On the 15th floor of the Empire State Building, a clock marks the time with the sound of clanging church bells, momentarily drowning out the sirens and horns from the Manhattan traffic below.
Here in the administrative offices of the King’s College, the juxtaposition of the worldly and the religious is just what the leaders of this evangelical-Christian institution have sought. A prime mission of their institution, and the reason they located it here, is to bring Christian students to the thick of an urban metropolis and prepare them to become leaders in the nation’s premier economic, cultural, religious, and political institutions, many of which are based here.
Manhattan is populated with millions of people who are, on the whole, politically and culturally unlike the kind of students typically drawn to the King’s College, which is owned by the Campus Crusade for Christ International, an interdenominational group dedicated to spreading Christianity. Most of the 239 students who attended the college this past academic year consider themselves conservative. Many freshmen attended the Republican National Convention, which was held here during the college’s orientation week last year.
In New York City, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than five to one. In last year’s presidential election, the city ranked among the nation’s most heavily concentrated pockets of votes for John F. Kerry, the Democratic candidate. The city’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, is a Republican but holds socially moderate views (he favors abortion rights and gun control).
So when the King’s College set up shop in Manhattan’s iconic skyscraper in 1998, “the stage was set for a fascinating experiment in higher education -- an ultimate encounter of red and blue America,” Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a conservative columnist, wrote in the online version of National Review.
This spring, that relationship grew tense.
The King’s College sought to renew its accreditation through the New York Board of Regents, which colleges in the state can choose as their accrediting body rather than a regional group like the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. In March, when the regents voted to extend the college’s accreditation for one year rather than the five years that the board’s advisory panel had recommended, administrators at the King’s College suspected that antireligious bias may have played into the decision.
The New York Post and Christian radio stations, among others, took up the college’s cause, echoing the sentiments of Mr. Kurtz, who called the situation a “sad example of blue America gone bad.”
Regents and other New York State officials were puzzled by the strong reaction. They did not consider the board’s decision a negative outcome for the college, since it remained accredited. The board’s attention was focused on academic matters, and regents say their decision was made without regard to religion or politics.
What the incident may illustrate best, some observers say, is how quickly society is willing to view situations through a divisive prism and ascribe political motives to events that may be isolated from any broader social context.
Voicing Concerns
The King’s College was created in 1938 as a Christian liberal-arts college in New Jersey and moved to Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., about 30 miles north of Manhattan, in 1955, when it became accredited by the State Board of Regents. The college closed in 1994, after struggling financially. In 1998 it reopened here, under the new ownership of Campus Crusade for Christ, and now operates on a budget of about $10-million a year.
The college offers a curriculum that is similar to Great Books programs. Students can earn associate and bachelor’s degrees in such programs as politics, philosophy, and economics, and business administration.
When the college’s accreditation came before the state board, regents voiced concerns in three main areas: faculty resources, finances, and the library.
But officials of the college and its supporters say there were other questions, ones they considered ridiculous, including inquiries about the rights to the college’s name. College leaders also felt that they had already answered the regents’ central queries with materials that they had previously collected for the board.
College administrators and conservative commentators began to wonder if the board was looking for reasons not to support a longer period of accreditation. They especially questioned the motives of one regent, John Brademas, a former president of New York University who had served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mr. Brademas asked many of the questions at regents’ meetings that King’s College officials say were unnecessary and that they felt characterized the institution as a deceptive organization. The college’s leaders stopped short of directly accusing Mr. Brademas of anti-Christian bias, but they wonder aloud whether he opposes the mission of the King’s College to prepare leaders who hold a biblical worldview, and if that, in turn, influenced his questions as a member of the accrediting board.
“We cannot see into his heart, but his actions demonstrate a hostility of some kind to us,” says J. Stanley Oakes Jr., president of the college.
Mr. Oakes and others at the college call the decision to extend the institution’s accreditation for only one year a “virtual death sentence,” making it hard to recruit students and faculty members because of uncertainty about the college’s future. Administrators have started to raise money for possible legal action, sending out a fund-raising letter in April that the college says has so far brought in more than $180,000.
‘Routine’ Process
New York State education officials and regents, however, say the situation is far from a life-and-death one. They say the board provided a one-year accreditation so that the college’s accreditation, which was to expire in March, would not lapse entirely as regents’ questions were answered.
“This was really done to be helpful,” says Johanna Duncan-Poitier, New York State’s deputy commissioner for higher education. The entire process, she says, was “really very routine.” In about one-third of accreditation decisions over the past five years, she notes, the board has chosen not to follow all of the advisory panel’s recommendations.
Now, she says, state officials are trying to expedite the process for King’s College as it seeks accreditation for a longer period. A vote could come as soon as next month.
John Beckman, a spokesman for Mr. Brademas, says his and other regents’ questions about the college are focused purely on academic issues. Any insinuation that Mr. Brademas is “anti-Christian” is “really shocking and appalling,” Mr. Beckman adds, noting that the regent is also a trustee of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, an international coalition of religious leaders.
Mr. Beckman says he finds it noteworthy that the public discourse over an issue like the accreditation of the King’s College has so quickly been cast as a politically motivated clash of cultures. He says he does not know the motives of King’s College officials but hopes they were not trying to capitalize on divisive caricatures for financial gain.
“It would be cynical to take something unfair, ad hominem, and wrong and to use it for fund raising,” Mr. Beckman says of the college’s characterization of Mr. Brademas. “Not every vicious, unjustified, inappropriate, personal attack is a red-state/blue-state issue. Sometimes it’s just people acting badly.”
College officials defend their fund-raising campaign, saying they need the money to make sure that they have the resources to fight a legal battle if the regents do not accredit the institution for a longer term. Among other possible supporters, the college has talked with officials of the Center for Individual Rights, a Washington-based nonprofit legal organization that has waged many court battles against colleges’ affirmative-action policies.
Administrators also say the regents’ vote to extend accreditation for one year requires the college to defend its reputation. It has hired a lobbyist in Albany and joined the state’s independent-colleges association.
Mr. Oakes and others at the college say they are hopeful that this is all a misunderstanding, one that will be resolved this summer. For the most part, they say, they have found state officials to be reasonable with them.
Fruitful Relations
In fact, on the whole, college officials and students say, the institution’s relations with the blue-state world just outside the institution’s elevator doors have gone smoothly.
Students have landed internships at New York-based media companies, like an ABC affiliate, and financial firms, including the Oppenheimer Group. Nearby pizza shops and cafes have advertised in the student newspaper.
Anthony Randazzo, who just finished his freshman year at the King’s College, says being in midtown Manhattan challenges him to discuss and defend his faith in an urban, worldly environment. “The fact that we’re located in the Empire State Building takes away from any bubble effect that other Christian colleges located in the middle of the woods might have,” says Mr. Randazzo, who is from Orlando, Fla.
That’s just the kind of experience that faculty members say they came to the college to help provide. Professors say they love New York for its cultural resources and emphasize that they take pains to expose students to diverse viewpoints.
“We’re not just watching Pollyanna and The Mission,” says Stephen N. Salyers, an assistant professor of communications and the humanities, but also movies that include Fahrenheit 9/11. “When we take students to museums,” he adds, “we don’t bypass the nude statues.”
Red-state celebrities, like Sean Hannity, a conservative talk-show host, have come to the college as invited speakers. But the campus has also played host to more-liberal guests, like Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor at The New Yorker who was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Oakes says he wants the best thinkers who disagree with him to come to the college. “The goal,” he says, “is to start competing on the most important ideas,” such as exploring the existence of God and the nature of evil, and promoting policy alternatives to solving urban problems through government largess.
“This is an adventurous life. It’s difficult, and it’s expensive,” Mr. Oakes says. “But we like New York.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Volume 51, Issue 41, Page A17