This ecosystem, ever in flux, has given rise to an institution that defies stereotypes and to an array of reactions to DeVos’s selection as education secretary from students, faculty, and alumni. DeVos has been an ardent supporter of not only charter schools, but also the use of vouchers (public money to support private education, and religious education in particular), and generally opposes state and federal regulation. While many in the Calvin orbit are proud of her selection, others are appalled at both her views and her lack of experience (she has never taught public school).

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.—It would be easy enough to drive past Calvin College without giving Betsy DeVos’s alma mater a second thought. Six miles southeast of downtown, the school is a sprawling cluster of nondescript buildings and winding pathways in a quiet suburb. But to bypass Calvin would be to ignore an institution whose approach to education offers clues about how the recently appointed U.S. education secretary might pursue her new job, and about the tug religious institutions feel between maintaining tradition and remaining relevant in a rapidly diversifying world.

DeVos is now Calvin’s most famous alum, and in recent weeks, the school has been painted in some circles both online and in conversation as a conservative, insular institution that helped spawn a controversial presidential-cabinet member intent on using public dollars to further religious education. But that is a grossly simplified narrative, and one that obscures the nuances and very real tensions at the school.

In more than a dozen interviews, professors, students, and alumni of all political stripes painted a picture of a college where intellectual diversity and thought-provoking debate are the norm, and where the belief that followers of the Christian Reformed Church, with which the school is affiliated, have an obligation to engage with the world around them compels both instructors and students to question what they think they know.

“Our faith commits us to engaging the world all around us,” said Kevin den Dulk, a political-science professor who graduated from Calvin in the 1990s, during an interview in the DeVos Communication Center, which sits across from the Prince Conference Center bearing the secretary’s maiden name. (Her mother, Elsa, is also an alum.)

Den Dulk’s words aren’t just PR fluff; it’s a concept borne out by the school’s 141-year history and the Dutch-influenced part of western Michigan it calls home. The Christian Reformed Church is a Protestant tradition that has its roots in the Netherlands and has been deeply influenced by the theologian Abraham Kuyper, a believer in intellectualism—specifically the idea that groups with different beliefs can operate in the same space according to their convictions while respecting and understanding others. “Fundamentalism is really anti-intellectual and Calvin is the exact opposite,” said Alan Wolfe, the author of a 2000 Atlantic piece about efforts to revitalize evangelical Christian colleges.

As Wolfe noted, Christian colleges are no monolith. Where evangelical colleges like Calvin, Pepperdine University, and Baylor University are “part of a determined effort by evangelical-Christian institutions to create a life of the mind,” fundamentalist schools like Bob Jones University have often taught that the bible should be taken literally and resisted intellectual debate. As Wolfe noted, quoting the historian Mark Noll, fundamentalists had “a weakness for treating the verses of the Bible as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that needed only to be sorted and then fit together to possess a finished picture of divine truth.” Professors and students at Calvin said they feel that distinction is often blurred when people talk about religious colleges, as is the fact that students at Calvin have long grappled with social and political issues that some fundamentalist Bible colleges have studiously avoided.

Buried in the dusty stacks of Calvin’s library are clues about the topics that gripped the campus when DeVos—then called Betsy Prince—enrolled at the school in 1975. A November article that year in the Calvin Chimes student newspaper, now part of the library’s collection, bears the headline “Black Community Discusses Problems With Law Enforcement Officials, Sets Goals.” A piece the following year entitled “Cultural Poverty” reports on a “racial-awareness conference” where students “spoke of the need for history courses on minority groups.” The story pointed out that most of the scholars and writings students studied were Caucasian, and urged readers to push past the notion that western culture is “most influential” and question “why this civilization is most influential.” Later the piece asserts that the reason has to do with the “arrogance” of western people.

The fall after DeVos graduated with a degree in business economics in the spring of 1979, the school’s magazine, Spark, published an article called “Calvin Probes Shortcomings,” about how minority students were not always served well at Christian schools and Calvin, specifically. “It was apparent from the discussion that there were differences of opinion regarding the extent of the problem and what actions should be taken to redress the situation,” the article said. One black alum, the piece continued, “noted that, although he was deeply grateful for his Calvin education, he had reluctantly concluded that he could not always recommend a college education at Calvin to black friends and members of his congregation.”

At Calvin today, the Black Lives Matter movement, racial diversity on campus, and minority outreach are still contested topics. Aside from a few dated terms and turns of phrase, the pieces in Calvin Chimes and Spark could easily appear in any number of modern campus papers, religiously affiliated or otherwise. That’s both a depressing sign that progress on such issues is slow, and an indicator that Calvin has historically not shied from such debates, even when DeVos was a student some 40 years ago.

“The change is dramatic.”

In 1985, the college adopted a “Comprehensive Plan for Integrating North American Ethnic Minority Persons and Their Interests Into Every Facet of Calvin’s Institutional Life.” In a 2010 update, the school acknowledged that the work is broader now and even somewhat more elusive. In outlining steps to recruit, retain, and promote more people of color both as students and faculty, Calvin acknowledged that it was behind on goals to enroll more racial minorities and that some of the students who did enroll were burdened by feelings of being “unusual.”

But these debates are arguably even more pressing today. As young people in the United States become increasingly racially diverse and as the percentage of students on campus who identify as members of the Christian Reformed Church dwindles, Calvin has been forced to spend more time recruiting in places like Detroit and enticing international students to western Michigan, with mixed results. Enrollment has declined slightly over the last several years and skewed slightly more female. Racial diversity is up, but minority students still represent less than 15 percent of the student body. The number of students whose parents attended Calvin has also declined over time, meaning the school cannot simply rely on the same families to replenish the supply of students.

“The change is dramatic,” den Dulk said. When he was enrolled in the ‘80s, somewhere around three-quarters of the students were affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. Now, it’s closer to a third. Where there used to be “a slight bit of tribalism,” now classrooms are full of students from different backgrounds with varied beliefs and “some of the faith assumptions have to be talked about,” he said.

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