Tag Archives ⇒ unfortunately

Earlham College’s woes

October 22, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Chris Hardie has writ­ten a very infor­ma­tive piece about what’s hap­pen­ing at Earl­ham Col­lege, the beloved Quak­er school out in Rich­mond, Indi­ana. The news is pret­ty grim. Take this dev­as­tat­ing detail: “In 2007, Earl­ham had over 1,200 under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. This fall, that num­ber was 671. The col­lege has most­ly retained the same num­ber of teach­ing fac­ul­ty in that time…”

This has been hap­pen­ing for awhile. Then-dean of Earl­ham School of Reli­gion Matt His­rich warned us about some of this back in late 2020 when he revealed that Earl­ham Col­lege was raid­ing what had always been treat­ed as ESR’s endow­ment. By all accounts the cur­rent EC pres­i­dent is doing his best after inher­it­ing a mess but cut­ting pro­grams and reduc­ing staff isn’t goin to help turn it around.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this spi­ral is becom­ing ever more com­mon with small lib­er­al arts col­leges. The pan­dem­ic hit hard and a cur­rent drop in stu­dents (a baby bust that start­ed in the 2008 reces­sion) is just going to make things that much hard­er for these kinds of schools.

I appre­ci­ate Hardie writ­ing this. Back in 2013 I got to know him as a fel­low pan­elist at an ESR lead­er­ship con­fer­ence and we’ve kept in touch over the years. In recent years he’s been on a task almost as quixot­ic as sav­ing small col­leges: he bought a paper, the West­ern Wayne News (pub­lish­er of this arti­cle), and has been try­ing to build a mod­el of a sus­tain­able local paper. I shared his great man­i­festo in defense of the open inter­net a few years ago and try to keep up with his blog. I’m glad to see Friends are shar­ing today’s arti­cle pret­ty wide­ly on Facebook.

Earl­ham Col­lege has long been an invalu­able part of the Quak­er insti­tu­tion­al land­scape and Earl­ham School of Reli­gion fills a need that no oth­er school comes close to. See­ing these on the edge is wor­ri­some for the whole Soci­ety of Friends. Guil­ford Col­lege in North Car­oli­na has been hav­ing a rough go of it as well, though cham­pi­ons like my friend Wess Daniels have been pas­sion­ate at drum­ming up sup­port.

Earlham hopes big cuts foster long-term survival - Western Wayne News
Earl­ham hopes big cuts fos­ter long-term sur­vival — West­ern Wayne News 

Hop­ing to con­tin­ue its acclaimed lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion offer­ings well into the future, Earl­ham Col­lege in Rich­mond is…

Western Wayne News West­ern Wayne News 

Wait, a new Quaker blog, what retroness is this?

February 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

And just as we’re talk­ing about the con­tin­ued down­ward entropy of blog­ging, here’s a new Quak­er blog. Isaac Smith of Fred­er­ick (Md.) Meet­ing (and Twit­ter) has the first post in a time-limited, “pop-up” blog. He’s call­ing it “The Anar­chy of the Ranters.” I’ll over­look the sim­i­lar­i­ty to this blog’s name in the hope that the peo­ple who have been drop­ping com­ments on mine since 2004 ask­ing about the dif­fer­ence between Quak­ers and Ranters will start both­er­ing him now.

The first post is “Defen­sive­ness as a The­o­log­i­cal Prob­lem for Friends,” a good blog­ging debut.

The ques­tion of who belongs in the church, which has always been of cen­tral impor­tance, is what’s at stake here, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is often being answered in ways that are hurt­ful and alien­at­ing — the oppo­site of what the gospel promises.

Collaring the Peacniks in Iowa

February 11, 2004
· Martin Kelley

It’s get­ting “scary in Amerikkka when they start round­ing up peaceniks in Iowa”:www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/national/10PROT.html
bq. To hear the anti­war pro­test­ers describe it, their forum at a local uni­ver­si­ty last fall was like so many oth­ers they had held over the years. They talked about the non­vi­o­lent philoso­phies of Mahat­ma Gand­hi and the Rev. Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to con­vey their feel­ings about iraq into acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. But last week, sub­poe­nas began arriv­ing seek­ing details about the forum’s spon­sor — its lead­er­ship list, its annu­al reports, its office loca­tion –and the event itself.
Mild-mannered pro­test­ers wear­ing 1980s-style Guatemalan cloth­ing, talk­ing about Gand­hi and climb­ing the fences of Nation­al Guard bases are not a threat to state of Iowa. But this kind of strong-arm tac­tic is a clear threat free speech and a clear act of intim­i­da­tion to those who might join the peace move­ment. How sad. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I know lots of peo­ple who are already afraid to speak out to loud­ly – this will silence at least some of them.
Of course, it’s hard to get too worked up about Iowa sub­poe­nas, when much more seri­ous civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been going on since the start of the Afghanistan War. The “pris­on­ers of war” down in the Amer­i­can base at “Guan­tanamo Bay have been held with­out charge or tri­al for two years now”:http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng.