By: Kara Zupkus and Elizabeth Guldimann
Princeton Theological Seminary recently facilitated mandatory racial bias training for its students and faculty that separated participants by race, according to video materials obtained exclusively by Young America’s Foundation’s Campus Bias Tip Line.
The training, presented by outside consultants Laurie Carlsson and Dr. Michelle Majors, hosted three separate groups for participants to join for their training:
- A “white-only space” to ““grapple with our whiteness and how we’ve been socialized, in a way that does not harm our colleagues and co-students of color.”
- A group “only open to students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color,”
- An integrated group for those “who are uncomfortable with either of these scenarios.”
The trainings, according to the video, were aimed at helping students and faculty “achieve their anti-racism goals.”
Dr. Majors states that the segregated groups are designed to “[create] safety and support while addressing the personal institutional challenges of becoming an anti-racist institution.”
Both Carlsson and Majors fail to highlight how–in their attempts to become anti-racist–the institution is straying closer to the very segregation that took the civil rights movement decades to overcome.
The integrated group should have been the only option for students to come together and have frank discussions, without worrying of “safety” and silly microaggressions. To be truly inclusive, sessions like these must welcome all students, regardless of background, viewpoint, or skin color.
Other video materials obtained by YAF show Yeda Walker, the Director of Student Life Programs, suggesting that professors go easier on minorities in class. “…some of the very heavy lifting we require of students of color, and those who sit at the intersection of race and gender, should be balanced by the professors and TA’s.”
Among the other videos included for student viewing in the race training, Associate Dean Victor Aloyo touches upon how seminary students should question and “reimagine theological concepts and faith tenets” that have been presented through racist frameworks.
A member of the PTS Board of Trustees, Ruth Santana-Grace, stated that “anti-racism affirms a holistic theology,” while adding that she is glad that anti-racism training is “not a program,” and that “it’s being embedded as a way of life..”
The materials for student consumption also include videos from Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be An Anti-Racist, required implicit association tests, which allege racial bias through looking at photographs, and a Vox article titled “What it means to be anti-racist.” According to the documents obtained by YAF, these online components will later be grouped with a live training this spring.
The training caps off a year-long initiative by PTS to become an “anti-racist” institution. An action plan that was released by the “Antiracism Task Force” details the steps administrators are taking to enforce their leftist curriculum, including holding an “antiracism” worship session.
While it’s unclear just how much money PTS has spent to undertake this ambitious agenda, one thing is for certain––students would be much better off having the money invested into their schooling, scholarships, and other resources than this divisive nonsense. It’s a sad day when not even America’s religious and theological institutions are not safe from the far reaches of leftist orthodoxy. Religion should bring followers together–not divide them by the color of their skin.
See more of the exclusively obtained materials here, and watch the full, unedited footage here.
Elizabeth Guldimann is a National Journalism Center intern at YAF’s New Guard.