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Greetings:<br><br>
Thank you for posting my evaluation of New St. Andrews College. The
text did not come through very well on my e-mail, so I will simply post
the URL:
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/nsaccred.htm" eudora="autourl">
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/nsaccred.htm</a>.<br><br>
You can also back off to my entire Doug Wilson page at
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/Wilson.htm" eudora="autourl">
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/Wilson.htm</a>. And for more good stuff
on the topic you can visit Tom Hansen's website at
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse" eudora="autourl">
www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse</a>.<br><br>
Nick Gier, Proud Intolerista<br>
Intolerance is a virtue if one is intolerant of biogtry, discrimination,
dishonesty, deception, and bad manners.<br><br>
:57 AM 1/26/2007, you wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font size=4><b>Author's <br>
Note</b>: NSA received <br>
accreditation from TRACS on November 29, 2005. This text has been revised
as new <br>
information has come to light. Even though I clearly marked this letter
"private <br>
and confidential," Dr. Russell Fitzgerald, Executive Editor of
TRACS, shared it <br>
with Roy Atwood, President of New St. Andrews College. <br><br>
<br><br>
February 17, 2004<br><br>
<br><br>
Transnational Association of<br><br>
Christian Colleges and Schools <br><br>
P.O. Box 328<br><br>
Forest, Virginia 24551<br><br>
<br><br>
<b>Private and Confidential<br><br>
<br><br>
</b>Dear TRACS Officials:<br><br>
<br><br>
I! am writing concerning the accreditation of New St. Andrews College
(NSA) in <br>
Moscow, Idaho. Let me first introduce myself. I just retired from 31
years of <br>
teaching at the University of Idaho in the Department of Philosophy. For
23 <br>
years I was Coordinator of Religious Studies. In 2002-2003 I was
President of the <br>
Pacific Northwest Region of the AAR/SBL/ASOR. My CV can be found at <br>
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vitanick.html" eudora="autourl">
<br>
</a>
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vitanick.html" eudora="autourl">
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/vitanick.html</a>.<br><br>
<br><br>
I have known the principals at NSA--Douglas Wilson, Douglas Jones, and
Roy <br>
Atwood--for many years. Wilson was a philosophy major and took an M.A.
from our <br>
department in 1977. Both Wilson and Jones were lecturers for us for
several <br>
years. I’ve known Atwood since he first came to the University of
Idaho, <br>
where he was a well res! pected administrator and teacher/scholar.
Because of <br>
these close a ssociations I have requested that you keep this letter
private and <br>
confidential.<br><br>
<br><br>
In a letter to the <i>Moscow-Pullman Daily News</i> (May 22, 2003), <br>
Atwood stated that his college was an accredited institution. He stated
that <br>
“we'll inform our national accreditors
(<a href="http://www.tracs.org/">www.tracs.org</a>) <br>
that U. S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education
<br>
Accreditation recognition does not constitute 'proper
accreditation.’” Instead <br>
of explicitly stating who NSA’s accrediting agency was, he gave readers
the <br>
impression that NSA was accredited by the Department of Education and the
CHEA. <br>
Later in the letter he did spell out the name of a prestigious liberal
arts <br>
agency, one with which he presumably would rather be associated.<br><br>
<br><br>
I wrote to Atwood and asked him to clarify his original letter with a
follow-up <br>
letter in ! the newspaper. I also requested that he also state that NSA
was only a <br>
candidate for accreditation, not actually accredited. Atwood declined my
<br>
invitation to set the record straight.<br><br>
<br><br>
It has now come to my attention that Greg Dickison, attorney for Christ
Church, <br>
claimed that NSA was accredited at Latah County Board of Equalization
hearing in <br>
April 2003. The result of that hearing was that Christ Church lost its
tax <br>
exemption on two of three parcels of property in downtown Moscow. You can
hear <br>
Dickison's own voice at<br>
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/temp/NSA_Accred.mp3" eudora="autourl">
<br>
</a>
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/temp/NSA_Accred.mp3" eudora="autourl">
http://www.tomandrodna.com/temp/NSA_Accred.mp3</a>. <br><br>
<br><br>
Atwood's rebuff led me to do more research about NSA, and if I were on
any <br>
accrediting team, I would be concerned about the following:<br>
</font><font size=2><br>
<br><br>
<br>
</font><font size=4>·</font><font size=2>73 <br>
percent of NSA's faculty do not have PhDs. NSA has the resources to hire
PhDs., <br>
but evidently chooses not to do so. Since the first version of this
letter, all <br>
NSA faculty, except one visiting lecturer, have the masters degree that
is <br>
required by TRACS. However, TRACS does require that the degree be in the
<br>
teaching area, but Ben Merkle's M.A. in English does not qualify him to
teach <br>
Hebrew or theology as he regularly does at NSA.<br><br>
<br>
</font><font size=4>·Of <br>
special concern is Wilson’s statement that a college degree is not
necessary to <br>
teach in the K-12 schools that his own association accredits. Indeed,
<br>
prospective teachers are warned that a degree from a secular institution
might <br>
place them at a disadvantage. Until recently NSA was <br>
listed as an a! ccredited school by Wilson's own Association of
Classical <br>
and Christian Schools.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·While <br>
NSA was a candidate for accreditation, Roy Atwood was giving lectures
around the <br>
country on behalf of TRACS promoting "Trinitarian"
accreditation.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Two <br>
of NSA’s senior fellows, presumably equivalent to full professors, do
not have <br>
PhDs. Generally, a PhD is required at the lowest rank of assistant
professor.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Although <br>
full resumes are not available on NSA’s website, it appears that a
majority of <br>
the faculty! s published books are from Canon Press, Wilson’s own
creation. <br>
Atwood has admitted that Wilson’s slavery booklet is not a “scholarly
work,” and <br>
yet it appeared in Canon's Monograph Series, which usually showcases a
press’s <br>
most scholarly work.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Of <br>
special concern is the fact that Wilson’s brother, his son, and his
son-in-law <br>
are on the NSA faculty.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Wilson <br>
wrote an article “Why Evangelical Colleges Are Not” in
<i>Chronicles</i> <br>
(September, 1998), the journal of the far right Rockford Institute. The
<br>
hostility displayed against reputable evangelical colleges in this
article not <br>
only shows blatant disrespect for these fine schools, but it manifests
shameful <br>
disregard for the entire academic enterpris! e. Over the 30 plus years
I’ve been <br>
active in the regional American Academy of Religion (AAR) and Society for
<br>
Biblical Literature (SBL), I’ve been impressed with the academic
progress that <br>
some regional evangelical schools have made. For our 2003 Moscow meeting
40 <br>
percent of the papers presented came from these outstanding schools.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·On <br>
April 1, 1999 NSA faculty and students were involved in an outrageous
April <br>
Fool’s stunt, complete with stealing UI letterhead and using the
English <br>
department’s FAX line, to announce an alleged UI sponsored lecture
entitled <br>
“Topless and Proud.” Wilson tells us how proud he was of his
students' actions: <br>
“By the time you receive this, our local police will probably have
forgotten all <br>
ab! out it, so a little bragging is now safe, and perhaps it is even in
or der. But <br>
first some background. Our local city council, through a series of
ridiculous <br>
circumstances, decided to quit restricting female toplessness. The noble
senior <br>
editor of this journal [Wilson’s son-in-law], encouraged by some winks
and <br>
nudges from me, not that he needed any, made up a flyer which announced a
<br>
topless and proud lecture series by topless feminist scholars.” See the
full <br>
text at <br>
<a href="http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-3meander.php" eudora="autourl">
<br>
</a>
<a href="http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-3meander.php" eudora="autourl">
http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-3meander.php</a> <br>
and the police report at <br>
<a href="http://dougsplotch.com/looter.htm" eudora="autourl"><br>
</a><a href="http://dougsplotch.com/looter.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://dougsplotch.com/looter.htm</a> <br>
at the bottom of the page.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·In <br>
the fall of 2002 I extended a special invitation to NSA students and
faculty to <br>
submit papers to the regional 2003 AAR/SBL meeting in Moscow. Typically,
there <br>
is a large turn out of students and faculty from schools in the vicinity
of the <br>
sponsoring institution. In a letter to the <i>Moscow Pullman Daily
News,</i> I <br>
expressed my disappointment that not a single NSA student or faculty
attended <br>
the conference. The accreditation issue then arose in Atwood’s response
to that <br>
letter, in which he told the community that NSA had "better things
to do" than to <br>
attend the meeting.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·In <br>
October, 2003, the existence of <i>Southern Slavery As It Was</i> (Canon
! Press, <br>
1996) co-authored by Wilson and Steve Wilkins was made know n to the
Moscow <br>
community. It was later discovered that 20 percent of text had been
lifted from<br>
Engerman and Fogel's <i>Time on the Cross</i>. <br>
Wilson first said that proper citation was scrambled in the transmission
of <br>
Wilkins' portions of the text, but Wilkins later admitted to the errors
(see <i><br>
World </i>magazine, May 1, 2005). A former member <br>
of Wilson's congregation has looked at two other books written by Wilkins
and he <br>
has found problems there as well. Typically what he found was indented
passages <br>
that are indeed cited, but when one reads the books cited one discovers
that, in <br>
one instance, over 200 words that precede the indented passages are also
copied <br>
from that text. For all the texts in question see <br>
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/SPW.htm">
www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/SPW.htm</a> and<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/Plagiarism.htm" eudora="autourl">
<br>
</a>
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/Plagiarism.htm" eudora="autourl">
www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/Plagiarism.htm</a>.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Among <br>
many arresting statements in the slavery booklet is the following:
“There has <br>
never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual
intimacy <br>
and harmony in the history of the world" (p. 24). The booklet caused
an uproar <br>
in the community, and two UI historians wrote a strongly-worded response
to the <br>
piece. Wilson defended the booklet in the <i>Daily News,</i> saying,
among other <br>
things, that the real issue was gay marriage. (He also reminde! d the
community <br>
that he believed that homosexuals should be execut ed or at least
banished.) <br>
Instead of facing their critics in proper academic exchange, Wilson,
Jones, and <br>
Atwood launched a full scale attack on them and the UI, even to the point
of <br>
asking the Governor to censure the administration and sanction the two
history <br>
professors who wrote the response to the slavery booklet.<br>
</font><font size=2><br>
</font><font size=4>·Regrettably, <br>
the debate over the slavery booklet may have led to vandalism against NSA
<br>
property. Despite the fact that the culprits were not identified, the NSA
dean <br>
and faculty have continued to blame UI administrators, faculty, and
students for <br>
these unfortunate acts. <br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
·</font><font size=4>In <br>
response to a community petition drive with the title “Not in Our
Town,” <br>
directed against Wilson and his slavery booklet, Ben Merkle, Wilson’s
son-in-law <br>
and NSA instructor, set up a website named Hatesplotch
(<a href="http://www.hatesplotch.net/">www.hatesplotch.net</a>) <br>
on which he and others have posted sarcastic and denigrating remarks
about the <br>
community response to his father-in-law’s views. Ben Merkle and others
from NSA <br>
also launched a rude attack on the UI Office of Diversity and its
[former] head <br>
officer, Raul Sanchez.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Since <br>
1994 Wilson has sponsored an annual “history” conference held at the
University <br>
of Idaho. The 1994 conference was on slavery and the Wilson/Wilkins
booklet was ! <br>
one of the published results. UI faculty were unaware of this conf erence
until <br>
last fall, and now many are quite worried about the impression that their
<br>
university is giving academic respectability to this event.<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Steve <br>
Wilkins and George Grant are regular speakers at Wilson’s annual
conferences. <br>
Grant has a mail order doctorate and Wilkins is a conservative Calvinist
<br>
minister from Louisiana. Grant and Wilkins are promoting the novel
<i>Heiland</i>, <br>
whose hero leads a violent overthrow of a "godless" federal
government. <i><br>
Heiland </i>has been compared to the <i>Turner Diaries,</i> which
inspired the <br>
bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building. Wilkins wrote a <br>
blurb on the backcover of book that reads: "<i>Heiland </i>takes us
forward into <br>
the future so that we might remember what we have lost from the
past. It <br>
is a most urgent! tonic for our sick day."<br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
</font><font size=4>·Wilkins <br>
is a founding director of the League of the South, which has been
declared a <br>
hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The League has had close
ties <br>
with the 32,000-member Sons of Confederate Veterans, who in 2000 elected
Kirk <br>
Lyons to its national executive board. An outspoken racist, Lyons was
married by <br>
neo-Nazi Richard Butler in 1990, when Butler still had his compound in
Hayden <br>
Lake, Idaho. The League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans
<br>
organize public protests with the Council of Conservative Citizens whose
website <br>
decries "negroes, queers and other retrograde species of
humanity." One League <br>
leader said that we “need a new type of Klan.” (These quotations are
taken from<br>
<i>Intelligence</i> <i>Report </i>[Summer, 2000]).! <br>
</font><font size=2><br><br>
< span style="font-family:
Symbol;"></font><font size=4>·When <br>
journalists interviewed Wilson, Grant, and Wilkins in February, 2004,
they each <br>
disavowed any association with these organizations and their beliefs,
even <br>
though Wilson’s school proudly hangs Robert E. Lee's portrait in its
classroom <br>
and has displayed the Confederate flag on social occasions. One
conservative <br>
Christian minister wrote to the <i>Daily News</i> testifying that he saw
the <br>
Confederate flag prominently displayed in Wilson’s office. Wilson
attended the <br>
Fourth Southern Heritage Conference and has written four articles for the
<br>
neo-Confederate journal <i>Chronicles</i>, whose editors have boasted
that they <br>
are all members of the League of the South. The last article appeared
together <br>
with an ad announcing a conference in which Lincoln would be condemned
and the <br>
right of secession would be defended. Wilson also published an essay
defendin! g <br>
the right of succession in his journal <i>Credenda/Agenda</i>. Finally,
Wilson <br>
is contributing editor for <i>The War Between the States: America's
Uncivil War<br>
</i>(Bluebonnet Press, 2005), John J. Dwyer, general editor. Historian Ed
<br>
Sebesta claims that "this book seems to incorporate every 'Lost
Cause' and <br>
modern Neo-Confederate idea."<br>
</font><font size=2><br>
<br><br>
</font><pre>In an article in the Spokesman Review</i> (Oct. 22, 2006),
Wilson confessed that he was a "Paleo-Confederate," just after
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier"></font><br><br>
<br><br>
<pre>NSA President Roy Atwood said that any connection b!
etween NSA and the neo-Confederates was "laughably
stupid."
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier"></font><br><br>
<br><br>
<pre>The distinction Wilson tries to draw between neo- and
paleo-confederate is one without a difference. Steve Wilkins,
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier"></font><br><br>
<br><br>
<pre>Founding Director of the neo-Confederate League of the South, has
been keynote speaker at Wilson's Moscow
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier"></font><br><br>
<br><br>
<pre>conferences for 12 years in a row. Wilson also admitted that Robert
E. Lee's portrait and the Confederate flag have
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier"></font><br><br>
<br><br>
<pre>been displayed in church and school functions, in spite of Logos
principal Tom Garfield's claims to the contrary.
</pre><font face="Courier New, Courier"></font><br><br>
<br>
<br><br>
<font size=4>As I understand it, the principle of <br>
academic collegiality is not just an in-house affair, but it should be
practiced <br>
with all colleagues and all academic institutions. Especially disturbing
is <br>
NSA’s decision to criticize the UI, upon which it is dependent for
library and <br>
lab science resources. This attack is especially ironic considering the
fact <br>
that so many NSA faculty have or are finishing UI degrees. <br>
Nine of the 15 faculty have or expecting UI degrees.<br><br>
<br><br>
I trust t! hat you will agree that NSA’s response to this controversy
is a very <br>
disturbing trend for this young college, one that started with so much
promise <br>
and support from the community. In the past I have spoken at NSA’s
weekly <br>
colloquium, and I spent upwards of sixty hours with one NSA student and
his <br>
senior thesis on Buddhism. I personally regret very much this loss of
<br>
collegiality and mutual respect. <br><br>
<br><br>
If your policies require that I release this letter for wider validation,
I will <br>
certainly consider that option. But for now please consider these remarks
<br>
private and confidential. <br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
Sincerely,<br><br>
<br><br>
Nicholas F. Gier<br><br>
Professor Emeritus<br><br>
Department of Philosophy<br><br>
University of Idaho<br>
</font><br><br>
<font size=4><br>
</font><br><br>
<br>
Juanita Flores <br>
Advocate for the Truth from Jesus <br>
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=======================================================</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=2>"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the
application of it to human affairs."<br>
--Ralph Waldo Emerson<br><br>
"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings
who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."<br>
--Mohandas Gandhi<br><br>
"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot
be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on
the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science,
religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its
various parts." --Ma</font><font size=1>x Planck<br><br>
</font>Nicholas F. Gier<br>
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<br>
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm<br>
</a>208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950<br>
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm<br><br>
</a></body>
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