Who are the watchmen?

If everyone is suspect, is accountability dead?

As current events go, few could match the controversy surrounding the testimony of college presidents from three of the nation’s most elite academic institutions at a December 5th hearing of a U.S. House committee on antisemitism on college campuses. Ever since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th and Israel’s retaliatory response to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, Americans have responded passionately to the war in the Middle East, particularly on college campuses, and the rise in tensions includes a spike in antisemitic incidents. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the world’s leading organization in the fight against antisemitism:

Since the Hamas massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, U.S. antisemitic incidents reached the highest number of incidents during any two-month period since ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) began tracking in 1979...On average, over the last 61 days, Jews in America experienced nearly 34 antisemitic incidents per day.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) counters that they’ve noted a “172 percent increase” in requests for help and reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate over the previous year since the war began.

This conflict has been most notable on college campuses, which have been torn between permitting the legitimate expression of diverse political points of view by students and faculty while also ensuring the safety and well-being of those targeted by speech or actions that have, in some instances, crossed the line, thus the motivation for the aforementioned hearing. A brief recap is in order if you wisely avoided the news during the holiday season.

During the hearing, the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania were questioned by members of Congress regarding their responses to the tensions on their respective campuses. Their answers were legalistic and evasive, mainly when it came to how their institutional codes of conduct would address speech calling for violence against Jews. Their inability in the moment, despite being given repeated opportunities, to give a “yes or no” answer to pointed questioning by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated campus policies was widely panned by critics across the political spectrum and calls for their resignation rose from alumni and donors of the respective institutions.

Dr. Liz Magill of Penn resigned within days, as she was already under pressure before the hearing for previous actions related to this issue, including sponsoring a Palestinian literary festival on campus despite previous antisemitic comments from some of its speakers. Dr. Sally Kornbluth of MIT received a vote of confidence from the university's governing corporation, as did Dr. Claudine Gay of Harvard.

However, the pressure on Dr. Gay intensified as critics raised questions about the volume and veracity of her scholarly work and the university’s motivations for hiring her as the first black person and only the second woman to lead an academic institution regarded as America’s best and one of the world’s most elite. Once it was revealed that she either didn’t properly cite or mark several paragraphs in her academic papers that were taken from the work of others, the pressure on her intensified until she was also forced to resign at the beginning of the year.

This episode triggered clashes on several fronts of today’s culture wars. Race, ethnicity, gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), freedom of speech, antisemitism, populism and its anti-intellectual bias, and the role of the academy in America today are some of the battleground topics that come to mind. To her proponents, Dr. Gay was a trailblazer for black women and a barometer of racial progress in the academy; to her opponents, a diversity hire with limited academic credentials and compromised credibility, guilty of equivocating on antisemitism, and chosen primarily to promote a “woke” agenda at America’s most prestigious university.

Things have continued to escalate; one of Dr. Gay’s most vocal critics, Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager, Harvard alumnus, and major donor, is now suing a news outlet for accusing his wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, of plagiarism in a tit-for-tat response to his activism. Moreover, Dr. Gay’s supporters have labeled her critics racist and misogynistic and accused them of ulterior motives unrelated to combating antisemitism and defending academic integrity. Essentially, the most persistent line of attack against her foes is that they are odious people weaponizing antisemitism and authenticity in scholarship to accomplish other less lofty objectives, and their judgment is, therefore, suspect.

Frankly, they may well be right. Dr. Gay’s critics are mostly not known for their sustained and passionate advocacy on behalf of the Jewish people. However, they are avowed critics of the modern academy, which they perceive as centers of indoctrination in leftist ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) heresies. They will exploit any opportunity to harass and discredit colleges and universities for their politically and culturally liberal leanings and perceived exclusion of conservative scholars and opinions from college campuses.

That said, some have asked a critical question: if the academy's critics are untrustworthy, and the academy itself is dismissive or diminishing about its shortcomings, who holds them accountable? Scapegoating is a time-honored propaganda technique to shift blame from oneself to perceived opponents. However, lost in the blame-shifting and demonization of their critics is whether the response of these university presidents to the rise of antisemitism on their campuses is sufficient or whether those accused of academic dishonesty plagiarized. Suppose it’s not acceptable for outside critics with ulterior motives to raise those concerns. Is there someone within the academy or a trusted arbiter to conduct an independent inquiry and arrive at the truth?

The academy is not the only arena where this is occurring. In the political arena, opportunists and demagogues attack institutions a civil society relies upon as agents of integrity and truth to the point where it takes practically no effort to dodge accountability for wrongdoing. Just scapegoat them as enemies of the people to be immunized from accusations in the court of public opinion, and even a conviction of wrongdoing loses credibility in the eyes of one’s supporters. Little to no thought is given to the damage to the checks and balances system essential to maintaining order in a free society. In the end, when only you and people like you are viewed as trustworthy, it will be impossible to maintain a diverse, pluralistic society with common goals.

And what of the church, whose existence is grounded in morality, integrity, and truth? Regrettably, it is perceived as another institution mired in self-preservation and power-seeking at any cost. Polls indicate that only 32 percent of Americans have “a great deal or fair amount of confidence” in the church or organized religion, and the last time most Americans trusted the church was in 2009. As I’ve mentioned on a few occasions, we are amid what authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham and political scientists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe have dubbed “the great dechurching,” the greatest shift in American church attendance in American history. While the reasons for this unprecedented shift are varied, one that stands out in the public eye is the ongoing revelations of pervasive corruption, megalomania, and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by church leaders, some of whom are giants in their respective religious sects, and the widespread denial, deflection, and coverup of these egregious acts, presumably to protect the reputation of the institution.

When one witnesses the extent to which the church, not only intended to be the world’s standard-bearer for righteousness but also its towering beacon of truth and light, shrouds itself in shadows, lashing out at anyone who dares to expose its misdeeds as enemies of the Lord, it’s apparent why accountability in our society is in critical condition.

Secular critics of the church are dismissed out of hand with flippant recitations of John 15:18, the Scriptural equivalent of “haters gonna hate,” and attempts by the church’s governing bodies to police the institution from within are half-hearted, incomplete, insincere, and predetermined toward the exoneration of even the most heinous behavior with a horrifically misapplied mantra of forgiveness and grace.

Any Christian who dares to challenge the church on its sins is treated as “worse than an unbeliever” and is cast off from the community of believers. This de facto excommunication is grievously harmful to the victims of abuse, who suffer the act of abuse itself, the indifference or hostility of their fellow believers, and the loss of a community they once held dear. Advocates of the abused are similarly cut off from previously secure bonds of congregational love and care, and should they continue to pursue accountability by the church from outside platforms, they inherit the double scorn of being declared an apostate and a traitor.

When crimes within the church, committed and covered up for decades, are exposed, too many leaders in the church respond, not with remorse, repentance, and humble surrender to whatever consequences should come, but with pride, hostility, and hate for those who dared to shine a light into the dark corners of the sanctuary. The Lord exposed these predators centuries ago, yet they persist to this day:

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them. (Ezekiel 34:1-10)

James, Jesus’ half-brother and the bishop of the first church in Jerusalem, said, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). Some may see the great dechurching as a warning, but I see it as judgment. Accountability is people voting with their feet and abandoning this institution that calls out, “Lord, Lord,” but will hear in response, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:23).

The Lord is taking the flock away from the false shepherds, and it is up to the good shepherds, the faithful few, to restore the church to a place of trust. My former pastor constantly told us, “The local church is the hope of the world.” He believed that and led his congregation with that aspiration in mind, and it will take that kind of leadership to model accountability to the nations.