Nashville Art School to Purge All Non-Christian Faculty After Being Taken Over by a Religious School
When I get sensational headlines like this coming across social media, I always like to check the source and, unfortunately, it looks like it wasn't an exaggeration.
According to Wikipedia, Watkins College of Art is a private Nashville art school has been around since 1885. According to ArtNet article I linked to above, it has been struggling financially for years, so it's not exactly surprising that someone bought it. The problem is is the who - Belmont University, a private, historically Baptist university that remains culturally conservative, in the Evangelical sense, even after cutting ties with Tennessee Baptist Convention (which, if the Wikipedia summary is anything to go by, is a whole other can of worms. And, according to Wikipedia, Watkins isn't even the first specialized private college Belmont University acquired.
Belmont doesn't employ non-"Christian" instructors, and it looks like it isn't making an exception for Watkins. And the students are understandably concerned about what a conservative institution that famously fired a coach for being in a same-sex relationship.
I don't really have enough local context to fully judge what happened. But it occurs to me that this is the sort of thing that increasingly happens with private institutions, with larger universities buying smaller ones for purely vulture capitalistic reasons, without caring about the culture of the institution they are acquiring. And it is unfortunate. There is also something to be said about smaller private colleges struggling to raise money, especially since larger public and private systems seem to be spending more money than ever to make themselves more attractive to students, even as tuition continue to rise.
According to Wikipedia, Watkins College of Art is a private Nashville art school has been around since 1885. According to ArtNet article I linked to above, it has been struggling financially for years, so it's not exactly surprising that someone bought it. The problem is is the who - Belmont University, a private, historically Baptist university that remains culturally conservative, in the Evangelical sense, even after cutting ties with Tennessee Baptist Convention (which, if the Wikipedia summary is anything to go by, is a whole other can of worms. And, according to Wikipedia, Watkins isn't even the first specialized private college Belmont University acquired.
Belmont doesn't employ non-"Christian" instructors, and it looks like it isn't making an exception for Watkins. And the students are understandably concerned about what a conservative institution that famously fired a coach for being in a same-sex relationship.
I don't really have enough local context to fully judge what happened. But it occurs to me that this is the sort of thing that increasingly happens with private institutions, with larger universities buying smaller ones for purely vulture capitalistic reasons, without caring about the culture of the institution they are acquiring. And it is unfortunate. There is also something to be said about smaller private colleges struggling to raise money, especially since larger public and private systems seem to be spending more money than ever to make themselves more attractive to students, even as tuition continue to rise.