{"id":2041,"date":"2006-05-15T22:33:42","date_gmt":"2006-05-15T22:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/give-me-liberty.html"},"modified":"2006-05-15T22:33:42","modified_gmt":"2006-05-15T22:33:42","slug":"give-me-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/give-me-liberty.html","title":{"rendered":"Give me liberty…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christianity Today reports on big troubles at Patrick Henry College, <\/a>the small liberal arts college founded in 2000, with homeschooled young people as its intended demographic. At the center of the controversy is Michael Farris, well-known as an attorney deeply involved in defending the rights of homeschooling families, and the president of the college (soon to be chancellor). 5 of 16 faculty members are leaving.<\/p>\n

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Michael Farris, a constitutional lawyer and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, founded the school in 2000 as a "Christian college blending classical instruction with apprenticeship methodology." It prides itself on the high number of White House internships secured by its students, whose SAT scores average over 1300.<\/p>\n

"We were brought here on false pretenses," said David Noe, assistant professor of classics who has taught at Patrick Henry since its founding. "We are leaving due to a long train of abuses by Farris in violating both academic freedom and due process, as well as many other issues relating to Farris’s running of the college."<\/p>\n

Departing professors also cite Farris’s treatment of government instructor Erik Root and his March firing of Robert Stacey, the chairman of the college’s department of government, as additional reasons that confirmed their decisions to leave the 350-student college.<\/p>\n

Noe, Root, and rhetoric and theology professor Todd Bates agreed to go public with Christianity Today<\/em> earlier this month, they said, after Farris repeatedly denied their requests to respond to accusations that beliefs they had expressed were biblically unsound. "Farris said that we threatened the college’s fidelity to its mission and vision," said Noe. "He spoke to the press, but told us we couldn’t."<\/p>\n

Farris did not respond to multiple requests by CT<\/em> for an interview, but told The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em> that he wonders why the professors are still leaving now that he is no longer president. "If I’m the problem\u2014well, I’m going to be gone," he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christianity Today reports on big troubles at Patrick Henry College, the small liberal arts college founded in 2000, with homeschooled young people as its intended demographic. At the center of the controversy is Michael Farris, well-known as an attorney deeply involved in defending the rights of homeschooling families, and the president of the college (soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGive me liberty... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/give-me-liberty.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Give me liberty... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Christianity Today reports on big troubles at Patrick Henry College, the small liberal arts college founded in 2000, with homeschooled young people as its intended demographic. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}