“The details are that Liberty College’s response to the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic is indistinguishable from that of many, if not most, universiti
“The details are that Liberty College’s response to the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic is indistinguishable from that of many, if not most, universities, and, extra importantly, it had not skilled a single on-campus pupil or worker testing constructive for Covid-19,” he mentioned this week in an announcement that ignored diseases amongst off-campus members of the Liberty neighborhood.
To his supporters, he has been much less temperate. The media, he mentioned in a radio interview with John Fredericks, who recognized himself as a Trump marketing campaign operative, “simply need energy, they’re authoritarian, they’re like nothing I’ve seen since, in case you return in historical past, to Nazi Germany. That’s what they remind me of.”
And he has spared no effort to defend his actions since articles on Liberty’s reopening ran in ProPublica and The New York Instances. He pursued arrest warrants for misdemeanor trespassing towards two journalists, Alec MacGillis, a reporter for ProPublica, and Julia Rendleman, a contract photographer for The Instances. He enlisted a New York regulation agency to threaten authorized motion towards the Instances and, he has mentioned, different retailers as properly.
He known as a Instances reporter shortly earlier than midnight, leaving a voice mail message that mentioned, “you’re in some critical hassle.” He accused the journalists of placing his college students in danger as a result of they traveled from New York Metropolis. (They didn’t.)
Final week, Liberty ran full-page advertisements in regional newspapers saying that reopening the campus after spring break put Liberty “in fairly good firm” with Virginia Tech, the College of California at Los Angeles, Texas A&M, and Arizona State College.
However all of these actions have had penalties.
Liberty’s authorized menace towards the photographer elicited a response from the newspaper’s counsel, David McCraw.
“Julia was engaged in essentially the most routine type of information gathering: taking photos for a information story,” Mr. McCraw mentioned in an announcement. “We’re disillusioned that Liberty College would determine to make that right into a legal case and go after a contract journalist as a result of its officers had been sad with press protection of the college’s resolution to reopen campus within the midst of the pandemic.”