In the past decade there have been at least three universities established with questionable credentials.
The most notorious has been Trump University at which students were lured into an elaborate hard-sell scheme that offered an initial 3-day seminar for $300. A confidential playbook issued to the “faculty” laid out in detail how they would convince students to buy seminars such as the “Trump Gold Elite” package for a cool $34,995.
In 2013, the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump and his associates “operated an unlicensed, illegal educational institution” and “through their deceptive and unlawful practices, they intentionally misled over 5,000 individuals nationwide.”
Fraudster Trump settled the case and he was forced to pay $25 million to the claimants. During the 2016 campaign Trump, in his vicious combative style, called the judge in the case “a hater,” a “Mexican,” and “hostile.”
In 2010, conservative right-wing personality Glenn Beck started Beck University even though he did not have a college degree. One course, Faith 101, was taught by David Barton, an evangelical Christian minister.
Beck praised Barton as “the Library of Congress in shoes,” but Barton’s claim that the founding thinkers did not believe in the separation of church and state is demonstrably false. In a letter dated July 10, 1822, James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, wrote: “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they aremixed together.”
In a 2011 television interview, Beck interviewed conservative Presbyterian minister Peter Lillback. Beck raved about his book, “George Washington’s Sacred Fire,” an analysis of Washington’sreligious beliefs.
Even his own Presbyterian pastors disavowed Lillback’s book: “I can tell you that a large number of us are embarrassed by his poor historical methodology.” I have laid out Lillback’s sloppy scholarship and misinterpretations at bit.ly/39ytQJS.
By far the most influential fake university has been the one established by conservative columnist and radio talk show host Dennis Prager. Founded in 2009, Prager University offers no classes, no diplomas and has no accreditation.
Prager has 2,200 videos on YouTube, which have had 4 billion viewers. YouTube removed two videos because of hate speech content directed toward the trans community. Right wing commentator Candence Owens stated that being transgender was a disease just like schizophrenia.
Two Prager videos, presented by men with no scientific credentials, argue that there are problems with the pre-Cambrian explosion of complex life and the intricacies of DNA molecules. Their argument is that evolution through natural selection cannot explain how these complexities came into being.
Using God as a hypothesis for the order and structure of the universe fails as a scientific explanation. Jesus proclaimed that “with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:6). Therefore, whatever order and structure the world might have, then God could have created it.
On March 3, 1987, I witnessed creationist Duane Gish debating Grover Krantz, an anthropologist at Washington State University. Gish finished his presentation with a series of slides about the stages of development of the Monarch butterfly. He challenged Krantz to explain how this intricate and complex process came about by natural selection.
Krantz said that this was not his specific field, but he assumed that biologists had not yet found an explanation. Compare Krantz’s humble answer with Gish’s triumphant answer: “God did it.”
Intelligent Design is a theological hypothesis, not a scientific one. If conservatives ignore this essential distinction, this controversy will undermine the integrity of science education in this country.
Prager’s videos have now been approved by Florida’s Department of Education for supplementary instruction, and the Broward County School Board voted not to adopt them. A spokesperson for Miami-Dade County Public Schools announced the district approved Prager University “as a vendor for supplemental materials/resources,” but there were no “plans to adopt the content for the school year’s curriculum.”
Prager spoke at the 2023 annual conference of Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia. Protesters held up many signs, and one of them accused Prager of indoctrination. Prager admitted that his materials contain Judeo-Christian “doctrines, but what is the bad of our indoctrination?”
The “bad” of your creationist teachings, Mr. Prager, is that they are illegal for public school instruction. Since 1968, courts in 10 major cases have ruled that creationism is a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Gier is professor emeritus at the University of Idaho. Email him at ngier006@gmail.com.
