BY HANK REICHMAN

I don’t usually use this blog to direct people to other articles (although I have been known to do so) but today I want to urge my readers to click on this link to go to a remarkable piece published today on The Bulwark about something called the Falkirk Center at Liberty University.  You know, Liberty University — founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. and led by his son, Jerry Jr., until his disgrace last year?  You know, the tax-exempt, non-profit that proudly claims that “all of our courses are taught from a Christian perspective?”

Now, I never thought much of Liberty as an institution of learning (see John Wilson’s terrific takedown from earlier this year on this blog), but apparently at least some of its graduates did not fully absorb the toxic messages its leaders have been preaching.  Some are speaking out.  Specifically, it turns out that as of late December more than 400 Liberty students and graduates had signed a petition demanding the closure of the Falkirk Center, a Liberty-based “think tank” (scare quotes intentional).  One of those students, Calum Best, a co-founder of Save71, an organization devoted to bringing reform to Liberty, from which Best graduated in May 2020, is the author of the Bulwark article.

What, you must by now be asking, is the Falkirk Center.  Well, I’ll let Best describe it:

The Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty is Liberty University’s think tank, launched in 2019 and named after its co-founders: Jerry Falwell Jr., the longtime Liberty University president, recently forced out, and Charlie Kirk, the political activist and founder of Turning Point USA.  If you’re already thinking that a Fal–Kirk partnership sounds like the opposite of a good idea, you’re correct.  Liberty University is the center’s institutional home, providing it with funding, staff, office space, camera equipment, and tax-exempt status for receiving donations.  In return, Falkirk churns out a steady stream of propaganda aimed at convincing Christian conservatives they are oppressed victims in society, church, politics, culture, child-rearing, and every other dimension of life.

Yep, a “think tank” founded by one sleazy huckster infamous for a sex and finance scandal and another well-known grifter infamous for his creation of the Professor Watchlist, a project condemned even by the Charles Koch Foundation, and ridiculously named for both of them to boot.  What does the Falkirk Center do?  Well, here are a few examples from Best’s Bulwark article (but you really should just read the whole thing):

In a recent Falkirk podcast episode, Phill Kline—a former Kansas attorney general and a law professor at Liberty University even though he had his law license suspended in 2013 by the Kansas Supreme Court for a “substantial pattern of misconduct”—shares debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results. . . .

In another two-part episode, John MacArthur, a well-known evangelical pastor who defied California’s coronavirus lockdown, blurts out a near-parodic diatribe against social justice, “cultural Marxism,” critical race theory, and other bogeymen of the right wing.  MacArthur flatly states that “it’s impossible” to believe the gospel and affirm critical race theory, because CRT denies the essential gospel truth of “personal responsibility.”  Of course, this is false: CRT does not deny the gospel, and the gospel is not about “personal responsibility.”  MacArthur also says he does not believe “a real Christian can vote Democratic,” because of the “blasphemous accoutrements” of the party.  (Someone should tell the roughly 40 million self-described Christians who voted for Joe Biden that they aren’t “real” Christians after all.). . .

On January 6, the day of the storming of the U.S. Capitol and the certification of Joe Biden’s election, Falkirk perfunctorily denounced the violence at the Capitol.  But just one day later, the center was still peddling fears of massive voter fraud, saying that the fraud “debate” will be an open question for years to come.  This week, Falkirk is back to its normal stream of reactionary, anger-fomenting content.  On January 13, the center posted a video called “Our Freedoms Are Under Attack.”  One commenter on the Facebook post agrees, and says he will “die fighting” for his freedom.  Where have we seen that language recently? . . .   And now—no surprise—people affiliated with Falkirk are spreading more debunked lies about the Capitol riot having been a false-flag Antifa operation.  This despite the fact that a Falkirk “ambassador” was arrested for her part in it.

As for Falkirk’s academic credibility, well, here are a few more choice passages from the article:

A Liberty University spokesman provided the best example of Falkirk’s indifference to intellectual quality when he responded to Falkirk’s critics by saying that the center, which he absurdly described as an “academic think tank,” has “received hundreds of supportive emails.”  Defending a think tank by pointing to supportive emails is not the action of an institution that seriously cares about its integrity—but then again, the Falkirk Center is less a think tank than a loose collection of agitators and wannabe Ben Shapiros. . . .

Liberty’s spokesman tells us that the university’s board of trustees has “unanimously endorsed” the Falkirk Center and has received “detailed reports on its activities” for the last years.  Of course, this is the same board that supposedly received detailed reports about Falwell’s behavior for years.

Back in November I suggested that Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, home of “herd immunity” advocate and erstwhile Trump pandemic adviser Scott Atlas, might well be an example of the sort of “proprietary institution” that the AAUP’s founders had in 1915 described as institutions whose “purpose is not to advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial investigators, but rather to subsidize the promotion of opinions held by the persons, usually not of the scholar’s calling, who provide the funds for their maintenance.”  But I do wonder if those founders could have imagined that one proprietary institution, Liberty, would today host another, the Falkirk Center, whose brazen partisanship and contempt for truth (and faith!) are so extreme as to lead at least one alum to describe it as “just another right-wing slime factory.”

But, really, read the whole article, “The Falkirk Center: Liberty University’s Slime Factory.”  It’s simultaneously terrifying and hilarious.