We asked several people involved in Higher Education and in the ARP, to comment on the recent report from Erskine’s Accrediting Agency http://bit.ly/deUx7D. Here are the returns we received.

1. From Dr. Ken Smith, President, Geneva College

I do not know enough about Erskine’s governance structure or its authorizing documents to be able to comment on the action taken by the Synod of the ARP. Consequently (and concurrently) I am also unable to comment on whether the SACS committee’s conclusions are reasonable or appropriate.

That said, I do not believe Geneva’s governance structure would allow—procedurally or legally—a similar action to be taken by the Synod of the RPCNA. Unlike Erskine, Geneva College is by charter governed by a (22-member) Board of Corporators composed of members of the founding denomination. Four of these members are elected by the Synod, six by Presbyteries, and the remainder by the Board of Corporators itself. The Board of Corporators establish Geneva’s bylaws, elect the Board of Trustees, and may veto the Trustees’ selection of a new president. The Board of Trustees, all of whom are elected by the Corporators, is composed of 31 members, 18 of whom must, by college bylaw, be members of the RPCNA.

Given this structure, the denomination exercises its control of the college through two intermediary boards, and the charter and bylaws do not permit the Synod to directly abolish or otherwise reconstitute either board.

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2. From The Reverend Jim Pakala. Mr. Pakala is a PCA Teaching Elder who has served as a seminary librarian since 1974 – at Biblical Seminary until 1991, since that time at Covenant Seminary. He offered his comments which come from a deep and well-read understanding of the world of Higher Education in general in our nation.

I’ve followed this Erskine situation also via Academic Impressions (a daily e-newsletter covering US Higher Ed from community colleges to Ivy League to professional/grad schools).

People can comment and they say everything from “modern” (e.g., How do such places achieve accreditation in the first place [when they’re so medieval]?) to “postmodern” (e.g., “People have every right to adhere to whatever they want, and discrimination is illegal unless you want to bring on ‘big brother’ or the thought police”).

I’m not surprised by what SACS is doing. I’m surprised the ARP Synod didn’t seem more aware of how academe works. In fact, evidently as a measure to assure greater understanding and empathy, SACS chose folks from religiously affiliated schools to visit Erskine.

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2. From The Reverend William Marsh, Member of the ARP Moderator’s Commission on Erskine

We considered accreditation early and often throughout our process. However, we believed that the failures of Erskine College and Seminary in both mission fulfillment and prudent management and stewardship were much greater threats to Erskine’s long-term stability, of which accreditation is an important piece.

We did not believe that Erskine’s failures to implement its mission — a mission which was been supported by centuries of tithes and offerings of the members of our churches — to be of secondary concern to a singular fixation on accreditation. Both were motivating factors in our discussions.

When the General Synod received our report in March and then overwhelmingly adopted the recommendations of the Moderator’s Commission on Erskine, they became the Synod’s actions and no longer the commission’s recommendations.

The Moderator of the General Synod, Dr. de Witt, Rev. Mulner, and I (three commissioners) met with the SACS team for over an hour on Wednesday, May 5. It appeared that we were scheduled near the end of their multi-day visit to the Erskine campus.

The SACS team did not seem particularly interested in Erskine’s missional infidelity, nor did they exhibit any interest in the governance and financial management concerns raised by the Commission. Instead, their sole focus seemed to be academic freedom and the relationship of the Synod to the College and Seminary as it related to the appointment and dismissal of Erskine Trustees.

Their lack of intellectual curiosity about the dysfunctionality of the present board structure, the failure of trustees to be competent, engaged, and independent, and the systemic failure by decades of trustees to implement Synod’s Philosophy of Christian Higher Education was disappointing.

The team asked us no questions regarding the Synod’s rationale for the steps taken at the March Called Meeting. One member of the SACS team was hostile to the point of combative at the notion that ARP Synod believes Erskine College and Seminary to be one its agencies. It seemed to us that the SACS Committee was interested in asking us only questions which pre-supposed the Plaintiffs’ and the deposed board members.

This team’s tired repetition of the hackneyed canard of “academic freedom” was as predictable as it was irrelevant to the present moment in the future of Erskine College and Seminary.

There are missionally faithful, denominationally-owned colleges throughout the United States who have not taken the steps proposed by the SACS team. Their tendentious assessment of the influence of a sponsoring denomination on its college and seminary cloaks a radical view of governance that should be of concern to all denominationally-affiliated colleges. Everyone will be watching to see if SACS agrees with this small committee of three. My own view is that this is a long way from being a settled matter.

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4. From Dr. Niel Nielson, President of Covenant College

First and foremost, while there are always tensions regarding academic freedom, I don’t believe that any disruptive or mission-threatening tension exists at Covenant between maintaining academic freedom and maintaining allegiance to the mission and confessional standards of the PCA. Academic freedom is absolute nowhere, and is, at any and every institution, always defined within some larger context of mission and values. For us at Covenant, that context is the context of biblical, Reformed faith and the identity and mission of the PCA.

Further, at many institutions the demands of political correctness and adherence to an explicit or implicit code of acceptability make it extremely challenging for biblically and theologically conservative faculty to express views contrary to prevailing paradigms. In such places, the unqualified academic freedom often touted can hardly be said to exist. By contrast, robust academic freedom — to explore intellectual ideas, to ask tough questions, and to pursue inquiry with curiosity and energy — is alive and well at Covenant, with a boldness and assurance borne of our conviction that, because God is Creator and Designer and Sustainer, we can and will make significant headway toward dependable, true understanding and genuine answers. In fact, I contend that true academic freedom can ultimately endure only where such conviction about God also endures, or else the intellectual enterprise, having no reference point outside itself, devolves into politics, anti-intellectualism, and downright silly pseudo-scholarship. To paraphrase Chesterton, when people stop doing scholarship in light of God, it’s not that they do scholarship in light of nothing; it’s that they do scholarship in light of anything.

Further, we should note that the finest historic and most fruitful traditions of intellectual enterprise — in the sciences, the humanities, the arts, etc. — are thoroughly rooted in theological frameworks, without which, in the opinion of many, the result would have been intellectual dead-ends (e.g. see Stanley Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God). I am particularly grateful that Covenant carries on the remarkable intellectual tradition grounded in Reformed theology and thought, which, in God’s providence, is responsible for huge achievement and benefit for human thought and life across the centuries.

As to governance, according to Covenant’s by-laws, approved by the PCA General Assembly, the board of trustees has governing authority for the policies and operations of the College, and the PCA does not have direct control over the actions of the board. In light of sound principles of governance, this is as it should be. However, Covenant’s board of trustees is elected directly by the PCA’s General Assembly, and thus the denomination can, as it sees fit, elect those trustees whom it desires in order to exercise its rightful authority over the College as an agency of the denomination. In light of the College’s identity and mission, this is also as it should be. In addition, the College’s board and administration make regular and, I trust, accurate reports to the General Assembly so that, by God’s grace, the denomination, with informed understanding and through its annual elections of trustees, can enable the College to stay on track with its mission.