Donald Trump vs. Dordt University

Some things are different this time around

It was less than a week before Christmas that I heard the news that Donald Trump would be returning to Sioux Center.

I remember his first visit vividly:

On a bitterly cold day in January 2016, Donald Trump stood on the stage of an auditorium at a small Christian college in Iowa. He boasted of his poll numbers and his crowd sizes. He warned of the dangers posed by Muslims and undocumented immigrants, and he talked of building a border wall. He denigrated American politicians as stupid, weak, and pathetic. He claimed that Christianity was ‘under siege’ and urged Christians to band together and assert their power. He promised to lead. He had no doubts about the loyalty of his followers: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he claimed….

I wasn’t in Iowa at the time, but I watched this spectacle unfold as it streamed online. I knew the setting well. The college was Dordt College, my alma mater. The town was Sioux Center, my hometown. I’d grown up a short walk from campus, on the other side of the old farmstead only recently converted back to native prairie….Every year as a child I’d attended Easter sunrise services in that auditorium, and as a college student I faithfully attended chapel services in that same space. Standing on the stage where Trump now stood, I had led prayers, performed in Christian “praise teams,” and, during choir rehearsal, flirted with the man who would become my husband. We married in a church just down the road. Although I moved after college, the space remained intimately familiar. But as I watched those in the overflow crowed waving signs, laughing at insults, and shouting back in affirmation, I wondered who these people were. I didn’t recognize them.

I recounted this story on the first two pages of Jesus and John Wayne. That day, Trump had brought Robert Jeffress with him to make the case for why he “would make a great president,” and the pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church was more than happy to explain how evangelicals were “sick and tired of the status quo” and looking for a leader to fight on their behalf.

But as I watched the event, I remember thinking, “Donald Trump doesn’t know where he is.” Dordt College wasn’t Liberty University. Dordt was a different kind of Christian college. Conservative, yes, but not the kind that could be manipulated to serve Trump’s purposes. Indeed, that day local residents, including some students from Dordt and from the local Christian grade school, stood outside the event holding signs proclaiming “Love Your Neighbors” and “Perfect Love Casts Out Fear.” Still, their numbers were dwarfed by Trump’s supporters, and would be again on November 8, when 82 percent of Sioux County voters voted for Donald Trump.

Photo credit: Dordt University website

All this went through my mind when I saw the announcement of Trump’s return. I wondered what Trump might do this time around. Trump already seemed to be increasingly unhinged in the closing weeks of 2023, and the event was scheduled for the eve of January 6. I hated to think what might become the next “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue” quote that would cling to Dordt’s name for the foreseeable future. Contrary to appearances, I knew the event did not signify that the university (Dordt College became Dordt University since 2016) was pandering to Trump. Dordt has always hosted candidates from both sides of the aisle and maintained an official posture of neutrality. As a kid, I watched Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson speak from that same stage. (As a seventh-grader, I was a huge Dukakis fan, my loyaty prompted by a desire to offset my social studies teacher’s heavy-handed shilling for Bush; it was my first foray into the world of electoral politics.) In recent years, however, fewer Democratic candidates have made their way to the deeply red corner of the state. Republicans tend to show up in droves. Just a month earlier, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy, and Binkley attended a “Faith and Family with the Feenstras” event at Dordt, hosted by Rep. Randy Feenstra. Now it was Trump’s turn.

Although I thought a case could certainly be made that Trump has placed himself in a category by himself, and that the university might have good reason not to host him and not wish for a repeat of the infamous Fifth Avenue speech, I did not expect them to overturn their longstanding policy of neutrality in this highly polarized moment.

I was surprised, then, when a reporter texted me with the news that Dordt had cancelled the event. At that moment I was driving back to Sioux Center after stopping for ice cream in LeMars, the ice cream capitol of the world. I quickly pulled up Dordt’s statement:

The Commit to Caucus Rally for Donald J. Trump has been rescheduled for the Terrace View Event Center in Sioux Center on January 5, 2024.

Each campaign cycle, Dordt University invites every presidential candidate in good standing with their political party (be it Republican, Independent, or Democrat) to have equal access to campus. Dordt maintains a neutral stance on political candidates and issues.

These events are intended to be educational in nature, including questions directly from Dordt students to the candidates. The Trump campaign started the process of lining up a campaign stop but desired a rally format. Dordt understood that President Trump’s visit would not be publicized until the format was finalized after the new year. Ultimately, the vision of the Trump campaign and Dordt were incongruent, and the event will not take place at the university.

Good for Dordt, I thought. Dordt hadn’t “cancelled” Trump, they were simply holding him to the same standard as every other candidate. When Trump refused to comply, arrangements were made to host the event at the golf course event center a couple miles away. Of course, Trump isn’t used to playing by the rules. I can only assume that Dordt knew they’d pay a price for this decision. Sure enough, The Iowa Standard, a Right-wing online publication (one that worked to stir up opposition to my own speaking at Dordt back in 2020, labeling me one of a string of “ultra-liberal speakers”), was quick at the draw, attributing (without evidence) the decision to the influence of a staff member with a history of anti-Trump tweets. (This individual had gone quiet on social media years ago, it’s worth noting). Libs of TikTok amplified this unsubstantiated hot take, and I can well imagine the trolling that ensued. Todd Starnes even got in on the game. But Dordt stood firm.

Dordt did nothing heroic, but I couldn’t help but wonder how the trajectory of the last few years might have been different if others had done the same. What if, starting decades ago, Donald Trump had been held to the same standard as others? What if his corrupt business practices and sexual assaults and lies and bullying and other unsavory actions had been called out and censured long ago? What if more people had been willing to speak truth to power, or simply to treat him as they would any other person?

Instead, we’re reaping what has been sown.

Turning the calendar to 2024, it feels to me that we’re in new territory. With so many systems having failed (congressional oversight, for one), where does this leave defenders of decency and democracy? My default has always been to simply hold to the rules and established procedures, but I know that many are questioning if that will be enough. Has that ship sailed? At a time when both parties believe the other is intent on undermining democracy, I worry that taking extreme or even unconventional measures may well play into the hands of extremists. Or, is this exactly what this moment calls for? These questions have been swirling in my mind lately, with respect to decisions in Colorado and Maine to keep Trump off the ballot, to disagreements over how to respond to the firing of Harvard president Claudine Gay, and to ongoing legal cases against the former president.

These are the questions, I think, that will frame the next 11 months, and I’ll be thinking aloud here on Substack, looking to twentieth-century history for any wisdom that can be gleaned, and reviewing some of the works that I’m finding most helpful in discerning which tactics and postures might be most conducive to preserving democracy and during these tenuous times. I hope many of you will be thinking along with me in that.

For tomorrow, I’ll be watching Trump’s Sioux Center speech and probably breathing a sigh of relief that this time my alma mater’s name won’t be associated with whatever comes out of his mouth at the golf course down the road.

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East Coast friends, I’ll be at Eastern University on Friday, January 12, giving the Windows on the World Lecture (10-11am) with a luncheon to follow. Please come by if you’re in the area!