The obscene president of Liberty University deleted a tweet Monday showing one person in a black face and another in a Ku Klux Klan hall and cloak, after black alumni and religious leaders spoke out against it and its “inflammatory rhetoric” in recent years.
That tweet, Falwell said, was intended to “remind everyone of the governor’s racist past.”
Instead, it encouraged an open letter from black Christian leaders and alumni. She also encouraged her resignation: online instructor and pastor of the University of Liberty
Christopher House resigned after seeing the tweet. The house, which is black, is also an
associate professor at Ithaca College.
A group of 35 black shepherds, heads of ministries and former student athletes of Liberty University
this month he sent to Falwell asking him to “stop this infantile behavior,” citing a tweet as the latest example.
“While your tweet may have been joking about the Governor of Virginia, he shed light on our painful history of slavery and racism of our nation,” the letter said. “A hooded and hooded mascara tweet may seem ridiculous to you, but this tweet is the work of a political commentator or activist and is neither appropriate nor acceptable for the leader of one of the largest evangelical Christian schools in the world.”
In response, Falwell said Monday that he realized he had “refreshed the trauma caused by that image and insulted some by using the image to create a political stance.”
“Based on our long relationships, they uniformly realized it wasn’t my intention, but because it was the result, I deleted the tweet and apologize for hurting my hard work, especially within the African-American community.”
he tweeted. Petition Change.org encouraged alumni, faculty, academics, and parents at large to sign if they agreed with the message. So far, nearly 40,000 people have signed up.
About 85,586 students attend Evangelical Christian University in Lynchburg, Virginia
Virginia State Council for Higher Education, Approximately 4,500 of these black students – less than 10% of the student body.
Falwell’s recent coronavirus controversy
Falwell, a vocal advocate for President Donald Trump, has led a lot of controversy since the late, mostly over the coronavirus. In an interview with Fox News in March, he said people were “overreacting” to the pandemic.
When Liberty University reopened to 1,000 students in late March, with instructions from government officials and disease control and prevention centers, Falwell said concerns about students returning to campus had overcome.
And in April, a lawsuit against the university claimed it had benefited from the coronavirus crisis by reducing campus services but not returning tuition fees for those services.
