How NOT to Issue a Press Release: Lies, Misleading Statements, and Coverup at Emmanuel Christian Seminary

The scandal at Emmanuel Christian Seminary involving the attempt to (wrongfully) terminate Professor Chris Rollston appears to be much uglier and more mishandled than we first thought.

Thomas Stark, who first broke much of this story on the Religion @ the Margins blog, has posted a new story that at first seems too unlikely to be true. But after reading the story, and more amazingly, viewing the screen shots, it unfortunately appears to be all too real.

Emmanuel President Michael Sweeney apparently asked Thomas Stark to issue a press release for Emmanuel that addressed the Chris Rollston disciplinary action presently underway at Emmanuel. This is, quite frankly, insane! (With all due respect to Thomas Stark and the Religion @ the Margins blog.) Since when does a university president ask a blogger to issue a press statement on the blogger’s blog?  Does the Emmanuel President not own a computer and a website? And how is it that we STILL haven’t heard a single thing from Emmanuel on this issue (outside of Paul Blowers divulging the confidential business of a disciplinary action to the public on Facebook, and then writing an entire article to the B&I website discussing the situation publicly)?

Who taught these guys to deal with press? And who taught them to do damage control? Silence from the Emmanuel administration only further exacerbates the perception that they have committed a grievous crime and STILL haven’t even figured out how to begin to address it. The Emmanuel administration’s complete failure at damage control (i.e., Blowers’ self-serving, and quite unhelpful article at B&I, and nothing else?) and their inability to communicate to the public even an acknowledgment that something is, in fact, going on at Emmanuel, belies just how bad things are there.

(Side note: screaming “mind your own business” and “cheap seats” is not considered effective damage control.)

Not only is Emmanuel missing opportunity after opportunity to address and settle this matter in an expedient manner, now they have apparently taken to attempting to convince bloggers to release “official” statements containing numerous falsehoods on their behalf. That is, they appear to be trying to get bloggers to lie to the public for them. This is absolutely shameful.

Stark’s latest post offers examples of four misleading, incorrect, or false statements in the Emmanuel statement. Here is an example of just one of them:

A fourth and final problem with Emmanuel’s statement is this: “nor is a disagreement over the content of Dr. Rollston’s Huffington Post article an issue in our discussions.” This statement is, in no uncertain terms, false. It is not simply a mischaracterization; it is a lie. It is a very troubling lie, and it is a lie that could not have been unintentional. As revealed last Monday in the Inside Higher Education article, President Sweeney’s letter to Rollston does in fact bring up the Huffington Post article as one of the causes justifying termination proceedings against Rollston. A whole paragraph is devoted to the subject of Dr. Rollston’s Huffington Post article and his Facebook posts. In fact, the letter mentions the Huffington Post article more than once, and does in fact express disagreement with Dr. Rollston’s conclusions.

But of course, Sweeney’s letter resorts to obvious mischaracterization of Rollston’s conclusions in his Huffington Post article. Sweeney’s letter alleges Dr. Rollston’s article made the claim that “the Bible, as a whole, marginalized women,” and that its conclusion was, “we cannot put our trust in ‘biblical values.’” This is of course completely false. Rollston did not argue that the Bible “as a whole,” marginalized women. He argued that a majority of texts relevant to the question of women’s status in ancient Israel reflected patriarchy, while a minority of texts pushed back against this ideology in various ways. In the article, he identified eleven examples of such push backs. Moreover, he did not conclude that we cannot put our trust in “biblical values.” He concluded that patriarchy was one biblical value among many (and who in their right mind can deny this?), and that this specific biblical value is not something we ought to value. (Does President Sweeney wish to defend the patriarchal institutions established throughout much of the Bible, and argue that they should remain in force within modern Christianity?) Clearly Dr. Rollston’s article showed that he saw a clash of values within the Bible, and demonstrated that he found some of those values to be morally praiseworthy. President Sweeney and the experts in hermeneutics at Emmanuel should be defending him from those who have plainly misinterpreted his article, not engaging in the same careless and sweeping mischaracterizations themselves.

More to the point, clearly this displays that there was discussion of and disagreement over the contents of Dr. Rollston’s Huffington Post article in connection to disciplinary proceedings. So when President Sweeney releases a statement in which he flatly denies that any “disagreement over the content of Dr. Rollston’s Huffington Post article” was “an issue in our discussions,” we know he is lying. I have spent a great deal of time trying to imagine a charitable interpretation of this claim that does not amount to an intentional lie, and I have been unable to do so.

Unbelievable! But there it is. Not only has Emmanuel apparently begun termination proceedings against a tenured professor (wrongfully, I might add), but they have yet even to address the matter publicly, because their one attempt to quell the growing outrage from other scholars and former students against them failed miserably when the blogger they asked to release an official statement refused to do so because the statement was utterly false – falsehoods that were immediately confirmed by the publication of the Inside Higher Ed article.

Had Thomas Stark published the Emmanuel statement from President Sweeney as-is (like he was asked to do), Stark would have been roped into lying on behalf of Emmanuel, which based on the evidence, Emmanuel asked him to do!

Stark describes how he felt when he finally realized that he had been asked to lie for Emmanuel:

Then, when I was sent a deeply problematic “statement” described as “officially” from President Sweeney, to be published on my website, I had come firsthand into solid confirmation of my suspicions of incompetence. No matter whose idea it may have been, how incompetent would President Sweeney have to be to approve the publication of an official statement from Emmanuel, with his name on it, on my blog! Does this evoke a sense of direction? Does this communicate a sense of properly handling a potentially damaging scandal? What is more, to include in that statement a number of mischaracterizations, evasions, and an outright lie—a lie he should have known full well could be proved false at any time—I ultimately concluded that President Sweeney appears to be in over his head, and is having a great deal of trouble managing the combination of this financial crisis, this ideological controversy over the direction of the seminary, and now what appears to be the wrongful termination of Professor Rollston, in anything remotely resembling a competent manner. It seems to me that President Sweeney has made mistake after mistake after mistake, and in doing so, has put Emmanuel’s reputation and its viability in serious jeopardy.

IMHO, Emmanuel should settle this case ASAP. They should either drop this farce of a “disciplinary action” against Professor Rollston immediately, apologize, and perhaps open an inquiry into Professor Blowers’ activity in this whole mess, OR, Emmanuel should pay Professor Rollston his salary for the next bunch of years, apologize, part ways (I can’t imagine Dr. Rollston (or any other faculty member for that matter) wanting to stay at Emmanuel after this), and end this absolute nightmare before they end up in court and the national press picks this up. It’s only a matter of time. Emmanuel should go to their “six-figure donor”, ask him for the money to buy out Dr. Rollston (and avoid court), and then at least Emmanuel can claim a partial victory (the departure of Prof. Rollston). Professor Rollston can go to a school that will actually appreciate him, and the remainder of the faculty can watch their backs as the Paul Blowers thought police plays hall monitor in Johnson City.

Only time will tell if Emmanuel’s credibility and reputation are too damaged to recover from this inexplicable mess, brought upon their own heads by their own mismanagement.

steve kolowich at inside higher ed: on evaluating the digital humanities

Steve Kolowich has published an excellent piece entitled, “The Promotion That Matters,” on evaluating the Digital Humanities in Inside Higher Ed.

In it, he discusses the growing problem of evaluating scholarship within the Digital Humanities. The article is worth a read. Here are my initial comments:

The humanities have finally caught up to business, law, science, and medicine and have discovered methods both to digitize classical works in the Humanities, as well as employ the latest technologies and methodologies to generate new knowledge within the Humanities.

Of course, two persistent problems remain for new disciplines (and methods within disciplines):

1. There are those who do not appreciate (or understand) the new technology and/or discipline. People always fear (or are at least skeptical of) that which they do not understand. This goes especially for established scholars who used traditional methods (read: typewriters and bound dictionaries) to generate their research. While these scholars are always looking for new and better ways to do their research, they are not often the first adopters of new technologies, and are therefore wary of them at the beginning. Until established scholars have had enough time to review research generated by new digital methods and deem it credible, they will rightly be skeptical of what the young digital humanists are doing.
2. There is no accepted way to evaluate the research generated by scholars in the Digital Humanities. Since you cannot manage what you cannot measure, and since you cannot promote what you cannot manage, it is essential that those scholars who do understand the Digital Humanities make themselves available to serve on the rank, tenure, and promotion committees for scholars at neighboring institutions. In fact, there may be a small cottage opportunity for those willing to establish a Digital Humanities evaluation group within the academy.

One other thing: even if “Digital Humanities” fades as an independent discipline (which I believe it will), those humanists hired into established departments need peers with knowledge of the new technologies and methodologies to evaluate their research. As a digital humanist hired into a traditional department within the Humanities (Classics and Religious Studies), it is understandably difficult to find a classical philologist or medieval religious historian who understands virtual reality and 3D digital reconstruction of archaeological remains. For this reason, many universities like UCLA (Center for Digital Humanities) and Iowa (Digital Studio for Public Humanities) have established centers for the Digital Humanities where scholars trained in both traditional Humanities disciplines and new digital approaches to the Humanities research can assist scholars with Digital Humanities research.

Give the article a read.

conversations on science and religion

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Christian Brady has brought my attention to a wonderful June 17, 2010 article by David Moltz at Inside Higher Ed entitled, “Science Gets Religion.” The article examines the real tension between faith and science within academic circles. Simply put, there are just as many scientists that dismiss out of hand anyone espousing any form of faith or belief in a god whatsoever as there are fundamentalists of all faiths who dismiss science as a manner of understanding the world. Those of us standing somewhere in between the two extremes experience difficulty arguing in support of the need for dialogue between these two worldviews. Just as moderate politicians often find themselves defending against attacks from both sides, often (and unfortunately) resulting in their gravitating towards one pole or the other in an effort to maximize financial support and minimize political exposure, so to do many scholars gravitate towards one extreme or another, often for the same reasons. Rational dialogue is sacrificed for political and/or religious ideology and institutional funding.

The AAAS’s new Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion (DoSER) will assist with facilitating dialogue between the two groups. It will be interesting to see what kinds of discussions this group produces. Will it be junk science disguising religious fundamentalism pretending to be science? Will it become a target for attack from Dawkins’ “militant atheists?” Or, will the group ask for honesty from both sides and discuss matters of ethics and faith without sacrificing the fundamental principles of science?

The article is worth a read.

(via christian brady)