A New Year Message from Dr. Grant Hagiya, Co-President of Claremont School of Theology

As we share news from our Claremont School of Theology, let me express our deep appreciation for Disciples Seminary Foundation. We have enjoyed a long-term collaborative relationship with DSF, and we greatly value the Foundation’s vision and commitment to theological education. A personal thank you to Rev. Dr. Christy Newton and the entire DSF staff. They are great to work with, and their support of CST is overwhelming.

Instead of the usual positive achievements reports, I would like to address our current socio-political situation in our country and how it is profoundly affecting higher education. I am not trying to be overtly political, and I apologize in advance if you are on the other side of this issue. I also own these reflections as my own, and they should not reflect on DSF itself.

I don’t need to remind you of the chaos and poor decisions of the current Presidential administration, or the incompetence of our legislative branch, or the massive polarization of our society and world. I am not speaking from just one side of the political spectrum either, as an objective assessment of leadership would have to conclude that we are experiencing leadership at its worst. For an objective read, please see Barbara Kellerman’s “Bad Leadership,” and you can literally check off her descriptors of bad leadership.

The assault of the Trump administration on higher education is truly shocking. For example, in May, all US schools received the infamous “Dear Colleague letter,” which stated that all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts must stop, or schools will be severely punished. This included LGBTQI initiatives, and later any athletic program that supports transgender athletes. This is a blatant attempt to remake all education in the nation to conform to a radically conservative political ideology. The courts later vacated this initial round of demands from the Department of Education, but subsequent negative actions soon followed. Targeted first were the large and prestigious universities in what appeared to be a coercive effort to force them to conform to a conservative agenda. Major universities such as Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA have been targeted, and their federal research funds have been frozen. Trump and the Department of Justice have demanded nearly $1.2 billion from UCLA, which will affect almost every aspect of the school.

This is contrary to all the fundamental values of our Claremont School of Theology, where diversity and inclusion are part of our inherited DNA. Our new CST values of “Compassion-Justice-and Belonging” are fundamentally opposed to all of Trump’s values of racism, nationalism, and hyper masculinity. At first, the leadership at CST discussed flying under the radar and perhaps removing some of these values from our website. However, we soon realized that it would be impossible to do that. Fundamental to our very being as a school are the values that the Trump world is trying to erase. Instead of complicity, we decided to double down on our radically inclusive values of everyone belonging. We cannot change who we are at our core, and any capitulation would destroy our fundamental identity as a school.

The short-term outcome so far is that our enrollment has increased due to our defiance! We cannot draw the automatic conclusion that student enrollment is growing solely because of our radically inclusive stance, but it is far from hurting our current admissions. We believe our message of “Compassion-Justice-Belonging” resonates with young people and people of faith.

Only time will tell if American higher education will be able to weather the assaults on academic freedom, and in many ways, an assault on reason itself. What does seem clear from our biblical roots is that we prophetically stand up to the powers and principalities of our government and protect the welfare of the most vulnerable among us: the poor, the children, and the immigrant.

Living with Compassion-Justice-Belonging out loud.

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Rev. Dr. Grant Hagiya is the Co-President and Professor of Leadership and Innovation at Claremont School of Theology.