Welcome to our February newsletter.
The Furman Free Speech Alliance is a group of alumni, parents, and friends concerned about Furman University’s deteriorating campus climate for free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.
Each month, we update you on what’s happening at Furman and what actions we’re taking to defend free speech on campus.
Looking Back:
In 2022, two of Furman’s best professors, Drs. Ben and Jenna Storey, left their posts in Furman’s Politics and International Affairs department to become fellows in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. It was a major loss for the university.
The Storeys were excellent teachers, sage advisors, and beloved by many of their students. They were also founders and directors of the Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society, which was (and is) one of Furman’s most spirited intellectual communities. Every year, its flagship Tocqueville Fellows program brought students from all corners of the political spectrum together to read great books and discuss some of history’s most serious philosophical questions.
You may have heard of the Tocqueville Program before because of its popular lecture series, which consistently brings some of the country’s best and brightest to campus. It was the Tocqueville lecture series, for example, that brought renowned author Mary Eberstadt to campus before the threat of student protestors—who tore down flyers for the event and suggested that Eberstadt was a fascist—led her to cancel her trip and pen a piece in the Wall Street Journal indicting Furman’s campus culture.
It has been almost three years since the Storeys moved to Washington, and still, Furman has not hired new faculty to fill their shoes. Why? The answer is simple: Furman is struggling to attract and hire qualified faculty committed to liberal arts education. This is a negative reflection on the entire administration, and this failure seriously affects the student experience at Furman.
Take the Tocqueville Fellows program that the Storeys used to lead. It is now being directed by the experienced Dr. Brent Nelsen, who has done an excellent job organizing an impressive lecture series for the 2024-25 school year. However, Furman’s failure to hire professors to replace the Storeys has started causing essential components of the program to fall by the wayside.
The most obvious example is coursework. The Tocqueville Program used to require students to take several political philosophy courses to be considered fellows. These courses helped students engage more deeply with the material and with one another. They also helped students ask better questions of outside speakers. In many ways, these courses were the heart of the whole program.
But coursework like this simply isn’t possible without professors—professors that Furman has been unwilling or unable to hire. Of course, this neglect of the Tocqueville Program hasn’t stopped the university from touting it to donors, parents, potential students, and alumni.
There is no better example of Furman pretending to value programs that promote open discourse and intellectual rigor while failing to provide the resources to make those programs possible.
This is an unacceptable situation. There is no excuse for Furman to go another year without hiring new professors to replace the Storeys.
One Stat You Should Know:
As of 2022, Furman University received $7.91M in grants and contracts from the federal government. Many of these grants are now in jeopardy because of new anti-DEI executive orders from the Trump administration
Looking Ahead:
The aforementioned Tocqueville Program is hosting a lecture on the American family later this month that could prove to be the most contentious event on campus since Furman students protested Scott Yenor and ran off Mary Eberstadt in Spring 2023.
The lecture, which will take place on February 12, will feature Melissa Kearney, a distinguished economist from Maryland University, and Brad Wilcox, a well-known sociology professor from the University of Virginia who also leads the National Marriage Project. Both are eminently qualified and top experts in their fields.
Wilcox, however, is a Catholic and holds a traditional view of marriage, much like Mary Eberstadt. His latest book, “Get Married,” unapologetically calls for young Americans to get married. He is a proponent of the success sequence, which posits that Americans who graduate high school, get a full-time job, and have children after marriage are less likely to be poor. He also contributed to a 2012 study that found that “young-adult children of parents who have had same-sex relationships are more likely to suffer from a range of emotional and social problems.”
None of this should be disqualifying, of course. In fact, it should be encouraging that Furman is hosting high-caliber speakers from across the political spectrum.
But in 2023, many Furman students, particularly those in Young Democratic Socialists of America, found beliefs like these so offensive that their protests pushed Furman into the national spotlight, and not in a good way.
Will the same thing happen this month? Only time will tell, but we have already heard rumblings that some students plan to protest the event. We hope they won’t. But if they do, it gives Furman’s administration a golden opportunity to show the country that they’ve learned their lesson by enforcing common-sense rules and making sure that a few radical students don’t prevent others from having the chance to learn.
In the Network:
In an attempt to avoid scrutiny from the Trump administration, the University of Colorado renamed its diversity, equity, and inclusion office to the “Office of Collaboration.”
Expect more sneaky moves like this from colleges as they try to navigate changes coming from Washington.
Washington's ban on federal funding going to DEI-related programs is obviously going to mean big changes for universities - but is it clear what's precisely entailed in doing away with DEI? Does FFSA have a list of specific changes that would be needed at Furman to end the privileged status of DEI as a university orthodoxy, without infringing on academic freedom?