Forced school to ‘acknowledge the difference between education and indoctrination’
(Conservative Playlist) Timothy Keiderling’s decision to enroll in the Princeton Theological Seminary reflected his commitment “to give my life to work for justice and to live out the values of the Kingdom of God.” In a letter to the seminary’s president, Craig Barnes, he wrote that he “would sacrifice anything to make sure that my brothers and sisters see relief from their oppression.”
But the seminary’s concept of justice clashed with Keiderling’s conscience when PTS required him to attend “anti-racism” training sessions that he considered a form of indoctrination. He refused to participate in the sessions even after being reminded that they were mandatory. And then – early this year, with the potent support of the newly founded Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) – he convinced the seminary to exempt him from the training.
It was “a real victory which can advance the academic freedom cause substantially,” says Princeton Professor Robert George, a leader of the AFA who acted as an adviser to Keiderling, and whom the latter credits with making his victory possible. “Instead of a victim, we have a victor — one who stuck to his guns and persuaded his institution not only to respect his right of conscience, but to acknowledge the difference between education and indoctrination.”
As universities across the country careen more and more to the left – amid attacks not only on conservative and moderate students and faculty but also on liberals targeted for not being radical enough – mandatory instruction in far-left views on race, gender, and sexuality is on the rise. Students and faculty are told what they must think and say while submitting to “trainings” that require them to confess to, or otherwise accept guilt for, the taint of whiteness, or to defer to nonwhite and LGBTQ students or both.
Keiderling’s case matters because – at a time when critical race theory and anti-racism training are routinely described in the media as benign ways to encourage meaningful conversations – his experience opens a window into the often coercive and radical nature of those efforts. His willingness to push back against being told what he must think and to hint at a possible lawsuit to protect his right to think for himself may presage something like the broad pushback that has taken place in the courts against unfair procedures in campus sexual assault cases, suggested George.
Keiderling, who hails from the New Paltz, N.Y., area, said he entered PTS in August 2019, at the age of 24, hoping to learn the variety of opinions on the big questions about the New Testament, including nondenominational, outside-the-box perspectives.
He enjoyed most of his first year at PTS and his roughly 360 fellow graduate students and other friends in Princeton. But that year was a turbulent time, as the seminary was in the midst of an intensive, multi-year analysis of its ties to slavery, its “ongoing legacy of racism” since its founding in 1812, and its need for “confession and repentance.” And in Keiderling’s second year – after police killings of George Floyd and others had rocked the school along with the rest of the country – the seminary became focused on race, gender, and causes including “social justice” and “a serious overhaul in the nation’s approach to policing.” Beginning in August 2020, he said, he and his classmates were required to submit to direction by PTS in how they must think and speak about matters of race, gender and sexuality.
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