While I am fearful of spreading false rumors, I am also mindful that where there is smoke, there is some fire somewhere. So I would pass onto you cautiously this information.
A CUWAA faculty member, Dr. Gregory Schulz, wrote this piece charging that a woke agenda was at work at CUW and specifically in the election of a president. You can read his words published by Christian News (a publication with a reputation that some might believe is good cause for dismissing this). CUW has a Diversity Guide, that is without dispute. You can read it for yourself and make your own judgment as to its content.
Acting President Dr. William Cario believes that this is an attack on CUW and it appears his administration has suspended Dr. Schulz for his article. This is the response of Dr. Cario:
I will admit that the Regents can often feel like they are between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand they have the realities of an educational system that has thoroughly invested in the woke agenda and the goals of diversity and inclusivity and which is in charge of credentialing the university. On the other hand, they act not simply as representatives invested in the university but as fiduciary guardians of a campus and program that belongs to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and must abide by the confession, doctrine, and practice of that Synod. As I have noted often here, that culture outside the university and the responsibility to be a Lutheran university are increasingly at odds. Furthermore, the language of our woke culture and its cause for diversity and inclusivity are cloaked weasel words that often mean something different to those within the system than they do to those not schooled in the language and vocabulary of the woke culture.
When the university's own “demonstrated belief in and commitment to equity and inclusion” promotes racialized “diversity in all its myriad forms” and the deception of a gender fluid culture defined by self-affirmation and feelings, it may become impossible to find the delicate line in the middle. I feel for those in charge and yet I am fearful that the pressures from the outside might by so great that our universities will find it hard -- perhaps even impossible -- to retain their Lutheran confession and identity without surrendering some of the things that they have cultivated and enjoyed in their pursuit of success. If that is the case, they are not alone in having to sacrifice earthly success in order to remain faithful....
Stay tuned for more. . . .
2 comments:
Regarding the four points CUW Interim President William Cario made in his February 18, 2022, email about the CN article:
1. A red herring. Neither Prof. Schulz nor Christian News claimed it was an official publication of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
2. Prof. Schulz's article is his opinion about the Woke stance of the university.
3. Prof. Schulz's quotes showing that CUW seeks a president with Wokeness are taken from CUW's own "Presidential Prospectus." If there are claimed factual errors (other than misspelling or grammatical errors), Cario doesn't provide any evidence to substantiate such a claim.
4. One of the main points of Prof. Schulz's article is that it is the systemic Woke-ism at CUW that is divisive for Lutheran students, faculty, and supporters of CUW. From the information provided in We Love the Concordias Facebook site, such systemic Woke-ism is significantly substantiated.
BTW, the more readable image of the text is attached to a February 21, 2022, YouTube video, "Dr. William Cario Refuses to Comment on His Suspension of Dr. Gregory Schulz without Due Process," following a question from Rev. Dr. Roy Peterson, President of the Concordia University Wisconsin Foundation.
A Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty announcement, "WILL announces settlement involving Professor suspended for criticizing woke policies at Concordia University," stated in part:
"The terms of the settlement agreement are confidential, but they resolve Dr. Schulz’s employment dispute with CUW. Both WILL and Dr. Schulz are satisfied with the settlement agreement.
"Dr. Schulz is now retired from CUW as a professor but will continue to serve the Church faithfully elsewhere. He recently published a new book, Anatomy of an Implosion, diagnosing the woke virus that now infects much of higher education, and completed a teaching stint in Nairobi, Kenya, with Lutherans in Africa.
"Dr. Schulz commented, 'It is my hope that Concordia’s senior administrators, regents, and church body supervisors will heed the moral and legal warnings of my WILL attorney published in the opening pages of my most recent book, Anatomy of an Implosion, and the warnings they have received from national groups such as FIRE and AFA. My prayer is that they would, even at this late hour, show the moral integrity and religious fortitude required of any institution worthy of the names Lutheran and university (1) by embracing academic freedom for CUW’s dwindling faculty at its Ann Arbor and Mequon campuses; (2) by honoring professors’ contracts; and (3) by unequivocally rejecting and condemning in their words and deeds all woke Marxist/DEI/racial and social justice programs and aspirations in our schools and universities.'”
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