Johan Mau­r­er has a good run-down at con­tro­ver­sies brew­ing at Earl­ham School of Reli­gion. I’m very wor­ried about it. I’ve known the sud­den­ly oust­ed dean Matt His­rich for years through blogs, Twit­ter, and a face-to-face hand­shake or two and I read his hon­est memo to staff last week. He’s always impressed me as impas­sioned, fun­ny, and full of integri­ty. His memo was con­cern­ing but seemed well-reasoned and fair. The larg­er com­mu­ni­ty should know what’s going on. That Earl­ham Col­lege took half of ESR’s endow­ment is a very wor­ri­some development.

Guil­ford Col­lege in North Car­oli­na has been going through sim­i­lar tri­als. Its new pres­i­dent has pro­posed dra­con­ian cuts across major lib­er­al arts depart­ments that would evis­cer­ate the school and its Quak­er her­itage. A huge out­cry from alums has been orga­nized at Saveg​uil​ford​col​lege​.com. Guil­ford’s board vot­ed on the pro­pos­al this week and decid­ed to step back from this plan and study it some more but the future of the col­lege is still very cloudy.

Many Friends who are pas­sion­ate about the future of our reli­gious soci­ety end up at places like Earl­ham, ESR, and Guil­ford and they come out now just with degrees, but with skills to help fash­ion that future. Grad­u­ates of these schools are over-represented in the mate­r­i­al Friends Jour­nal pub­lish­es. If some­thing hap­pened to these insti­tu­tions it would be a hard blow to the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends¹.  What hap­pens to them should be of con­cern to all of us. And what is hap­pen­ing should be transparent.

1. Grant­ed, out­siders brought in as slash-it-all admin­is­tra­tors fix­ing a bud­get free-fall might not care one iota about a few grad­u­ates’ con­tri­bu­tions to the his­toric denom­i­na­tion of the school. It’s not the school’s main mis­sion and choice do some­times have to be made. But much of the mon­ey they’re shift­ing around came from Friends invest­ing in the future of the RSOF.