Free Republic

Nearly six months after ending his Republican presidential campaign, former Vice President Mike Pence landed a new teaching job at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. In a statement posted last week, the conservative Christian college said it was establishing a Center for Faith & Public Life “to support the presence of Christian faith in public institutions.” Pence will help launch the initiative, serving as the Distinguished Visiting Fellow. “The appropriate role of faith in the public square is a major issue in this moment of our American life,” said Grove City College President Paul McNulty. “The Founders envisioned a free...

When Cedric Lewis came to Grove City College nine years ago, he was delighted to teach where his Christian worldview was expected, not just tolerated. The Christian College, along with Hillsdale College and a few others is a bastion of conservative education, even refusing any federal government aid for fear of their curriculum being compromised by coercive government mandates. But this year, as the Western Pennsylvania school became engulfed in a politicized dispute over critical race theory, Lewis worried its Christian identity could be at risk. “We are in a fight for the soul of this college,” Lewis, an African...

In the latest development in Grove City College’s critical race theory saga, the board of trustees at the Pennsylvania school accepted the report from an ad hoc committee Friday (May 13) that acknowledged instances of “CRT advocacy” at the school. In accepting the report, the board also agreed to restore the word “conservative” to the school’s mission statement and adopted a list of “remedial actions” to curb CRT going forward, all while denying allegations of “going woke.” “Today, Board chair Ed Breen announced that the Grove City College Board of Trustees voted to accept and adopt the ad hoc committee...

Josh McDowell speaks at Talbot Chapel at Biola University in CaliforniaProminent Christian author and apologist Josh McDowell announced that he will step away from his ministry work and speaking events for the time being after making controversial remarks about minorities and education.In a statement posted Wednesday afternoon to his Twitter account, the 82-year-old said that the backlash from his recent comments at the American Association of Christian Counselors conference on Saturday led him to conclude that he had to step away from his ministry efforts for a time."It has become clear to me, along with Cru leadership, that I need...

Grove City College will open as scheduled for the fall 2020 semester on Monday, August 24 with protocols in place to protect the health and safety of students, employees and the larger community in light of the coronavirus pandemic. College President Paul J. McNulty made the announcement Monday. McNulty has assembled a cross-disciplinary Fall Return Planning Committee. They will address key campus and community concerns associated with the return of students and develop and implement a comprehensive plan that ensures an excellent academic and residential experience in the fall. “It is our intention to return to our distinctive residential program...

With a correct answer just seconds before the final bell, Grove City College defeated Harvard University to capture the championship in the second annual American History and Western Civilization Challenge Bowl over the weekend at The King’s College in New York City. Grove City College’s team of Noah Gould, Carolyn Hartwick and Elena Peters racked up 537 points to the Harvard squad’s 526, securing the lead and ultimate victory by correctly identifying 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The matchup Saturday was the result of preliminary action in the American Heritage Education Foundation-sponsored event. The foundation invited four northeastern colleges to...

GROVE CITY – Security will be tight for Grove City College commencement Saturday, the college’s president said this week. Although the college has had high-profile speakers previously, having a sitting vice president on campus offers a whole new set of requirements. “We will have a much more secure situation than what we’ve ever had before,” GCC President Paul J. McNulty said. The college plans to have commencement outside in the quad at 10 a.m. Saturday for 606 graduates – the largest class in the school’s history – with tickets required for family/friends and credentials for media, he said. There have...

Grove City College's selection of Vice President Mike Pence as commencement speaker is generating mixed reviews among the conservative Christian school's students and alumni. Many are thrilled that the small college 60 miles north of Pittsburgh landed such a big name for the May 20 ceremony — particularly one who describes himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order.” But some argue that Pence's politics aren't always in line with Christian teachings, and that the college has grown too cozy with Republicans. “I'm worried that we are aligning more with a political party, the Republican...

What kind of criticism would prompt a major publisher to withdraw from circulation a New York Times bestseller by a recognized scholar? One would think the objections would have to be weighty and the critics unquestioned experts in the particular field. In the case of "The Jefferson Lies", one would be mistaken to make those assumptions. In 2012, David Barton's popular analysis of Thomas Jefferson was pulled by the book's publisher, Thomas Nelson, based on what appears to have been an academic putsch designed to protect the now popular view of the third president as a secular deist and hypocritical...

Hillsdale College, a 135-year-old liberal arts school in Michigan, eschews federal financial aid and provides students with an education steeped heavily in classical liberalism. So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Obama administration found a bogus excuse to omit the institution on its new “College Scorecard.” According to the Department of Education, Hillsdale isn’t listed on its scorecard, touted as a government sponsored effort to help students “identify which schools provide the biggest bang for your buck,” because it hands out too few bachelor’s degrees. “Hillsdale does offer bachelor’s degrees,” DOE spokesman Denise Horn told Hillsdale’s Collegian...

An Obama administration representative took a shot at a well-known conservative college Thursday, saying the school wasn’t included on its much-heralded new “College Scorecard” because it isn’t a real two-to-four year college. Hillsdale College, a 1,500-student liberal arts college in Michigan, is ranked by U.S. News and World Reports as the 67th-best national liberal arts college in the country. The college is well-known for the conservative identity of its student body and its focus on a core curriculum that emphasizes Judeo-Christian tradition and the U.S. Constitution. It’s also known for its refusal to accept any federal funding (including federal student...

In his lone commencement address of the year, former Florida governor Jeb Bush urged students at a Christian liberal arts college Saturday to reaffirm their socially conservative values, a sign that he is underscoring his own as he considers running in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. “Remain true to your convictions and your faith,” Bush said, speaking at Grove City College in northwestern Pennsylvania. “This may seem a little challenging today, where we have a federal government that is willingly violating the religious freedom of its citizens. But we don’t have to accept it.” Dropping a possible hint about his...

"We should be jubilant," D'Souza announced about the triumph of American free trade. "American foreign policy has made the world much better." America has uniquely sought both self-interest and global improvement, from which much of the world has gained. American ideas about "self-determination" are now influencing the Middle East, he noted. There will be no utopia, but American predominance in the world is infinitely better for the world than all the likely alternatives, such as Russia or China. "Thank God for America," D'Souza concluded.

I knew the time would come. America’s public schools and ideologically monolithic universities have spawned a generation woefully uninformed in the most elementary facts about free markets, socialism, and communism. Personally, after teaching this material for years, I’m getting an inordinate number of questions about communism in particular, as that word is bandied about like crazy—the result of America’s decisive lurch leftward since the election of November 2008.There’s so much to say, especially about communism in practice, where the story is unprecedented misery: a death toll of 100-140 million human beings since 1917. That’s twice the combined corpses of WWI...

Most Americans don't believe that the way for Washington to address its gargantuan debt is to increase deficit spending and go deeper into debt. Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman disagree. Stiglitz, for example, in an interview televised on Feb. 17, denigrated "deficit fetishism" and assured listeners that more "stimulus" spending now would augment American prosperity, both short-term and long-term. There are several major defects in Professor Stiglitz' analysis. 1) Thralldom to the Keynesian macro-economic paradigm.  The Stiglitz/Krugman perspective is thoroughly Keynesian. They attribute today's economic sluggishness to insufficient aggregate demand; hence, government must compensate for this deficiency via...

Grove City College officials say no deal is in place that assures John Gechter will graduate from the school. Gechter withdrew last week after the college suspended him for working in the pornography industry. Gechter was discovered by a fellow student and school administrators appearing in online gay pornography. The conservative Christian school suspended Gechter for behavior that conflicts with the student code of conduct. Gechter led a secret life for two years, flying to the west coast on weekends to work in porn videos designed for internet audiences. In an interview with our newsroom last week, Gechter said he...

John Gechter's story has been troubling me ever since I read it in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09128/968674-298.stm)on Friday, May 8th. Gechter was set to graduate from Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania which is about 65 miles north of Pittsburgh. The college is situated in a rural area, and was founded in 1879 as a strict Christian institution, which it remains today. It prides itself as an authentic Christian institution. The college is also listed as one of the top ten conservative schools in the nation with very rigorous academics. Sex outside of marriage, heterosexual or gay is forbidden,...

Last semester, Will Ross, 21, did the unthinkable. He deactivated his Facebook account. His friends began asking what happened to him. "It was as if I'd disappeared or something," he said. But Mr. Ross, a senior at Grove City College, in Grove City, Pa., would rather send hand-written letters or escape to a cabin in the woods than keep up with his friends' profile pictures. He joins a growing fragment of college students and professors across the country who are challenging technology trends. At Grove City, a Christian college with a student body of about 2,500, it's not unusual to...

God and Barack Obama October 28th, 2008 by Dr. Paul Kengor Let me begin with what I hope is a credibility enhancer: For daring to write a book on the faith of Hillary Clinton, I was questioned by fellow conservatives, especially for calling Mrs. Clinton a “lifelong, committed Christian.” In the final chapter of that book, I included a brief section on the faith of Barack Obama, where, taking him at his word — based on a major June 2006 speech on his faith — I felt confident in reporting, “Obama is a Christian.”I’m not disputing that here. Since then,...

The Less Traveled Path of Grove City College by Eric Langborgh The ways in which America's colleges and universities are rotting are many. The classics have been abandoned and in their place are intellectually vacuous pursuits. In hiring and admissions, race often trumps merit. Teaching assistants, rather than professors, serve as instructors in many classrooms. Bureaucracy has exploded. Administrators dismiss free speech, as Duke Professor Stanley Fish has publicly done, as a "political construct," with speech codes and newspaper thefts ruling the day. Perhaps the most bitter pill to swallow is that despite the decay, the cost of college has...