An Open Letter to
the Moscow-Pullman Communities

November 13, 2003

Roy Alden Atwood, Ph.D.
Dean and Chief Executive Officer of the College

Bigotry and racism are great evils in any form and have no place in our community or College. As a Christian institution committed to the biblical truth that all men and women of all races are created in the image of the Triune God, New Saint Andrews condemns racism in all its forms unequivocally. The College will neither participate in nor endorse any event in which racism is supported or racial slavery—past or present—is condoned. Being a private institution that accepts no government funding, we will not open our facilities for any event that promotes racism or bigotry of any kind. Racist beliefs and activities are inconsistent with and a violation of our institution’s public commitment to orthodox Christian doctrine.

We also condemn hasty or false accusations of racism against any person. We believe that civility and justice in a free society demands a genuine presumption of innocence while pursuing truth through a careful study of all the relevant facts in the full context that gives them meaning. Charging someone with something as vile as racism based on prejudicial, weak, or partial evidence is irresponsible and a gross injustice. Such a rush to judgment is itself a form of bigotry and as worthy of condemnation as racism proper.

While we understand and share the community’s recent concerns about racism, we believe that the individuals and institutions accused of racism, the Moscow and Pullman communities, and our peers at the University of Idaho and Washington State University have been done a great injustice by multiple, repeated factual errors and distortions in local news reports and the commentary based on them. While we do not deny that the arguments made by one of our colleagues run contrary to the mainstream secular historical consensus and will likely provoke strong opposition among scholars and advocates of political correctness, we believe that those arguments—however controversial and provocative—are not racist in motive or in fact. Our colleague chose to question the means of abolishing slavery, arguing against violent means in favor of peaceful means. Some of his loudest critics, including university lecturers and administrators who should know better, have twisted that into a charge that he—and every institution associated with him—advocates slavery and racial hatred. Such twisting is bigotry. The expression of a minority opinion is certainly open to public and scholarly comment, criticism, and correction, but it deserves the same, if not greater, protection of free expression and academic freedom as any majority opinion. Being controversial and provocative, even being demonstrably wrong or giving offense, does not constitute racism or justify misrepresentation and defamation. Racial minorities should never be suppressed, and neither should minority viewpoints, especially in an academic community.

New Saint Andrews College has encouraged a racially diverse community since its humble inception in 1994. We are proud of the fact that our College is probably the only undergraduate institution in the Pacific Northwest whose first graduating class—of two students—was 50 percent African American and 50 percent female. So on behalf of the New Saint Andrews community, I invite you to contact us with your questions, to visit our campus, and to speak directly to our faculty and students to see and hear for yourself how racism and bigotry know no quarter in our academy.