Dear President Davis (February 2026)
We have important lessons to learn from Furman's past.
February 9, 2026
President Elizabeth Davis
Furman University
3300 Poinsette Highway
Greenville, SC 29613
Dear Elizabeth:
I want to begin by recognizing some great service from the Furman Library. My online search for an article in the November 1971 issue of the Furman Review was unsuccessful. Exactly 43 minutes after writing the Furman library, Lauren Lundy responded with the article I needed attached in an email. Kudos to Ms. Lundy.
One of the benefits of celebrating Furman’s bicentennial is how it helps us understand the principles that have sustained the school. The Furman Free Speech Alliance consistently points to a set of challenges our alma mater faces today, urging the administration, faculty, and trustees to acknowledge these problems and confront them.
For example, we frequently highlight the need to confront the lack of viewpoint diversity on campus, the problem of student self-censorship, the difficulties of the Pathways program, enrollment and budget challenges, and more. Our reading of Furman’s past, inspired by this bicentennial year, tells us that Furman has prospered from its humble origins when it has shown courage in acknowledging and meeting roadblocks to success and when it has recognized that its future hinges on promoting free inquiry, honoring intellectual merit, and respecting the diverse ideas that arise from the pursuit of truth.
To understand what I mean, I direct your attention to Albert S. Reid’s sesquicentennial article in the Summer 1976 edition of The Furman Magazine, “Issues Resolved and Unresolved in Furman’s 150-year History”. (As an aside, I once again urge The Furman Magazine to return to its intellectually stimulating past.)
For Reid – and remember he writes in 1976 – the primary unresolved issues are “Furman’s church-related identity” and “its financial base”. Fifty years on from Reid’s article, the latter issue certainly remains, but the former was finally and firmly resolved.
Reid’s account of the resolved issues is a short walk through Furman’s history. Some of those issues may strike us today as quaint:
Should Furman have dorms? “[F]ear of immorality and religious heresy among students” housed together “ran strong”, he notes. Dorms were built, but for anyone who has lived in one, those concerns might appear at times to have some merit.
Should Furman be a regional or local college? “To survive, Furman could no longer be content to be a Greenville and South Carolina college even if it wanted to be.”
Should Furman be coeducational? “Since the 1930s, coeducation has become essential for Furman just as mixing the sexes was anathema in the earliest days.”
Should Furman remain in Greenville, or seek a campus outside the city? Reid’s account shows how truly vexing this issue was. The question of “location… preoccupied the school for more than fifty of its 150 years.” There was clearly a bit of foot-dragging going on.
But many of the other resolved issues taken up by Reid are anything but quaint.
“Furman [recognized] that learning and the prestige of learning depended upon the right of teachers to teach without intimidation because of personal beliefs.” I would add to Reid’s account that this “resolved” issue is always threatened to be undone in times of deep ideological division.
Furman resolved early on that it “should have high standards based on academic excellence.”
Furman resolved, specifically under Gordon Blackwell, that it would achieve “excellence by national standards.”
(A curious omission in Reid’s account is the resolution of the issue of racial integration, which he mentions only in the context of ongoing disputes between the Board of Trustees and the Southern Baptist Convention.)
Reid’s history shows that, over those first 150 years, Furman confronted significant obstacles to sustaining a college grounded in the pursuit of truth, maintained by freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression.
Today’s obstacles are no less daunting for a modern university. Financial concerns remain very much on the table. But so too do issues of academic integrity, free inquiry, and robust debate.
Bending to trends such as adherence to a narrowly defined idea of “diversity”, or accepting a homogeneous political culture, will only serve to undermine the tradition of “high standards based on academic freedom” that Albert Reid celebrated in his fascinating sesquicentennial history of Furman University.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Salmon
President
Furman Free Speech Alliance
I would love to see Furman ditch the woke university mission statement enacted by president Davis. Her woke mission statement is a disgrace. Please do everything possible to return to the original mission statement. Thx
Hello John....Thanks for the inquiry about what exactly about Furman's revised mission statement I find objectionable.
Many of the words in the new mission statement have dual, if not multiple meanings. Their superficial meaning may be one or another commonly understood meaning, and in a mission statement, may seem benign or even aspirational. However, in the context of Furman University's mission statement, certain words have been chosen very purposefully and carefully because they have a secondary, very specific meaning in 21st century Marxist philosophy. Most people, perhaps including yourself, are unaware of the real meaning of these specific words in relation to Furman's mission statement and new proposed direction, yet a proper understanding of their true meaning is crucial to understanding what has happened to Furman.
To provide an example, I point to a single sentence that contains two of three essential concepts and tenants of 21st century cultural Marxism: diversity and equity (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). In a non-Marxist context, most people would applaud diverse ideas and opinions and backgrounds in a given institution. Likewise, most compassionate people might think that a certain amount of equity is favorable and fair. However, in Furman's mission statement they are designed to specifically promote neo Marxist principles. Hopefully you will begin to understand their true meanings, and begin to wonder exactly who crafted this statement and for what specifically.
Here's the problem.....
Equity infers equity of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Its very use in a mission statement infers a belief in a structural IN-equality based on purposeful institutional scheming and ossified policy that .gives some people an advantage over others that guarantees their success, while simultaneously guaranteeing another group's relative failure. It implicitly denies that hard work, merit, diligent study, scholastic achievement, skill, etc., are the principal components in a person's chances for advancement and success in life in a given nation, culture, corporation, etc..
It infers a system of baked in structuralized victimhood.
In modern cultural Marxist teaching, the unfair beneficiary is the white anglo saxon man ie., white privilege, and the unfair disadvantaged is any person of color, all women, all persons of non-traditional sexual orientation, etc..
Victimhood is a belief about oneself that is overwhelmingly disempowering. One soon aspires only to be the most complete and greatest victims among other of the class of victims. Such a victim can then become the beneficiary of the greatest sympathy, both political as well as institutional, and is in line to claim the greatest rewards for having been such victim, while at the same time aspiring to destroy the society that actually allows for and promotes individual exceptionalism. The worth of the individual is ceded to the so called 'greater good'.
In a generous democracy, this translates into free housing, free food, free health care, free education, free cash to mothers with children but no husband, free child care, etc., etc.. The victims who receive these benefits become entitled to having them because of their victimhood, all in the name of giving them equity of outcome approaching the success of those who worked hard, applied themselves, developed skill and character and responsibility, etc.. In their mind they didn't succeed because of an unfair system which was stacked against them, and those that did succeed did so not because of merit and individual exceptionalism. Ultimately this belief justifies violence against the perceived institutions and oppressors. In a word, it is evil. It is inherently divisive.
Now, for your own edification regarding this nuanced understanding of the Marxist meaning of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, I refer you to Dr. James Lindsay and his YouTube channel called New Discourses. In reference to this discussion he posted a three part series, three years ago, entitled The Marxist Roots of DEI. I highly recommend that you study this material so that you understand the present cultural divide in this country as well as the danger of this philosophy with regards to the future and direction of Furman.