already started posting some of my research on social media. The email was from a professor at another Christian college, someone I didn’t know. Our paths may have crossed at some point, but we weren’t closely connected, and the name didn’t ring a bell. They were wondering how I, a professor at a Christian university, could write the things I was writing about Trump, evangelicalism, and MAGA politics. Was I going rogue?

The truth is, I wasn’t sure. Was I? I thought I was within the boundaries of academic scholarship. Not only academic, but Christian scholarship. My work was well-evidenced, carefully argued, and stayed within my disciplinary expertise. What could go wrong?

Of course, I’ve also studied Christian institutions, and I knew exactly what could go wrong.

Around this time, I came across a colleague on campus who knew what I’d been working on. “So, Kristin, is this book going to get you fired?” they asked. I laughed and said I wasn’t sure and invited them to read the manuscript and let me know what they thought. A couple weeks later the verdict arrived: “I don’t think so…” And then they said something that has stuck with me ever since: “You know, Kristin, here at Calvin we all have your back. Until we don’t.”

Truer words were never spoken. That, I knew, was the perfect summation of my situation.

The book came out and I waited to see what would happen. Several months passed, the book was getting more and more attention, and everything seemed fine. Still, I waited. Then, it happened. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire came after me. Their audience knew exactly what to do. Letters and phone calls flooded in, many from outsiders, but many also from Calvin constituents in Shapiro’s orbit.

Still, I waited. And then I got an email from someone who worked on our Communications & Marketing team. “Kristin, can you tell us what they got wrong in this piece, so we can field complaints?” I told them the headline was hyperbolic and aspects of the summary were certainly inelegant, but the substance of my arguments were recognizable. The summary was of a talk I’d given at Calvin, a department colloquium put up on YouTube. A talk presided over by my chair and attended by my dean. So, the way I saw it, either what I had done was within the bounds of academic freedom, and Calvin ought to defend me, or, if it was outside those bounds, they should probably let me know that. Again, I waited.

A few weeks later, I received word from our president. He shared with me the letter he’d sent to critics but warned me that I might not be entirely happy with it. I took a look. In fact, I was perfectly happy with it. It didn’t defend my work (it’s not the president’s job to do so), but it did defend my right to do that work. It explained the concept of academic freedom and noted Calvin’s longstanding commitment to academic freedom, even, and especially, around controversial issues.* That was all I needed.

(*Important asterisk: There are limits to academic freedom at Calvin. Calvin is under denominational authority and issues deemed “confessional” do not fall under traditional academic freedom protections.)

On occasion since then, I’ve been asked to clarify my work with my provost or with members of advancement. The occasions tend to be other campaigns to get me fired—they happen from time to time, always sparked by a conservative media organization deliberately targeting me because I teach at a Christian university, presumably part of an effort to purge Christian colleges of people like me. To their great credit, individuals at Calvin tasked with answering for me have never asked me to temper my writing. They have simply asked me for a clear understanding of what I do, and for my understanding of who is coming after me, and why.

I know about a few of these dust-ups, but much of the time complaints are handled without me knowing it by people who get paid to do this work. I don’t love that I add stress to their work week, but I’m grateful for the work they do on my behalf.

Which brings us to a story published this week at RNS on Matt Warner, the Grace College professor unceremoniously ousted. Here’s a little background on how a professor who received glowing evaluations found himself without a job:

Then, in October, Warner learned there was a group of local moms calling for him to be fired. Warner traced the outcry back to a Facebook post by Evan Kilgore, a Grace alum and onetime employee who captured screenshots of Warner’s past tweets, which included such phrases as “I support gay marriage,” “My pronouns are he/they,” “Tucker Carlson is fascist” and “When Christendom is conservative it ceases to be transformative.”

Monica Boyer’s Facebook post. (Screen grab)

A former Turning Point USA ambassador and now faith-based political commentator, Kilgore told RNS he posted because “parents might want to be aware of somebody who has influence over their child with these beliefs.”

Kilgore said he was originally tipped off about Warner’s posts by Monica Boyer, a Grace College parent and local political organizer. While Kilgore’s post clarified that he was not calling for Warner’s termination, Boyer took a different approach.

“I am OFFICIALLY calling on Grace College to fire this professor IMMEDIATELY,” Boyer wrote on Facebook. “The devil probably shouldn’t mess with moms who fight for their kids,” she wrote the same day, adding that moms were driving around campus, praying.

The college caved to the pressure.

“The fit isn’t because of your theology, the fit is more about … how you’ve come across in the past, and the concern, or the confidence that it wouldn’t happen again in the future,” [Norm Bakhit, Grace College’s chief officer of human resources] said in a recording obtained by RNS.

Unlike many Christian college professors who find themselves in similar situations, Warner declined the $60,000 severance that came with an NDA attached, which means we get to hear his perspective:

“They’ve created a caricature of me based on taking a very small number of social media posts out of context,” Warner said. “I was treated from the beginning as a threat or liability. And nobody at any time had a conversation with me about what I believe, or what I’m willing to do to support the college.”

The repercussions extend not only to Warner and his family, but to all Grace College faculty members.

“It feels like it’s only a matter of time before I or anyone else cross an invisible line we didn’t know was there, and are determined to not be ‘missionally aligned,’” one Grace College employee told RNS.

Cliff Staton, director of Grace College’s school of arts and sciences partnership programs, said he wondered, if Warner didn’t fit at Grace College, did he?   

“In a low-trust culture, you start thinking, I must be at risk too,” said Staton. “That was pervasive across faculty. Especially because there was no definitive language around the ‘why.’”

As RNS reporter Kathryn Post points out, this isn’t the only Christian college to part ways with faculty members in response to conservative pressure:

As Christian colleges vie for a dwindling number of incoming students, many are struggling to navigate the chasm between the convictions of conservative stakeholders and those of their more theologically, politically and racially diverse faculty and student bodies. In many cases, precarious finances have led schools to prioritize the former. Last year, English professors at Taylor University and Palm Beach Atlantic University were dismissed after receiving alumni, donor and parental criticism for their teachings on racial justice, though both had been teaching on that topic for over a decade.

Also, a little glimpse into how power operates at a place like Grace:

In January, Warner filed a faculty grievance charging Flamm and Bakhit with alleged violations of college policy, but per the college bylaws, the president is the final arbiter of faculty grievances, and Flamm did not find that he or Bakhit had misstepped.

I’ve been protected at Calvin, but I’ve had several first-hand experiences of these dynamics at other schools over the past few years. In fact, a couple years back, I had a major speaking invitation rescinded at the very same Grace College. The reason? Outside pressure, members of the community—quite possibly the same individuals who pushed for the removal of Warner—spreading false information and painting me as a “CRT activist.” In that case, a previous president assured me that he knew the allegations were entirely unfounded, but that the pressure was too great. He caved.

This is the first time I’ve gone public with this story. I prefer to give agency to faculty and administrators who are trying to do what is right when it comes to airing things publicly. Sometimes, going public isn’t the most strategic way to fight things. Sometimes, keeping things quiet only makes things worse.

There are other dynamics at play here. Outside groups like Turning Point USA and media outlets like the Daily Wire are providing communities and constituents with a playbook. Christian college administrators may think that by caving to the pressure they’ll save their institutions from bad press and protect their reputations in conservative circles, but that’s a short-sighted move. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. This is how this works.

I have more stories I could tell from my visits to Christian colleges across the country—about community groups trying to purge unacceptable books from a Christian college library, to a local Facebook group that exists for the purpose of pressuring and punishing local groups, including the local Christian college, for any affiliation with supposed apostates like me. Some reading this will know exactly who I’m talking about.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Christian university presidents and boards need to know what they’re up against. In response to my posting about Warner’s story on X, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove had this to say:

“Might be helpful for the CCCU to inform their schools that Turning Point USA is training people to run these ‘cancel’ campaigns. The mothers calling in aren’t prompted by the Holy Spirit, but by Charlie Kirk.”

This is exactly right. The CCCU has spent a lot of time and energy lobbying for religious liberty protections at the national level. Maybe it’s time they turn their attention in another direction, every bit as much a threat to their missions as institutions of Christian higher education.

What else can be done? Individually, institutions should hold fast to their commitment to academic freedom and due process. If these commitments are not clearly stated, now would be a good time to shore them up. When controversies erupt, the best recourse an institution has is to fall back on established policies and procedures. If you’re interested in what this might look like, here’s Calvin’s statement on “Confessional Commitment and Academic Freedom.” (Again, worth noting the limitations here, in terms of “confessional commitments.”) It’s almost 60 pages. We do like our words here at Calvin. But they aren’t just words. I just read a fabulous student paper in my History of Evangelicalism course examining Calvin’s response to controversy surrounding the visit of David Noebel, an anti-gay speaker in the 1990s. When many of Calvin’s faculty and students objected to the speaker, the college drew the ire of Christian radio shows and Dobson’s Focus on the Family. In Jesus and John Wayne, I write about how college presidents learned to fear the disapproval of Dobson, knowing the damage it could do to recruitment and donations. But drawing on these longstanding commitments to academic freedom, Calvin protected the dissenters and stood firm in their commitment to academic freedom, even as they tried to smooth things over with Dobson personally.

Why does this matter? Give in to the pressure tactics one time, they will come back for more. You may think you’re dodging a bullet, but you’re placing yourself squarely in the line of fire.

More importantly, what is Christian education for? What have you hired your professors to do? What sort of thinking do we want to cultivate in our students?

Matthew Bonzo, a philosophy professor pushed out of Cornerstone University (a Christian college just up the road from Calvin), offers an astute observation about what’s at stake on this front:

“The thing that strikes me is the willingness of boards and administration to kind of alter the process to achieve the end that they want,” Bonzo told RNS. “At the very moment when Christian higher ed could be helping to navigate difficult cultural moments, we’ve been sidelined by these kinds of controversies.”

Any professor will tell you that we have very little influence over what our students think. We are invested in teaching them how to think. We want them to grapple with the best ideas, even from—especially from—opposing viewpoints. We want them to think critically, not shout down opponents. We want them to learn how to disagree with each other, and with their professors, with clarity, humility, and strength.

There are ways colleges can respond to pressure tactics that don’t involve cowering or caving. Wilson-Hartgrove noted that he was once targeted by one of these kinds of campaigns when asked to preach at a campus chapel. Instead of caving to the pressure, the college took a different approach: “A discerning President asked me to sit down with him on the campus TV and talk about my faith. It was an encouraging experience & an example of leadership, it seemed to me.”

Christian colleges have intellectual and theological tools to push back against these tactics. If they use them, they may well find that the majority of their constituents—students and alumni educated and formed at their institutions—will recognize the practices and come to their defense. Pursuing this route may seem like a lot of work and a lot of risk up front, but in the long run, it may well be the safest and most efficient response.

Speaking of the CCCU, I’ve been wondering lately what it might look like if Christian colleges banded together in defending academic freedom and genuine intellectual inquiry. When Turning Point USA or the Daily Wire or a local Facebook page comes for a Christian college, what would happen if dozens, or hundreds of Christian colleges stood in solidarity?

For a long time, threats to Christian institutions in the form of restrictions on religious liberty seemed to come from the Left. What if the greatest threat to Christian institutions is now coming from the other side? If this is true, it will probably only get worse. In the interest of mitigating risk, it might be smart to draw a line in the sand now. It will probably be even harder down the road.