Former Regent University professors have some stories to tell about Cornerstone University’s new president

On the day before Gerson Moreno-Riaño’s inauguration as president of Cornerstone University the faculty voted no confidence in him. (Read the faculty letter to the Board of Trustees here). The university went ahead with the inauguration almost as if the faculty vote never happened.

Perhaps the Cornerstone presidential search committee should have talked with a few former professors at Regent University. Here is a taste of Kathryn Post’s piece at Religion News Service:

In March 2012, Katy Attanasi, then an assistant professor of religion at Regent University in Virginia, was at home feeding her newborn son when she heard a knock at the door. On her stoop, she found a snow-dusted FedEx envelope from the university. Inside was a letter informing her that her faculty contract would not be renewed. 

Attanasi, now a Methodist pastor in Kentucky, was one of eight faculty to receive a Fed-Exed termination letter that semester. Hers was signed by Gerson Moreno-Riaño, dean of Regent’s School of Undergraduate Studies. No warning had been given and no explanation followed. 

“We didn’t have anything else lined up, and my husband had just had surgery,” said Attanasi. “We were looking at a future with a baby with a preexisting condition and no health insurance. It was a very frightening time.”

Scouring the faculty handbook, Attanasi found that as a tenure-track faculty member, she was guaranteed a terminal year contract, which she argued for and completed in 2013. Since then, former Regent employees claim, at least 39 others — administrators, faculty and staff — were also let go as Moreno-Riaño rose to executive vice president for academic affairs.

Those who were terminated were often seen as “going against the conservative evangelical grain of the university,” according to Walter Staggs, a former writing center director at Regent.

“It was traumatic for everybody,” said another former Regent staffer. 

Regent spokesperson Chris Roslan said that “Regent has not had any ‘faculty purges,’” adding that the university had ended “underperforming programs” and as a result a “small number of faculty” were “not renewed at the end of their contracts.” 

Last May, Moreno-Riaño was appointed as the 12^th president of Cornerstone University, a small, Christian liberal arts school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The day before his formal installation in October, Cornerstone’s faculty voted no confidence in his ability to lead as president, citing a culture of “fear and suspicion” and the last-minute departures of at least eight faculty and staff. 

Attanasi and some of her former colleagues at Regent called the pattern at Cornerstone eerily familiar.

The events at Cornerstone and Regent are bigger than any one administrator. Politics have exerted a strong influence on Christian schools in recent years, said Scot McKnight, a Cornerstone alumni and now professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois.

“There is a polarization in Christian education today that lines up too neatly with partisan politics,” said McKnight. “Many of these schools are now making decisions about which partisan group they are going to align themselves with, which turns an institution away from critical thinking and toward partisan politics.”

Attanasi compared the targeting of certain Regent professors to dismissals at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, after the school’s then-president, Jerry Falwell Jr., championed Donald Trump’s White House run in 2016 and invited him to campus. (Trump also held a campaign rally at Regent and was later interviewed there by its founder, Christian media executive and star Pat Robertson.) Liberty also saw a dramatic drop in Black students under Falwell.

“I unfortunately see the reality of this institution becoming like the next Liberty University,” said one Cornerstone employee, “where students of color are slowly but surely eked out. Or they just know they are going to continue to face what Christians do, which is racism.” 

Cornerstone has not commented directly on its faculty’s no-confidence vote, but an email sent to faculty on Nov. 19 affirmed the board’s commitment to “Biblical diversity and inclusion” and promised both “mission-centric hiring and retention of diverse faculty and staff.” (All of the terminated Cornerstone employees were said to be involved in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.) 

In a Nov. 22 email to Religion News Service, Carole Bos, chair of Cornerstone’s board of trustees, wrote, “Our board of trustees has been very appreciative of those who have raised concerns and offered ideas on how we may continue to best fulfill our mission. Moving forward with President Gerson Moreno-Riano, the board remains committed to our Cornerstone Identity, Mission and Vision.”

But the atmosphere at the school remains unsettled. Deja Terhune, a senior secondary English education major at Cornerstone, said she hadn’t received any information about the faculty and staff who have departed. “There is no transparency at all. No one is saying anything, everything is very secretive at the moment,” she said.

Some students of color have spoken out about what they view as the president’s distaste for diversity programs.

Read the entire piece here.