The Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard are Christian universities’ “worst nightmare,” according to retired Christian university sociology professor John Hawthorne.
What Trump and his allies are doing in demanding radical changes from Harvard could establish a precedent that could be used on other institutions, according to the former chair of the department of sociology, global studies and criminal justice at Spring Arbor University. Hawthorne also taught at Olivet Nazarene University, Sterling College, Warner Pacific College and Point Loma Nazarene University. He is considered an expert on the nature of Christian higher education.
John Hawthorne
In his April 21 Substack, Hawthorne warns that conservatives who cheer Trump’s actions against Harvard could set themselves up for the very thing they’ve always feared most — government mandates about how they operate.
He recounts the administration’s multiple demands of Harvard related to ending DEI — making more space for conservative students while submitting to government monitoring — and Trump’s threat to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
On the same day Hawthorne wrote, Harvard sued the Trump administration to stop it from freezing $2 billion in research grants.
Earlier, Hawthorne had posted this message on Facebook:
For my whole career, I heard Christian university administrators fear that the federal government would require them to change LGBTQ policies or open up hiring or mandate that they teach particular topics. This is potentially becoming a real thing at Harvard. Has anyone heard the CCCU or the NAE or Christianity Today or any Christian university media shop speak out about these threats? I’m interested in tracking the response.
In his book The Fearless Christian University, Hawthorne cites two accounts of earlier concerns that government would target Christian schools because they held to “traditional Christian values.”
“One story involves what happened to Gordon College 10 years ago when the then-president signed a letter asking for religious exemptions on LGBTQ issues. A number of local partners stopped working with Gordon, and conservative commentators were sure that they were going to lose their accreditation.
“The other story involves the College of the Ozarks filing suit against the Biden administration over changes to Housing and Urban Development rules about homosexual or transgender discrimination in light of the 2020 Bostock decision. There was nothing in the decision that related to Christian universities and no circumstance where HUD policy would every relate to residence halls.”
Hawthorne says he “downplayed these fears as being impractical” in the book because he knew government had limited power and “wouldn’t punish institutions for following their missional commitments.”
He then adds: “But what has happened to Harvard over the last two weeks has made clear that an administration unbounded by norms or regular protocol could do exactly what Christian universities have long feared.
“What would it mean if future presidential administrations demanded ‘viewpoint diversity’ at Christian universities? Could they require a certain number of agnostic faculty members so that students have a broader educational experience? Could they require those schools to teach evolution as fact? Could they eliminate hiring statements designed to support institutional fit? Could they mandate LGBTQ clubs on all campuses and the expulsion of any student who used hate language in response?”
In other words, what one administration is able to demand of private schools could become poison for other private schools under a different administration.
Two weeks after his Facebook post, Hawthorne says, he’s still waiting for anyone — any Christian universities or parachurch organizations — to speak out about the threats to Harvard. “So far I’ve got nothing but crickets,” he reports.
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