Samford, home to 12,000 students, is located in Homewood, Alabama. The 250-acre campus traces its roots to the 1840s, when it was founded by Alabama Baptists as Howard College.
A revealing story by The College Fix describes how Beck Taylor, Samford’s president, lashed out recently at local news outlet 1819 News for several stories that pounded away at the university’s embrace of left-wing activism. One story criticized a Stamford professor’s academic paper called “’Hot Girl Teaching’ in a Faith-Based Environment.”
A second story criticized the university for hosting two anti-Trump faculty sessions, with no one invited to defend the 47th president, after President Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
A third article, which seemed to get the most attention at 1819 News, criticized Samford for its “Diversity Action Plan” that promises to incorporate “racial justice” into its “core curriculum.”
The 19-page Samford Diversity Action Plan, found online by AFN, has a total of 59 “action items” in all that address race and racism in some way, including in athletics, Greek life, and in classroom curriculum.
DEI makes Bible bend to culture
Asked about Stamford’s liberal stance, Christian apologist Alex McFarland says words such as “inclusive” and “diversity” are not based on biblical standards, such as demanding equality and mutual respect. It is
“Generally, as the woke world demands it,” he tells AFN, “inclusion and equity and diversity mean that God's written revelation, the Bible, must bend to DEI demands, rather than the whims of culture bending and ameliorating themselves to God's revealed truth."
Reacting to the critical 1819 articles, President Taylor called them “despicable and wrong” in a recent private speech to faculty members.
The College Fix obtained audio of his speech in which Taylor attempted to describe the motivation behind the articles. The 1819 website, he said, wants to “stir the pot” on the campus because Stamford is discussing “racism and sexism” in the culture, which seemed to be a refence to the DEI Action Plan.
The articles that are criticizing Stamford, he continued, are accusing the university of violating “some newly imagined social contract that magically eliminates the need to continue to educate students on important elements of our history and of our current lived experience.”
A core tenet behind DEI ideology, however, is more than a study of U.S. history. DEI's related ideology, Critical Race Theory, suggests white people are naturally racist today and are still attempting to keep a white power structure in place.
That white power structure must first be recognized by white people, CRT argues, which is referred to "wokeness," and then it can been dismantled through DEI initiatives.
Critical Race Theory borrows its anti-white theme from Critical Theory, a Marxist theory that viewed the wealthy as oppressors of the poor.
In his speech to faculty, President Taylor concluded by vowing the campus will keep "biblical justice as part of its educational mission even if some struggle to reconcile that with their own beliefs."
