Strange things are afoot at the Circle K . . . oops, I meant Patrick Henry College. According to the LA Times, one professor was fired and three others resigned in protest. One of the exiting professors was Todd Bates, former professor at Criswell College where I teach.The LA Times writes:
Patrick Henry College, the small evangelical Christian school founded six years ago to train students for careers in public life, gained national prominence for placing many students in White House internships and other government positions. Now five of the school’s 16 faculty members have left, saying the school’s approach is too doctrinaire to prepare students for the realities of American politics . . .
The controversy began last fall after M. Todd Bates, a professor of rhetoric, delivered a lecture about St. Augustine’s search for truth that Farris faulted for not mentioning the Bible or the college’s Christian mission. Patrick Henry does not offer its professors tenure, and after Bates was criticized, he and eight other professors made a pact that if one of them was dismissed, the rest would leave in protest, Noe said.
The pact took effect this spring after Farris told government professor Erik Root he would not be rehired next year unless Root explained why he told a student, in the presence of one of her parents, that responding to a question by quoting Scripture was “simplistic†(source)
I know there’s two sides to every story, and I will be interested to hear what they are.
(HT: Mark Overstreet)
