Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.: ‘We Treat Students Like Customers’
Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. declared to primetime Fox Business host Lou Dobbs Wednesday that Ivy league institutions have left their “roots” while adding that the university in Virginia in which he leads – Liberty University – “operates like a business, we treat students like customers.”
Dobbs opened the segment by outlining that the United States Department of Education Wednesday opened an “investigation into Harvard and Yale for the possible failure to report $6.5 billion of donations from foreign nations including China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.”
The Fox Business host then riffed about how U.S. universities are accepting money from other nations to fuel “propaganda and carry out espionage.”
“The university is accused of receiving funds from nations hostile to the U.S. and using funding to gain opportunities to research, spread propaganda, and of course, carry out espionage,” Dobbs stated.
Dobbs asked Falwell his thoughts on why Harvard and Yale are taking money as “part of a Chinese effort to steal intellectual capital.”
Falwell responded, “It doesn’t surprise me. The Ivy League schools long ago left their roots, and they stopped making students their top priority.”
Falwell then explained that at the university which he heads, students aren’t treated like family but rather “like customers.”
“At Liberty University, we operate like a business, we treat students like customers,” he stated.
“Ivy League schools have become so elitist — Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, he’s the one who outlawed tall some of the drinks.”
Falwell then tossed in a joke comparing Bloomberg to the size of soft drinks claiming that the soda had gotten taller than the former New York City mayor.
Liberty Universities president then added, “But he said in a speech at Harvard when Obama was president that 96% of Ivy League schools faculty and staff had donated to Obama in the previous election. He was chastising them. He said, how can you have academic freedom and free exchange of ideas when 96% of the faculty think the same way.”
Farwell is no stranger to controversy over the manner in which he has run the private religious institution in Virginia. He has censored the campus newspaper which created “a censorship regime” at the student-run publication, and one former Liberty official accused him of running the university like a “real estate hedge fund.”
Board and tuition at Liberty University costs $34,000 a year, according to a ranking complied by U.S. News and World Reports.
Watch above, via Fox Business.
