On Saturday, September 16, LaSierra posted an announcement saying that their president, Joy Fehr, had resigned effective the following day, Sunday, September 17. The provost, who is named April Summitt, has assumed the duties of the presidency, pending the naming of an interim president by the Board of Trustees. Students are returning to campus for the fall quarter, which begins this Monday, September 25th.
Today, the school posted a more detailed statement regarding Fehr’s resignation:
Dr. Fehr was appointed to the presidency in 2019 following the retirement of Dr. Randal Wisbey. She was confronted by the Covid-19 pandemic in the winter of 2020, resulting in government-mandated organizational and business shutdowns that led to a campus closure until fall of 2021. Dr. Fehr ensured the campus’ compliance with local and state health directives and protocols, led the Emergency Management Team in the creation of a detailed re-opening plan as required by public health officials, and supported the development of successful Covid-19 testing procedures for those remaining on campus and for use once in-person activities and classes began to resume. She also supported development of science-based education projects and programs for the community and campus related to Covid-19 and its vaccines.
Her tenure also oversaw the implementation of campus focus groups toward creating a new strategic plan and vision for the university, and initiatives and partnerships aimed at enhancing academic programming.
Prior to accepting the presidency, Dr. Fehr served as La Sierra University’s provost for three years and one year as associate provost. She arrived at La Sierra University from Burman University in Alberta, Canada where she served as vice president for academic administration from 2010 to 2015 and as dean of its arts division.
The official statement on the school’s website is naturally anodyne and uninformative, but an article at Spectrum makes clear that President Fehr was ousted in a faculty coup, a coup led by the school’s hyper-Leftist religion faculty.
The La Sierra Board of Trustees, chaired by Bradford Newton, president of the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, was gathered for its start-of-the-school-year board meeting, and the faculty were apprehensive that the Trustees might allow President Fehr to keep her job:
Although staff, alumni, and outside observers voiced concerns about the vision and management skills of the president, it was the campus academic leadership that directly affected this executive move. Concerned that the Board would merely make recommendations for presidential self-improvement during its Friday meeting, Maury Jackson, the Chair of the Faculty Senate, appealed to speak to the governing body during its scheduled on-campus retreat. On Friday afternoon, the board listened as Jackson, Professor of Pastoral Studies, and his divinity school colleague, John Webster, Professor of Theology and History of Christianity and immediate past Chair of the Faculty Senate, explained why the faculty could no longer work with Fehr.
It was Webster’s June 9 letter, sent to the Board Chair, Pacific Union President Bradford C. Newton, that publicly detailed the faculty's reasons. . . . The six-page letter noted that her off-campus projects seemed to show a lack of financial attention to the campus, as well as a sense that longtime campus culture markers such as the Honors Program, Research and Scholarships, the liberal arts, participatory governance, and the campus’ progressive Adventist identity were increasingly ignored. . . . It noted that the president’s insertion into campus decision-making processes has created a culture of fear in the administration building, impeding initiative, and leaving the Provost, Vice-Presidents, and Deans unable to do their jobs. Painting a picture of decision paralysis then micromanagement, the list of eleven concern areas closed with this all contributing to what one emeritus faculty member described as the lowest campus morale in 49 years.
As most of you know, La Sierra has been surrounded by controversy for well over a decade, because of the liberal faculty’s promotion of Darwinism. (Retired president Randal Wisbey, who was at the center of using the school to evangelize for the atheistic origins myth, also solicited a million dollar donation from one of the most notorious abortionists in American history.)
John Webster was a notable player in the La Sierra Darwinism saga. To commemorate the retirement of Randal Wisbey in 2019, I wrote about the Louis Bishop story, which includes his mistreatment by the faculty and administration for exposing what they were teaching:
Louie Bishop attended this seminar class and found that John W. Webster, the dean of the School of Religion, discouraged students from believing that the Genesis narrative should be taken literally. Webster argued that the story of the creation week found in Genesis is not describing the creation of the world, but rather the dedication or inauguration of the “cosmic temple.”
(This theory is the brainchild of Wheaton College professor John Walton, as set out in his book, “The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.” I have read Walton’s book, and it is one of the goofier attempts to accommodate the Bible to the Darwinian origins narrative. A few years ago, it enjoyed a passing moment of vogue as an accommodationist theory, but its internal contradictions are many. Among other departures from the faith, Walton’s insistence that a temple is a model cosmos obscures the lessons the Hebrew sanctuary teaches us about the plan of salvation and Christ’s ministry on our behalf.)
Fortunately, Dr. Webster’s lecture was video-recorded, and a transcript made, so there’s no doubt about what was said:
• The literal method of interpreting the Bible is "not particularly helpful." (Transcript Page 11)
• A more useful and fruitful reading of scripture suggests that the opening chapters of Genesis might not really be about how the world came into being, but might be about how we understand the world as God's dwelling place, as the temple of God. (Transcript Page 11)
• The Old Testament Chronology, which was summed up as seven cycles of 490 years, is a human understanding of how history developed and when we have a humanly created product, we don't need to say this is absolute—that the earth can be no older than 4012 BC. (Transcript Page 20)
• The temple in ancient times was believed to be a miniature cosmos. When they built their temples, they built them as symbols of the entire cosmos, the entire universe. (Transcript Page 21)
• Genesis 1 tells us God took 7 days to create His temple. In ancient Jewish thought the temple was always dedicated in a seven-day ceremony. And so, when a temple is inaugurated, it wasn't created then but only dedicated. So you need to think in terms of the days of creation as being days of inauguration; God putting his stamp of ultimate approval saying ‘It is good.’ (Transcript Page 22)
• The dedication of God's temple meant that he could now enter it, and have a dwelling place; this is what happened in 7 days, not the actual creation of the world. (Transcript Page 22)
• We are now viewing Genesis 1 as figurative-it's full of symbolism as well as having a literal time aspect; seven literal days-but they are days of inauguration, not of initiation or beginning. (Transcript Page 23)
• After graduation you will say “I got my degree in June of 2013” but you are getting something you earned over a period of time. You did not earn all your degree in one day. It is the same way with the days of creation. There was a lot of work that went on beforehand. (Transcript Page 23)
• Question by Dr. Lee Greer: are you suggesting that a literalist approach to Genesis 1 may be a misreading? Answer: The literal approach doesn't work in ancient thought. Once we understand what it originally meant, then we can have harmony. (Transcript Page 23)
• Book to be posted on course website, "The Lost World of Genesis One" is a way of harmonizing science and religion. It's the inauguration view of Genesis 1. (Transcript Page 23)
It is no surprise, assuming Joy Fehr had any residual belief in the Seventh-day Adventist message, that she did not get along with the likes of John Webster, and this seems to be confirmed by the statement in the Spectrum article to the effect that Fehr did not appear to be interested in “the campus’s progressive Adventist identity.”
A lot of us are not interested in La Sierra’s rancid Leftism, certainly not in having a thing like that be connected to the SDA Church. Do you know who is? Bradford Newton, president of the Pacific Union, who chairs the Board of Trustees, and the presidents of the Arizona (Ed Keyes), Southern California (Velino Salazar), and Southeastern California (Jonathan Park) conferences, all of whom sit on the board of Trustees. They are all happy with what has been going on at La Sierra.