Marvin Olasky, Editor of WORLD Magazine serves as the Academic Dean (Provost) and Anthony Bradley, a frequent contributor to these pages, has just finished his first full year on the faculty.

The best-selling author and Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza has been selected as the new president of the King’s College, a Christian college which maintains facilities in the Empire State Building in New York City, according to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s online magazine, dated Saturday, August 21.

Readers of The Aquila Report probably best know of the school through two of its faculty names: Marvin Olasky, Editor of WORLD Magazine serves as the Academic Dean (Provost) and Anthony Bradley, a frequent contributor to these pages, has just finished his first full year on the faculty.

The Chronicle reports:
Mr. D’Souza is the author of books like Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus and What’s So Great About Christianity. He was a White House policy analyst in the Reagan administration and is a former fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. In recent years, he has become well known for high-profile debates against atheists like Christopher Hitchens.

While D’Souza has no administrative background at all, and is not even an evangelical Protestant (he is a Roman Catholic), it is obvious that the Board of Trustees did not see those as problems which detracted from his primary gifts and abilities. The King’s College is clearly a school firmly within the evangelical community but has a feel for being more like a ‘think tank’ than a typical school. In that context, D’Souza is a perfect fit.

The Chronicle reports the following comments from an interview with D’Souza in which he said that the college was “very well administered,” and his job would be to help tailor its mission—along with bringing in more students and more money.
“I’ve been kind of a think-tank scholar for most of my career,” he said. “In that sense, I’ve been part of a faculty of scholars, but in some ways I’ve seen myself as a lone operator, and this is a chance to spearhead an institution with a great history.”

Mr. D’Souza said he would like to see the college grow from 450 students to four or five thousand. He said he wanted to take something that is “very young and build it into something.”

Mr. D’Souza said when he was approached about the job, he thought it was a good fit, and his only hesitation involved geography. “The harder thing for me,” he said, “was just moving the family from sunny southern California.”

Readers can learn much more about D’Souza by visiting his own website at: http://www.dineshdsouza.com/

The King’s College was founded in 1938 in Belmar, New Jersey by Dr. Percy B. Crawford. In 1949, Crawford initiated Youth on the March, the first nationwide television show of any kind. CNN later honored Crawford on the 50th anniversary of the first Youth on the March broadcast.

In 1955, Crawford moved King’s to Briarcliff Manor, New York. When Dr. Crawford died of a heart attack in 1960, Dr. Robert Cook became the college’s second president.

In 1985, Dr. Friedhelm Radandt, a former professor at the University of Chicago and President of Northwestern College in Iowa, became the college’s third president. King’s ran into financial difficulties in the early 1990s and closed in 1994. In 1998, J. Stanley Oakes, in coordination with Dr. Bill Bright, led the effort to re-capitalize the school. Radandt continued as president.

In 1999, The King’s College acquired Northeastern Bible College, of Essex Fells, New Jersey. That year the revived King’s leased 34,000 square feet on two floors of Empire State Building, where it remains today.

On January 1, 2003, the Board of Trustees of The King’s College selected J. Stanley Oakes, Jr. to be the college’s fourth president. President Oakes, a graduate in Classical Greek from the University of Minnesota and in political theory from the University of Dallas, had spent nearly 20 years building a nationwide network of Christian professors.

In January of this year, Oakes became the schools first Chancellor, and Andy Mills, an experienced business executive and President of the Board moved into the President’s position. No press release is available at this writing to Mr. Mills new assignment. There is as of 9:30PM Eastern time no notice on the schools Facebook page.

Check back in the coming days for more updates on this breaking story.