Jerry Falwell Jr., the controversial president and chancellor of Liberty University, will take an immediate and indefinite leave of absence after a photo surfaced showing him with his pants unzipped and his arm around a woman. The move, announced late Friday, came a day after Rep. Mark Walker, a Republican congressman from North Carolina and former Liberty instructor, called on Falwell to resign.
In a news release the university said its governing board had unanimously voted for Falwell to take the leave, “to which he has agreed, effective immediately.”
Falwell has in recent years stood as very likely the most controversial figure in all of American higher education. From his reported appointment by President Trump to lead a federal committee to reshape higher ed (an effort that never materialized), to his apparent insistence on welcoming students back to campus in the spring amid the pandemic, to his alleged stifling of dissent on campus, to reports that one of his senior administrators had accepted a bag of cash from Michael Cohen, to his airing of a conspiracy theory regarding the emergence of the coronavirus, to his likening of President Trump to Abraham Lincoln, Falwell has been a lightning rod.
Falwell has been at the helm of Liberty, a wealthy Christian university with a formidable online presence, since 2007. His father, Jerry Falwell Sr., founded Liberty in 1971.
