Some Liberty University Grads Are Returning Their Diplomas To Protest Trump

President Trump poses with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., during commencement at Liberty University May 13 in Lynchburg, Va.

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President Trump poses with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., during commencement at Liberty University May 13 in Lynchburg, Va.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

A group of alumni from one of the country’s most influential evangelical Christian universities is condemning their school’s president for his continued alignment with President Trump.

A small but growing number of Liberty University graduates are preparing to return diplomas to their school. The graduates are protesting university President Jerry Falwell Jr.’s ongoing support for Trump. They began organizing after Trump’s divisive remarks about the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va.

Chris Gaumer, a former Student Government Association president and 2006 graduate, said it was a simple decision.

“I’m sending my diploma back because the president of the United States is defending Nazis and white supremacists,” Gaumer said. “And in defending the president’s comments, Jerry Falwell Jr. is making himself and, it seems to me, the university he represents, complicit.”

Liberty graduate Chris Gaumer said that “Jerry Falwell Jr. is making himself and, it seems to me, the university he represents, complicit,” with President Trump’s comments about white supremacists.

Courtesy of Chris Gaumer

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Courtesy of Chris Gaumer

Liberty graduate Chris Gaumer said that “Jerry Falwell Jr. is making himself and, it seems to me, the university he represents, complicit,” with President Trump’s comments about white supremacists.

Courtesy of Chris Gaumer

Trump has been criticized — including by many Republicans — for a series of statements after an anti-racist counterprotester was killed by an alleged Nazi sympathizer who drove his car into the crowd.

Trump initially responded by blaming “many sides” for the violence, and then made a statement condemning white supremacists, before eventually giving an off-the-cuff statement in which he claimed that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Falwell responded the next day with a tweet praising Trump’s statement and adding, “So proud of @realdonaldtrump.”

Falwell later followed up with a tweet calling white supremacists, Nazis, and other hate groups “pure evil and un-American.”

In January 2016, Falwell became one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse the billionaire candidate, at a time when many conservative Christian leaders were expressing concern about Trump’s multiple marriages and past support for abortion rights.

Last October, some Liberty students circulated a petition opposing Trump after the release of a 2005 Access Hollywood video where he could be heard bragging about groping women without their consent. Students also criticized Falwell for defending Trump.

Falwell invited Trump to give the first commencement speech of his term as president to Liberty University graduates. During his remarks, President Trump thanked evangelicals for their support at the voting booth last November.

Falwell isn’t alone among his evangelical peers in continuing to stand with the president. In recent days, multiple members of Trump’s evangelical advisory board have publicly condemned white supremacy, though most have stopped short of criticizing the president by name.

A university spokesman told NPR that Falwell “wants to make it clear that he considers all hate groups evil and condemns them in every sense of the word.”

In a group letter being prepared to be sent to university officials, several alumni declare their intention to return their diplomas and call for Falwell to repudiate Trump’s remarks:

“While this state of affairs has been in place for many months, the Chancellor’s recent comments on the attack upon our neighbors in Charlottesville have brought our outrage and our sorrow to a boiling point. During the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, white supremacists, nationalists, and neo-Nazis perpetrated brutal violence against anti-racist protesters, murdering one woman and injuring many. Instead of condemning racist and white nationalist ideologies, Mr. Trump provided equivocal and contradictory comments. The Chancellor then characterized Mr. Trump’s remarks, which included the claim that some of the persons marching as white nationalists and white supremacists at the rally were ‘very fine people,’ as ‘bold’ and ‘truthful.’ This is incompatible with Liberty University’s stated values, and incompatible with a Christian witness.”

“We’re asking that Liberty University return to its stated values and accept that the pursuit of power is leading it into some dark places, and really repudiate that,” said Georgia Hamann.

Courtesy of Georgia Hamann

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Courtesy of Georgia Hamann

Georgia Hamann, a 2006 alumna and an attorney in Phoenix, Ariz., helped pen the letter.

“We’re asking that Liberty University return to its stated values and accept that the pursuit of power is leading it into some dark places, and really repudiate that,” she said. “The word in Baptist and evangelical circles is ‘repent.’… You know, truly a turning away from wrong conduct.”

Alumni who can’t find their diplomas are being asked to sign the group letter or write individual letters to Falwell expressing their concerns.

Some Liberty graduates see Falwell’s association with Trump as both a personal liability and a moral embarrassment. Rebekah Tilley graduated from Liberty in 2002 and now works in higher education in Iowa.

“I was to the point where I didn’t even want to include my alma mater on my resume when I was applying for jobs, just because I think that can be so loaded,” Tilley said. “There’s such a strong affiliation now between Liberty University and President Trump that you know that reflects badly on all alumni.”

For Doug Johnson Hatlem, a 1999 graduate who now works as a Mennonite pastor in Ontario, Canada, Charlottesville feels like a tipping point for many alumni who have been concerned about the university’s association with Trump.

“It really is a watershed moment to have people openly chanting Nazi chants … holding white supremacist signs, and carrying weapons along with all of that, and killing somebody, injuring many in the process,” he said. “For there not to be an unconditional condemnation of that kind of action and behavior is just completely anathema.”

Johnson Hatlem said returning diplomas is an important symbolic statement.

“I’ll have to have my mom dig it out of storage,” he said. “But I do plan to send back my diploma to Liberty.”

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Back to Bomb Shelters? North Korea Threats Revive Nuke Fears

LOS ANGELES — 

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the era of nuclear nightmares — of the atomic arms race, of backyard bomb shelters, of schoolchildren diving under desks to practice their survival skills in the event of an attack — seemed to finally, thankfully, fade into history.

Until now.

For some baby boomers, North Korea’s nuclear advances and President Donald Trump’s bellicose response have prompted flashbacks to a time when they were young, and when they prayed each night that they might awaken the next morning. For their children, the North Korean crisis was a taste of what the Cold War was like.

“I’m not concerned to where I can’t sleep at night. But it certainly raises alarms for Guam or even Hawaii, where it might be a real threat,” said 24-year-old banker Christian Zwicky of San Bernardino, California.

People of his parents’ generation were taught to duck and cover when the bombs came.

“Maybe those types of drills should come back,” Zwicky said.

He isn’t old enough to remember the popular 1950s public service announcement in which a cartoon character named Bert the Turtle teaches kids how to dive under their desks for safety. But Zwicky did see it often enough in high school history classes that he can hum the catchy tune that plays at the beginning. That’s when Bert avoids disaster by ducking into his shell, then goes on to explain to schoolchildren what they should do.

“I do remember that,” says 65-year-old retiree Scott Paul of Los Angeles. “And also the drop drills that we had in elementary school, which was a pretty regular thing then.”

Even as a 10-year-old, Paul said, he wondered how much good ducking under a desk could do if a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city fell nearby. No good at all, his teacher acknowledged.

Then there were backyard bomb shelters, which briefly became the rage during the missile crisis of 1962, when it was learned the Soviets had slipped nuclear-tipped missiles into Cuba and pointed them at the United States.

After a tense, two-week standoff between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that some believe brought the world the closest it’s ever come to nuclear war, the missiles were removed and the shelters faded from public interest.

Now they, too, seem to be having a revival.

“When Trump took office it doubled our sales, and then when he started making crazy statements we got a lot more orders,” says Walton McCarthy of Norad Shelter Systems LLC of Garland, Texas. “Between now and a year ago, we’ve quadrupled our sales.”

His competitor, California-based Atlas Survival Shelters, says it sold 30 shelters in three days last week. During its first year in business in 2011 it sold only 10.

Bill Miller, a 74-year-old retired film director living in Sherborn, Massachusetts, thinks these days are more nerve-wracking than the standoff in October 1962.

“I think it’s much, much crazier, scarier times,” he said. “I think the people who were in charge in the Kennedy administration had much more of a handle on it.”

Nathan Guerrero, a 22-year-old political science major from Fullerton, California, agrees, saying he learned in history class that the “shining example” of a way to resolve such a conflict was how Kennedy’s brother and attorney general, Robert Kennedy, brokered the tense negotiations.

“But knowing the way the current administration has sort of been carrying itself, it doesn’t look like they are keen to solving things diplomatically,” he said.

“As a young person, honestly, it’s pretty unsettling,” he continued.

Had he given any thought to building a backyard bomb shelter?

“I’d be lying if I said such crazy things haven’t crossed my mind,” he said, laughing nervously. “But in reality it doesn’t strike me as I’d be ready to go shopping for bunkers yet.” Instead, he studies for law school and tries “not to think too much about it.”

Other Americans are more sanguine about the possibility of nuclear war. Rob Stapleton has lived in Anchorage, Alaska, since 1975, and he is aware that Alaska has been considered a possible target because it is within reach of North Korean missiles.

“There’s been some discussion about it around the beer barrel and I’m sure the United States is taking it seriously, but we’re not too concerned around here,” he said.

Alaska is so vast and spread out, said Stapleton, that he and his friends can’t imagine why North Korea would waste its time attacking The Last Frontier.

“I mean sure you’d be making a statement, but you’d not really be doing any damage,” he said.

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