Bob Jones III said Thursday he will retire as president of the Christian university that bears his name, ending a 34-year reign during which the school grabbed headlines because of its racial policies and fundamentalist views. Jones' son will take over as president of the school in May. The 65-year-old Jones, whose grandfather founded Bob Jones University 78 years ago, said it was time for someone younger and ``closer to the present generation'' to take over. "I've seen too many institutions - churches, Christian ministries - suffer when somebody stays too long,'' he said. ``And I've never wanted that to happen here.'' Jones said he will spend more time traveling and preaching but will remain a visible part of the campus, as chairman of the board of trustees and perhaps as ``grandpa'' to 5,000 students who attend college at the campus in Greenville. Jones has been no stranger to controversy in recent years. In 2000, George W. Bush was criticized for speaking at the university while campaigning because the school banned interracial dating. That policy has since been dropped. More recently, Jones drew attention for a congratulatory letter he wrote to Bush after his re-election. In the letter, he wrote, ``You have been given a mandate. ... Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ.'' [more]
- Pictured above: When George W. Bush spoke to 6,000 students at Bob Jones University, he was following in the footsteps of his father and President Reagan, who also made stops at the conservative university during their campaigns. [more]
- Until 1971 the school refused to admit blacks; for a number of years after that it would only admit married blacks, in order to forestall the possibility of interracial relationships.
- IIn 1975 Bob Jones University adopted campus rules which explicitly forbid interracial dating. A letter from the university in 1998 defended the ban on religious grounds, citing the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel: “God has separated people for His own purpose. He has erected barriers between the nations, not only land and sea barriers, but also ethnic, cultural, and language barriers. God has made people different one from another and intends those differences to remain. Bob Jones University is opposed to intermarriage of the races because it breaks down the barriers God has established. It mixes that which God separated and intends to keep separate.” [more]
- In 1975 the IRS revoked the schools' tax exempt status because it "practiced racial discrimination" or disallowed gifts to such schools as charitable deductions.
- Senate
Republican leader Trent Lott tried to help Bob Jones University keep
its federal tax-exempt status despite the school's policy prohibiting
interracial dating two decades before his recent comments stirred a
racial controversy. "Racial discrimination does not always violate
public policy," Lott, then a congressman from Mississippi, wrote in a
1981 friend-of-the-court brief that unsuccessfully urged the U.S.
Supreme Court to stop the Internal Revenue Service from stripping the
university's tax exemption. [more]
- Bob Jones University follows code from another century [more]
- Bob Jones’s True Colors [more]
- Ashcroft Speech: Jesus Is King Of America [more]