Brandon Ambrosino is a writer living in Delaware. His pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Atlantic and the BBC, among others.

Last weekend, as more than 9,000 alumni descended on Lynchburg, Virginia, for Liberty University’s homecoming weekend, much went as expected. The carnival atmosphere was pervasive—boosters offered free hayrides around campus, young families could let their kids run off some energy on the bounce-houses set up on the quad, and on Saturday afternoon, the football team won big. At the homecoming parade, bands marched, members of a hip-hop dance troupe donned Trump and Clinton masks, and University President Jerry Falwell Jr. sat on the back of a red convertible and threw candy to his constituents along the parade route.

Despite the happiness and cheer, though, an uncomfortable and urgent question hung over the campus, as it has for several months: What to do about Donald Trump?


The candidate has profoundly split Liberty, the largest Christian university in the world, and a political linchpin of American religious right. Trump—a thrice-married, womanizing TV personality and billionaire who has spoken ill of some minority groups and immigrants and routinely bragged about his poor treatment of women—is perhaps the least Christian Republican presidential candidate in generations. With his sordid personal history and ambivalence about Judeo-Christian morals, Trump has hewn deep divides in the evangelical community between those who support his campaign and those unable to vote for him in good conscience.

Perhaps nowhere is this more acutely felt than at Liberty, where Trump has spurred debates not only about the merits of his candidacy, but about free speech and free inquiry on a campus dedicated to a conservative Christian education.



As perhaps the least Christian Republican nominee in generations, Trump has deeply divided the evangelical community.

Early in the 2016 Republican primaries, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed Trump—he’s the candidate’s most famous evangelical supporter, bar none—a move that mystified many of the believers in Liberty University’s orbit. Falwell has consistently maintained that his views shouldn’t be interpreted as representing those of Liberty University itself. But many in Liberty’s community of boosters, academics, alumni and students see in Falwell’s remarks a double standard over who has the ability to freely voice their conscience.

A member of the Board of Trustees who criticized Trump and questioned Falwell’s endorsement of him was pushed into resigning. In the student newspaper, the Liberty Champion, a student-penned column criticizing Trump’s grotesque “Access Hollywood” comments about women was preemptively censored at Falwell’s request (that writer has since resigned). And Liberty’s faculty — all of whom work without the possibility of tenure—are reluctant to speak out, with many fearing retribution and the loss of their positions.

Quietly, often anonymously and in private, students and faculty are speaking out—many in condemnation of Trump, and a smaller group in opposition to Falwell and the direction he’s led Liberty.

Serious arguments about Republicans are rare at Liberty. In 1980, Ronald Reagan visited a week before the presidential election to voice his support for prayer in public schools (President George H.W. Bush did the same in a 1990 visit). It’s where Senator John McCain came in 2006 to make peace with evangelical leaders ahead of his run for the presidency in 2008. It’s where Mitt Romney reaffirmed his belief in traditional marriage the same week President Barack Obama announced his own support of same-sex marriage in May 2012.

Since its founding, the twin cornerstones of Liberty University have been its indivisible commitments to the basic tenets of Christianity and conservative politics. And now, for the first time, the world’s largest Christian university is grappling with whether and how it’s possible to go about those commitments if they’re divorced from each other.

***

Compared with the presidents of other colleges, Jerry Falwell Jr. wields outsized influence over his campus. In large part, that’s because of his namesake: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a titan of Christian conservatism, the mandarin who founded Liberty University in 1971 and the Moral Majority in 1979.

For more than three decades, Rev. Falwell inhabited a singular role in America’s evangelical life, but in the broader secular world, he was a flypaper for controversy, defined to many by his most outlandish statements—as when he warned that one of TV’s “Teletubbies” was gay, or, most notably, his September 13, 2001, comments explaining the fresh wounds of the 9/11 attacks as the result of God’s righteous anger prompted by abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians and the ACLU, among others.

Rev. Jerry Falwell with Ronald Reagan in 1984 (upper left), with Senator Ted Kennedy in 1983 (lower left), and in a 2006 photo taken at Liberty University (right). | AP Photos

When Rev. Falwell died in May 2007, at age 73, his two major roles were split between his two sons: Rev. Jonathan Falwell became the pastor of Thomas Road, the Baptist church the elder Falwell founded in 1956; Jerry Jr. inherited the presidency of Liberty University.

Since then, Falwell Jr. has rapidly grown the university’s presence and influence. Over the past nine years, the size of the residential student body has swelled from 9,600 to roughly 14,000, and 113,000 students take courses online. This growth—combined with a vigorous fundraising effort—has reaped a huge financial windfall. When Rev. Falwell passed away in 2007, the university’s net assets amounted to roughly $100 million; Today, its assets are valued at more than $1.6 billion.

On the back of this enormous success, Falwell’s clout on campus has outgrown its already prodigious scope. And that power has made it virtually impossible to voice opposition.



Since 2007, Falwell’s clout on campus has only grown, and that power has made it virtually impossible to voice opposition.

Witness the case of Mark DeMoss. For years, DeMoss was a member of Liberty University’s board of trustees and chaired its executive committee. DeMoss’ conservative evangelical bona fides are unimpeachable. He served as an aide (and, ultimately, chief of staff) to Rev. Jerry Falwell, a man DeMoss cites as his “political mentor” and likened to being “a second father” after the death of his own father—who was himself a Falwell associate and is the namesake of DeMoss Hall, the Ionic-columned, 500,000-square-foot academic hub of Liberty’s campus. DeMoss is a Liberty graduate whose expertise in public relations for faith-based organizations has netted him clients ranging from Billy Graham’s Library and Pat Robertson’s Regent University to Chick-fil-A. In both 2008 and 2012, he was an adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.

But this spring, he stepped out of bounds: He crossed Jerry Falwell Jr.

In a March 1 article in the Washington Post, DeMoss was quoted saying that he disagreed with Falwell’s endorsement of Trump, a candidate who, in DeMoss’ eyes, does not represent the “Christ-like behavior that Liberty has spent 40 years promoting with its students.”

The blowback against DeMoss was swift. Falwell reportedly believed that DeMoss’ motives for speaking to the media were entirely political, and that he was, in DeMoss’ words, “a political pawn of rival campaigns.” DeMoss insisted that he was speaking out “not to score political points against Trump, but to give voice to scores of Liberty alumni, faculty and supporters who feel queasy about the school’s new connection to Trump.” (In an email to Politico, Liberty refused to confirm or deny DeMoss’ characterization.)

On April 25, DeMoss resigned from Liberty University’s board of trustees, citing a “concern about a lack of trust.” (This, again, at his alma mater, a college whose main building is named after his dad.)

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

The move already has had a chilling effect on campus. “Whatever the truth may be behind that situation,” one professor said in an email, “it does leave the impression that speaking too forcefully or too directly about such issues could, at a minimum, lead to professional complications, unwanted scrutiny, or simply a loss of favor that might decrease one's chances of receiving a career advancement opportunity that would have otherwise been given.”

“When there’s that kind of culture, a sense of fear surrounding what might happen if you speak up—that’s why faculty have trouble with it,” says Dustin Wahl, one of the students behind Liberty United Against Trump, an open letter and online petition that has been signed by thousands of people in the Liberty community.



When there’s that kind of culture, [there’s] a sense of fear surrounding what might happen if you speak up,” says one Liberty student.

“In the months since Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed him, Donald Trump has been inexorably associated with Liberty University,” reads the letter. “We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement, and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history. Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him.”

Wahl says the point of the statement “was to show the world that there is diversity at Liberty University.” The letter has more than 3,000 signatures, he says, though he can’t say with certainty how many of those represent current Liberty students. More than half of the signatures came from people with official Liberty addresses, but some of those could be alumni accounts. And, for that matter, some students may have signed using private email accounts, like Gmail.

Falwell, who claims he is “proud” of the students for speaking their mind publicly, says the letter hasn’t gotten much traction around campus. One professor I spoke with echoed him: “I see no evidence that the student protest has reached more than a handful of people,” adding that any claims of “division” or “turmoil” on campus are untrue. “It's all blown completely out of proportion in the media … as usual,” wrote the professor.

Another professor, however, says the administration has no way of knowing how many students and faculty share the letter’s concerns, and notes that there is no process through which Falwell could ever learn that. Make no mistake, the professor told me: Faculty members are quietly cheering about the student revolt.

***

Falwell is aware of the tension, and in an interview with the Washington Post earlier this year, he seemed to acknowledge that a lot of people associated with Liberty do not share opinions.

“Any time you support a candidate, and you’re an official at a university, you just to have to accept the fact that a large percentage of the community is not going to agree with you,” Falwell said, adding that political disagreement isn’t really an issue on Liberty’s campus. In fact, Falwell often commends his student body for its willingness to engage diverse viewpoints. He proudly contrasts Liberty with other schools, like Virginia Tech and Brandeis, who have canceled speakers because of student unrest.

“I think our community is mature enough that they understand that all the administrators and faculty have their own personal political views,” Falwell concluded.

Certainly, they do—but what are those views?

Shortly before a speech on campus by Donald Trump in January 2016, Liberty students voice their consciences through prayer and respectful protest. | AP Photos

“I’ve been under the belief for years [that] staff aren't allowed to do interviews without authorization,” one faculty member told me. “It is the policy of the university for questions / comments from the media to be handled through our LU Marketing Department,” wrote another. And another: “I can’t be quoted on this. Even anonymously.” And another: “I thought through your request and decided I just can’t go on the record.”

Those faculty members who agreed to speak with Politico Magazine did so on condition of anonymity; no Liberty faculty member quoted in this article will be identified by name unless otherwise noted.

“While conservatism and Christian values are held in high esteem by the overwhelming majority,” wrote one professor, “different faculty and staff members fall on a reasonably wide spectrum of how to put those principles into action and the extent to which various aspects of conservatism and Christianity should be instantiated in politics.”

“This year, I cannot in good conscience vote for the Republican presidential candidate,” says one professor. “The very obvious moral hypocrisy of supporting a man like Trump won't be lost on the larger culture,” says another. Several faculty members pointed out the hypocrisy of Christians who are quick to forgive Trump for his “grab them by the pussy” comments, and yet continue to hold Bill Clinton’s indiscretions over his head. Christian support for Trump shows “that the Republicans control the evangelical vote instead of vice versa,” one professor writes. “By voting for a man who is EXACTLY like the people they claim to be opposing, I think they're acknowledging their subservient status and opening themselves up for legitimate moral derision.”

Those faculty members who said they were going to vote for Trump tended to view him as little more than a way to stop Hillary Clinton. “I'm not pro-Trump, but will do almost anything to keep Hillary from getting elected,” says one professor. “I fear for religious freedom and the future of institutions like Liberty. I do not agree with Jerry's enthusiastic support of Trump, and I'm suspicious of claims that [Trump] has had a recent conversion experience. But I do see Jerry's reasoning, and I think he has a business sense that most of us will never understand.”



In interviews and emails with me, faculty were quick to voice their moral opposition to Trump and their disappointment with Falwell’s decision to endorse him.

In interviews and emails with me, faculty were quick to voice their moral opposition to Trump and their disappointment with Falwell’s decision to endorse him. None of the faculty I spoke with said that they plan to vote for Clinton, even though, according to one professor, she is “pretty obviously the better choice.” The handful of those who said they are supporting Trump claim to be doing so only reluctantly or for “pragmatic” reasons.

From my conversations, it seemed that there is a good deal of political diversity among Liberty’s faculty — which might explain why several professors were so eager to speak with me, even if it were on condition of anonymity. Still: why all the secrecy?

After receiving mixed messages from faculty about Liberty’s policy for contact between faculty and the media, I went to find its exact wording: “Any request for information from an outside media organization or any request for comment from any outside party regarding the University in any regard whatsoever should be referred to the President or the President’s authorized designee.” It’s a rule rather sweeping in scope, and seems to insist that the university must be involved whenever a faculty member speaks with a journalist.

In an email to Politico Magazine, Liberty University’s lead counsel, David M. Corry, characterized the policy somewhat differently. “Faculty and staff do not need permission to speak with media,” he wrote, “but there are special rules about using their affiliation with Liberty University,” including informing Liberty’s administration no more than three hours after any contact takes place, and explicitly communicating to the interviewer that their views do not reflect the university’s.

Following these rules, Corry added, “is especially important when statements are made either in support or in opposition to a candidate for elected office,” because Liberty is a 501(c)(3) organization. That status prohibits the university from taking an official political position, and Corry says its media guidelines for faculty were created to protect its status. That may well be the case, but how then to explain Jerry Falwell Jr. being introduced as the president of Liberty University when he spoke at the 2016 GOP convention—a speech in which he talked about working to “restore Liberty University to financial health,” and said that Trump can do the same for the nation?

Jerry Falwell Jr. speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. | Getty Images

Faculty I spoke with suggested that Falwell is insincere in claiming his views cannot be confused with those of the university. On one hand, a professor wrote, Falwell has the right to express his opinions as a private citizen. But on the other, “He is the highest-profile representative of Liberty University, and everything he does and says will reflect, in one way or another, on the values and principles of this institution. I think it is fair for others to exercise their rights to make theological and pragmatic criticisms of his political statements.”



Faculty I spoke with suggested that Falwell is insincere in claiming his views cannot be confused with those of Liberty University.

Another professor referred me to a section in the faculty handbook, typeset in bold for emphasis: “All employees of the University are expected to conduct themselves in matters of language and morality in a manner compatible with the Mission of the University and The Liberty Way. Unsuitable conduct may be grounds for disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”

The Liberty Way is the university’s manual for its students, faculty, and staff. It describes in detail how everyone affiliated with the school should behave, dress, speak, etc. The reason for the manual is also explicitly stated: Every person associated with the university “should avoid any activity, on or off campus, which would contradict the university’s mission or purpose, compromise the testimony or reputation of the university.” In other words, it is the official position of Liberty University that the behavior of its students, faculty, and staff is clearly a reflection of the entire institution’s morals.

Which is precisely why one faculty member I spoke with suggested that Falwell was disingenuous: If the administration is so concerned about its reputation when it comes to the actions of a faculty member or student, then why isn't it even more concerned about how its reputation is affected by its president’s public comments?

Evangelical blogger Warren Throckmorton, who regularly writes about Christian higher education, offered a similar thought. “I wonder why it is acceptable to the Liberty board for Jerry Falwell to endorse a candidate as an individual not speaking for the university, but it is not fine for a board member [Mark DeMoss] to express an opinion as an individual not speaking for the university.”

“Jerry Falwell, Jr. would not have the public platform to speak as he does without the university and all the staff and students who have made it great,” one professor wrote me. “Part of the sacrifice of leadership should involve giving up some of his own freedoms in order to be a better steward of the public image of the university and the thousands of people associated with it. … It is fair for faculty, staff, and students to argue that he should voluntarily restrict his free speech on this issue because his words will reflect on Liberty University and ultimately on us.”

***

Dustin Wahl, co-author of Liberty United Against Trump, claims to have had “private contact with faculty” about his open letter. Faculty members are supportive, he says, but “want to remain anonymous.”

I asked Wahl whether there were any concerns around campus about publicly rebuking President Falwell. Wahl, echoing Falwell, says that Liberty values academic freedom, and he feels free to speak his mind—but notes an important caveat.

“I don’t think anyone has a rational fear of President Falwell doing something against them. People have joked about it, like, ‘I’m surprised you’re even still going here!’ But that’s not really the fear: There’s a sense among students that you don’t want to disagree with a position of leadership because it feels wrong to a lot of students.” Wahl says some classmates privately told him that they wanted to sign his letter, but decided that because they were in positions of student leadership, “it would be wrong to disagree with hierarchy.”

At the same time, Wahl doesn’t think it’s irrational to fear repercussions from administration. “Falwell has proven himself to have incredibly thin skin when it comes to disagreement. The fact is, the chairman was asked to resign because he gave his opinion,” he says, referencing the resignation of Mark DeMoss.

Several faculty members contacted for this story referenced DeMoss, suggesting worries that publicly opposing Falwell could cost them their jobs. However, both Corry and Len Stevens, the school’s media relations manager, say such concerns are baseless.

“If [faculty] are fearful, they shouldn’t be,” Stevens wrote in an email to Politico Magazine, capitalizing the first word. “That’s the bottom line.”

And yet, despite such assurances from Liberty’s administration, fear persists.

For the faculty, part of the reason for this stems from the fact that Liberty does not offer tenure. All employment is at-will, an arrangement clearly proclaimed in the handbook: “Liberty University and employee each remain free to terminate their employment relationship, with or without advance notice for any reason or for no reason at all.”

“As a professor, anything that could distantly affect your job security is a very high-stakes game,” said one faculty member, citing the general lack of jobs in academia.

Hans-Joerg Tiede, associate secretary of the department of academic freedom at the American Association of University Professors, cites this as a clear example of why university professors need tenure. Having read Liberty’s media policy, Tiede considers it “an interference in faculty members’ academic freedom,” adding that Liberty is not the only school guilty of this. “We certainly define academic freedom [to include] the freedom to speak to the press.”

Admittedly, the AAUP does have a slightly different concept of academic freedom for religious institutions, provided these “limitations” to full academic freedom are disclosed to the faculty member at their hiring. “But these would be restrictions that relate directly to religious doctrines,” says Tiede—not political views.



For many in the Evangelical world, the line between the religious doctrine and political beliefs isn’t so clean.

But for many in the Evangelical world—including many at Liberty, whose founder created the Moral Majority—the line between the religious doctrine and politics isn’t so clean. Is abortion a religious or political issue? How about same-sex marriage? War? The refugee crisis? For the last several decades, evangelicals have approached these and other issues as both political and religious concerns. Casting a vote was as easy as identifying the candidate who shared that approach—and for conservative Christians in the mold of Rev. Jerry Falwell, that has often meant supporting conservative Republicans.

With Trump, though—a thrice-married, womanizing TV personality who has spoken ill of some minorities and immigrants and routinely bragged about his poor treatment of women—that choice isn’t so clear.

In the world of conservative Christians, there are leaders who have denounced Trump’s politics and questioned his character. Among the first was Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who wrote in January that “Trump’s vitriolic — and often racist and sexist—language about immigrants, women, the disabled, and others ought to concern anyone who believes that all persons, not just the ‘winners’ of the moment, are created in God’s image.”

Of course, other evangelical leaders—Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Franklin Graham—have remained steadfast in their support of Trump, even after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, showing Trump vulgarly bragging about groping and kissing women without their consent.

From January 2016: Jerry Falwell Jr. appears with Trump for a campaign event in Iowa. | AP Photos

Their continued support for Trump has been noticed and condemned by other evangelical leaders, especially women. “Try to absorb how acceptable the disesteem and objectifying of women has been when some Christian leaders don’t think it’s that big a deal,” wrote Living Proof Ministries founder Beth Moore shortly after the tape came out.

It all adds up to a fracturing of the evangelical vote, which, as Laurie Goodstein recently noted in the New York Times, is “likely to reshape national politics for years to come.”

But on a smaller scale, this confusion about who is and isn’t allowed to speak for evangelicalism is playing out at Liberty University. Falwell endorses Trump, and some on campus speak out to say he doesn’t speak for the school. Falwell then speaks out to say that those individuals don’t speak for the school. Faculty take to social media to reassure their networks that they don’t share Falwell’s political values. Journalists ask faculty to discuss their views—and we’re back to Falwell, perhaps the only person on campus who does not need to request his own permission to speak publicly about his personal political views.

All things considered, it seems correct to say that Liberty technically allows all of its faculty and students to speak to anyone they wish, about anything they wish. It also seems correct to say that many faculty and students don’t feel as though this is the case in practice. In fact, several contacted me after we’d first spoken to again confirm that I would protect their identities.

I asked Corry what he makes of faculty’s reticence to speaking on record. His conclusion is that it is a “self-imposed” silence based on faculty members’ own mistrust of mainstream media. “The media's tendency to twist words and spin an interview would explain [faculty] reluctance to speak to a reporter while feeling free to post on Facebook and Twitter, where they have complete control over their messages,” Corry wrote in an email. “There is a long history of people from Liberty being misrepresented in the press and this reality is likely the greatest single reason for Liberty employees staying away from interactions with reporters.”

To be fair, many in the Christian community do believe that reporters don’t seem terribly concerned about fairness or accuracy in representing conservative religious people. But in the dozens of interactions I had with Liberty faculty in reporting this story, the prevailing concern I heard wasn’t about media bias, it was about Falwell and Liberty’s administration.

Corry’s remarks about the dishonesty of reporters was disconcerting because, well, I’m a reporter, and they seemed like a coy way of undermining the story I was asking him to comment on. His remarks echoed many of Trump’s own complaints about the media’s dishonesty. The actual words Corry used gave the impression that he was inviting me to read between the lines.

There was a similar subtext to the university’s official response to DeMoss’ resignation: “Individual board members have varied reasons for their displeasure regarding Mark DeMoss’ comments to the Washington Post, most of which are not related to his disagreement with Jerry Falwell’s personal endorsement of Donald Trump or a belief that Mark DeMoss’ motivations were entirely political. Liberty would prefer to not inventory or detail all these reasons.” The suggestion here is that contacting the Post was merely one in a long list of DeMoss’ indiscretions, but that Liberty was going to take the high road and not go into all of them. In the same interview, Falwell spoke about the criticism he faced for inviting Romney to speak on campus in May 2012. “I took a lot of heat having someone from the Mormon faith speak at Liberty, but I did it because Mark lobbied hard for it.” The suggestion here is that DeMoss is behaving like a hypocrite.

A similar subtext appeared in the school’s response to Falwell’s axing of a student op-ed that was highly critical of Trump. After outlining several reasons why the piece was killed, Corry said, “The University is at a loss for why [the student author] seems to have not recalled or understood these facts and circumstances.”

And then there was what some took to be a dig from Falwell directed at the “Liberty United Against Trump” student protest: “This student statement seems to ignore the teachings of Jesus not to judge others, but they are young and still learning.”

Perhaps most troubling of all was Corry’s request that I share with the school the list of faculty members who were reticent to speak with me. That way, he assured me, the university would be able to contact them, “clarify the ground rules, and underscore that they are free to speak about their preferred or un-preferred candidate as private citizens without retribution from the University.” (I declined to provide him the list.)

The trouble with subtext is that it’s hard to know whether it’s really there. But we can pretty easily talk about the context that all of these remarks are happening within.

Liberty University has always pretty clearly been associated with Republican candidates, thanks to its founder’s involvement with conservative politics. The current president is the son of that founder, and is a vocal and consistent supporter of a candidate many see as antithetical to many of the core tenets of Christianity. Though many non-tenured faculty oppose Trump privately, any who wish to address the issue publicly are required to inform the office of the president—a man who has compared Trump both to his late father and King David.

Liberty’s faculty have read their contracts. It seems many of them have also read between the lines.