(RNS) — Grove City College insists it’s not “going woke.” A new report from the conservative Christian college in Pennsylvania denounced school-sponsored courses and trainings they say promoted “CRT concepts” and characterized inviting historian Jemar Tisby to speak at a 2020 chapel service as a “mistake.”
“Grove City College has not changed,” a committee composed largely of Grove City board members said in the report released last week. “It remains a Christ-centered, conservative institution.”
The report, a product of the committee’s assignment to ascertain any “mission drift” at the college, recommends re-adding the word “conservative” to the school’s mission statement after it was removed in 2021 and lists “remedial actions” to curb the promotion of critical race theory at the school. These actions include replacing an education course accused of promoting “pop-CRT,” rebranding the school’s Office of Multicultural Education and Initiatives and exercising increased scrutiny of guest speakers and student trainings.
Tisby, The New York Times bestselling author of “The Color of Compromise” and “How to Fight Racism,” told Religion News Service the report uses CRT as “a junk drawer for anything about race or justice that makes a certain type of person feel uncomfortable.” Because of the rhetoric around CRT, he said, “much needed conversations about racial justice are being muted in the environments where they are needed most, such as Christian colleges and universities.”
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Others found the report encouraging. Megan Basham, an author at conservative news outlet The Daily Wire, tweeted that it offered a “straight-forward, honest assessment,” and said she appreciated its clarifying description of how CRT is incompatible with the school’s mission. “Well worth reading the entire report. Bravo!”
Matt Kennedy, rector at an Anglican church in Binghamton, New York, and his wife Anne Carlson Kennedy praised the report on their podcast.
“The best part of it is the description of critical race theory upfront, which is just one of the best short summaries of the problems of critical race theory I’ve ever read,” said Matt Kennedy.
The report says critical race theory is incompatible with the school’s vision, mission and values because it evaluates people based on their race and antiracist works, can’t be separated from political activism, “uncharitably detects aggression where none is intended” and sometimes “demeans rational argument as itself racist and oppressive.”
The school, which has just 2,400 full-time students, was first accused of promoting critical race theory, an academic framework that sees racism as embedded in institutions and policies, in a November petition authored by Grove City parents and alumni. The petition alleged that this “destructive and profoundly unbiblical worldview” was asserted at the college in a fall 2020 chapel presentation by Tisby.
