In Trust Center
The In Trust Center podcast is hosted by Matt Hufman. Walk alongside theological school leaders and innovators as they explore issues relevant to North American seminaries, all while helping institutions live out their missions more intentionally. Find more at intrust.org/podcast.
In Trust Center
Ep. 96: Navigating new realities - policy shifts and theological education
Federal policy shifts are reshaping higher education, and as details are still being understood, Peter Lake and David Rowe discuss what they mean for theological schools and how leaders can prepare. They explore new regulatory pressures, financial strains, and cultural changes affecting governance and mission. They offer leaders practical insight and encouragement to stay rooted in their theological convictions while navigating uncertain times.
Text of Education Secretary Linda McMahon's Sept. 8, 2025, speech at Hillsdale College can be found here.
The U.S. Supreme Court case "Sweezy v. New Hampshire" can be found here.
Hello, and welcome to the Intrus Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological school leaders. Thank you for joining us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. If you have been confused about news coming out of Washington, well, join the club. There's plenty of things to discuss. And I am I am grateful to be joined again by uh two people who have long experience in the field. First, law professor Peter Lake, an expert on higher education policy and governance. Peter, welcome back to the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's great to see you, Matt. Thanks for having me back.
SPEAKER_02:And of course, the Reverend Dr. David Rowe, no stranger to higher education, having served as a president, a consultant, and uh both uh higher ed and in four-year and graduate and theological education spaces. David, welcome back. Thanks so much, Matt. Good to be with you both. Well, when I say it's a little confusing, I mean, we see news all the time that is coming out of Washington. And for uh leaders of theological schools, this is uh this has been quite a summer, I think. And we've seen uh one big beautiful bill, we've seen uh guidance from the White House that the education department may be uh uh totally removed. Uh, and then we've seen increases in um, I think oversight, I would say, or guidance to schools. So let's break this down a little bit. Let me start, David, with you, because you've served in the hot seat as president of a few places. This is the time, I think, is as the old ad used to say, would be a malloc moment. Um, and we have talked about how you approach this. And and in past conversations, we've talked a little bit about making sure that you've got a a good sense of who your what your mission is and how you're gonna approach it. As summer has gone on, and we are recording this now in uh it's September 11th, uh 2025. Where are you at? What do you what's your advice? Just the overall kind of sense of how you would be approaching this as a president.
SPEAKER_00:Pay attention. I'd say pay attention. I think uh when we recorded our last episode on these topics, I think we were still trying to discern what the effect might be in the theological education space and weren't quite sure which of these new directions were gonna land and have direct impact on seminaries and schools of theology. But I think that's becoming less ambiguous now. I think it's becoming clearer how higher education in general uh is in a different context from a policy perspective and even a cultural perspective. And a theological education can't escape that particular context. And I think that both presidents and boards now need to have a rather pragmatic and clear-eyed view of uh what's going on and need to be evaluating policy shifts and cultural shifts in a careful way. And I think that means that as much as we bring our ideals and our faith to the table when it comes to governance and leadership of these great institutions, we also need to be prepared to have some very difficult conversations about how our missions are going to be lived out in a world that's different than it was. I'd say 24 hours ago, but certainly 24 months ago.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, again, I should note that we are recording this within 24 hours of the uh shooting and the the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who is a uh conservative activist. And so we're we're processing this too. I'll just note that for the record. But, you know, David, you mentioned you mentioned mission, you mentioned some things. Now, there are things in these bills, Peter, I think that you know we're seeing that are certainly going to affect mission. I mean, I see things like uh in endowment tax, which will certainly affect some schools, graduate issues with graduate student loans, DEI oversight. Uh, there's some very significant policy issues that are going to affect schools at all levels. Talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing in that regard.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, Matt, I really have gotten very focused not only on what happened yesterday uh with Charlie Kirk, but the speech that Linda McMahon gave at Hillsdale College, which I think I think every president in this sector should read that speech.
SPEAKER_02:We'll we'll find a copy and we'll post it on our podcast page.
SPEAKER_01:Because essentially the message is that the Hillsdale model is the blueprint. Uh tremendous praise for that president. And boy, this is not an administration that praises a lot of college presidents. Um this college president got effusive praise from Linda McMahon. And then the Secretary of Education laid out a blueprint based on the Hillsdale model as she sees it, which I think will have impact in the sector. Now, you know, at the margin, a lot of the things you mentioned, Matt, will impact us. I think the grad plus loan stuff actually is going to be very impactful for this sector and others. But I think the thing we need to be focusing on is that there's obviously a curriculum objective now, core curriculum. And Linda McMahon really emphasized this civilization point that's embedded in her speech, uh, teaching American civilization, even with an emphasis on the history of the West, which was exactly what that meant. But I think the theological sector, I think, has become comfortable with the fact that there are a wide range of history and religion connections with curriculum and focus that have been really supported by the legal system almost axiomatically. And it could be, and we're going to have to see what is the meaning of what McMahon has just articulated. Will there be a sort of a preferred central narrative of American history and the role of religion in that history? And how will that fit with the various missions and articulations and teaching of different colleges that are out there? And so far, you know, the speech was sufficiently ambiguous to leave open a multiple set of possibilities. But I think you're looking at a federal government that's not just looking to punish DEI and limit proxies for trying to work around SFFA, but it's actually now looking to try to establish curriculum standards and curriculum outcomes and objectives, workforce preparation, but also making American civilization a big part of what they're doing, whatever that might mean. And to David's point, I would keep my eye on that because I don't think everybody in this sector has necessarily the same narratives that Nels has. And as preferred narratives start to emerge, if they such do, I think that could be very impactful.
SPEAKER_02:Well, in certainly let's talk a little bit about this because first, I mean, there are I would say mechanical changes. There are things like what student loans, what students are going to be able to borrow. There's issues, of course, with international students and how they're counted for, or if they're they're able to come. Then you get into more policy questions, such as DEI and DEI oversight. The narrative questions, as you say, Peter, are very could be very real. And then you have things like earning tests for degrees. I mean, this is a widespread change for for higher education, certainly. In theological higher education, there's always kind of been this under the radar because there's a First Amendment right. You see that being that veil kind of being torn or that that that bubble being punctured in this?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've been talking for a long time about trifurcation of the field, you know, public, private, non-sectarian, private sectarian. I think you're right, Matt, that the Supreme Court showing so much favoritism in recent times towards the First Amendment's establishment and three exercise clauses. You know, this part, this sector in many ways has been the privileged sector of the three and the the most, um, shall we say, protected, I think people think from this. But my instinct is that even those barriers are going to start to erode. And it's coming directly and indirectly. I think the indirect stuff that you referenced, for example, because of what's happening with enrollment, well-resourced institutions are diving deeper in their wait lists. And that's pulling students away from smaller institutions. So, although enrollment might be good in some places, other folks are seeing a siphoning off. Same thing with international students, we're seeing that having an impact in the sector. Um, and I think the loans issues as well could be really fascinating. I think it's going to particularly hit law and medicine programs, but I don't know that others will be spared from the impact of July 26th when that goes into effect. And everybody's obviously talking about that as well. But I think the more significant thing that's on the table is to what extent will a Supreme Court be able to maintain being the guardrail for this sector? Because the authority of that court itself is potentially in some level of jeopardy in the scenarios that we're looking at. I think the court's aware of that. So you have noticed that the current Supreme Court has been backing a lot of Trump initiatives and not really guardrailing a lot in a lot of areas. And I think that's where I start wondering if the theological sector, having put so much emphasis on what the Supreme Court rules as the final outcome, could be distracting from the fact that the executive branch may now latch on to the First Amendment with its own perspective, one that's forming, I think, as we speak. And that's why I put a lot of emphasis on the Hillsdale speech. I think it may get drowned out with the news over Charlie Kirk's assassination, but I think it's very important for people to realize that that was a major moment of from the Trump administration saying this is what we want American colleges to look like, public and private. And we are invested in outcomes, jobs, value ratios, but we're also invested in the teaching of the quote truth and American civilization. And those are things I think the theological sector felt that we had hegemony over. That you know what American civilization looks like is within our purview to teach, what truth means is in our purview. I we'll have to see.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Well, I appreciate that, Peter. And David, I'm interested in your perspective, having run a few schools and dealt with this. When you look at this, you've got things like endowments tax change, you've got the graduate student loans. Um, as Peter noted, the professional, the earning test for degrees. Uh Frankie Mata at ATS uh sent out an email talking about that would include the Master of Divinity, right? The the big hallmark, the mainstay of seminaries over the last 50 plus years as a professional degree. And and then you've got DEI issues, you've got the the education department wanting more admission data, although we're not sure that the education department's going to be there next year, right? So, but one of the things about that, I mean, I think is is as you would prioritize. I mean, if you're sitting, if you're back as president of a school and you're thinking, well, one of the things you got to deal with is is this professional degree thing. Knowing that you may have people, you're you're preparing people for the church. You know they may have to be bivocational or tri-vocational or multi-vocational. All of a sudden that may cause issues. The lack of you know, student funding caps may cause issues. Tell me what you're thinking as you're hearing Peter speak, as you're hearing the this list of changes, how you're you're approaching this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I think one of the old things that's new again is that is the financial model is under strain, right? For higher education generally and theological education and you know, specifically. And the idea that some of our there's some novel sources of revenue that are now under strain that they that they didn't experience five years ago, right? So if the grad plus loan is is limited or the amount that students can take out is limited, then that really puts a constraint on what you can expect from tuition. And I think we were already feeling rather constrained by what we were getting from tuition. If some of the schools that were subsidizing tuition with large endowments get taxed now in ways that they hadn't been taxed before, that changes the calculations on that end. If there's a test for you know earning potential on the other side of this, we have a long runway to be able to show that the MDiv or other seminary degrees actually do meet some kind of objective criteria about that. So I don't think that these are different conversations than we've been having, but I think we might need to start speeding up the pace with which we're actually addressing some of the fundamental characteristics of the business model that supports our mission, because we have to think how do we do this more effectively? How do we do this more efficiently? And I think there's a long-term strategic question for the church and in theological education in general. Why is it that there's no earning potential in our degrees? Right, right. Why can't churches pay for what it takes to educate somebody to lead the churches? And what does that say about us who've been educating the leaders of these churches over time? You know, I don't think we should just assume that this enterprise is is um you know so so flawed that it never will produce any kind of earning potential. I think that we ought to take that on as a challenge to figure out how can we actually make it so that people who do follow a call can also support their families. And so I think that the whatever kind of regulatory pressure we're going to feel from that is also mirroring cultural expectations of higher education in general, that, you know, we really do have to understand the economic value of a degree going forward and not shy away from that. That doesn't take away from all of the non-quantifiable benefits of higher education, but there are a few benefits of higher education that are quantifiable.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's a that's a great point. There's a conversation I think the church has to grapple with, right? Why is it that somebody goes into debt or or scholarships spends a lot of money to get a degree and it's not a sustainable profession, at least according to this calculation. One talking to about though, uh another side of this is with the increased DEI oversight that they're talking about in the these, you know, the executive orders and the legislation that's been passed, to Peter's point, it seems like the veil has been pierced a little more in that there's not just conversation about standards, about whether these degrees are worth it or or that, but the question about what's being taught, or what, you know, for some of our schools where this is in in our membership, where this is a this is a core of who they are, uh, this would kind of seem like the federal government, I don't think seems. I mean, this it appears to me that this is the federal government telling them what they should or shouldn't be teaching.
SPEAKER_00:Well, so I think one of the interesting things here, you know, we recorded the last episode out, you know, we were talking about the religious liberty providing this extra level of protection. And we were thinking about it, the unit of analysis was the institution and maybe even the faculty member that, you know, they they have some rights under the First Amendment. It seems to me that the examples I'm reading about really examine the question of establishment and religious liberty from the perspective of the student and not necessarily from the perspective of the of the institution. In fact, and now I'm gonna look at my law professor friend here and ask him to correct me when I stray here, but it seems to me that they're taking kind of a view of a higher education institution that receives federal funding that's espousing a particular religious belief as I mean, they making it somewhat of an establishment claim, and that the religious liberty question is at the unit of analysis of a student. So is the student's religious liberty being impeded somehow by what this federally funded entity is requiring this student to grapple with? And so some of the, if you look at what happened at Texas AM this week, I mean, that was the way that the student framed the question, you know, that you know, we this is against my religion. And so what what do you do in that case? And I know this is no, it's not these conversations aren't strangers to progressive theology schools that have had to that are educating conservative students, and they're not strange to conservative theology schools that are educating progressive students. What's different here is now there's a regulator coming in and wanting to be part of the conversation.
SPEAKER_02:Which which I appreciate you bringing that case up about Texas AM. And the the viewpoint, it's a great point, is that the students coming in theological higher education. The point is, you know, the student comes to learn what they don't know. I mean, that that's what education is about, right? But now that has flipped, it seems to me. Peter, help us out here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, correct, correct my misreading of the law. Not at all, David. In fact, I was ruminating on how student expression rights started with Tinker and Des Moines, the right to a silent protest in the classroom. And so the Supreme Court towed into this by saying that there are expressive rights in the classroom. But what we're seeing now, and I think you've drawn attention to it, is that this goes beyond just the right to express oneself in the classroom. This goes to the level of being able to control what's taught, who teaches it, and how it's taught. The squeezy academic freedoms of another generation are very much trending now towards students. And I think there's been a shift in the freedoms in the academy thinking towards the rights and freedoms of students, as opposed to institutions or faculty members. And this is something I think that's hard for institutions that were built in the 20th century to grapple with, is there's been a seismic shift in the point of emphasis. And David, I think you nailed it. I've even talked about how I think tenure is in shifting in many ways from faculty members to students, because the students are getting the expression rights, they're getting the procedural rights. Meanwhile, the faculty members are seeing that diminish. Um, and when I talk to colleagues who teach, they they feel that. And whereas the other thing that connects to our dialogue is as every tuition becomes very precious to the existential state of an institution, shall we say making sure the customers are satisfied becomes a major objective. And that that itself, to some extent, runs in an interesting lane with what McMahon said at Hillsdale, because she was really pushing the idea of challenging students, et cetera. But anybody that's in the classroom knows that if you challenge the students too hard and directly, they complain about you, they might leave, and it puts pressure on the institution. So, you know, making sure the customers are happy and satisfied is a big part of the job. And and again, that cuts into being controversial or challenging or even expressing one's views in a way that one might think might generate controversy in some way.
SPEAKER_02:Which seems to go against the whole premise of higher at least graduate education. I mean, I remember my master divinity program, we had a paper that was assigned to critique our own denomination and its beliefs. And so, which again, I think may have offended some people, you know, but this is this is what we're we're doing in graduate education, is uh it's helping people see and expand uh their worldviews and their mindsets. And also, I think, Peter, back to your point about the narrative of of history is is to look factually at things. And this all again, the this seems to be a press a press on not only just what's being taught, but it maybe the way it's being taught, as you say, it's it's going to change that a little bit. Um, David, give me some thoughts about again. Now we've we've laid some of this out. Now, what do you do?
SPEAKER_00:Well, so I, you know, Peter's brought up Secretary McMahon's speech at Hillsdale. And if you look at it, there's a a place where she summarizes the four things she encourages higher education leaders to think about and do. I'm gonna start with three of them, and I'll come back to the to one of them in just a minute. Prioritize personal growth, seek and serve the truth, model intellectual leadership and produce future leaders and thinkers. Who among us would not think that that's consistent with the mission of higher education, right? I mean, I think we certainly think about formation and personal growth and development. We certainly want to seek the truth. We certainly want to model intellectual leadership and produce future leaders and thinkers. I think that the challenge here becomes when you try to fill those endeavors with specific content, right? So seek and serve the truth. And then there's a link to the truth, right? And somebody's defined what the truth is and prioritizing personal growth. Are you, you know, how do we open that up to the expansiveness of our understanding of what personal growth can entail and model intellectual leadership and produce future leaders and thinkers? Is it the critical, open-ended, original research type thinking that we're we've espoused in in higher education and theological education for a long time? Is it is it the question of how would you critique your own denomination? Or is it how do you become a good leader and thinker that applies the knowledge that your denomination has developed over centuries or decades? The third one that I've left out, which I think I wish there was a different verb here, she says preserve and defend civilization. I wish there was, I wish instead of defend it was advanced, and maybe instead of preserve, it was understand, or maybe that maybe a room for cultivate somewhere in there. But I think that tips the hand there in terms of where the norm is. And I think that that's what we need to pay attention to is that uh there there is something that the secretary seems to be wanting to keep the same. And and I I think she's sees the higher education as being part of that endeavor of keeping that the same. And I think that we would all agree that these other attributes are really important for higher education and theological education, except for we might take a more evolutionary view of how civilization changes as a result of those activities over time. I just think that that's where we as educational leaders need to find the common ground so that we can say, yeah, we we do want to seek these things, we do want to promote inculcate these kinds of attributes in our students. But I think we have to find respectful ways to explore what are the what are the costs of that, what are what are the risks of that, and how might that lead us to different conclusions and what happens when we do come to different conclusions, when we have an earnest disagreement about what the truth is.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well uh so again, let me let me state this again. If you just popped into the podcast somehow, I'm gonna post that speech on our website, interest.org slash podcast. Two, I will note that education has always been or has for years been political. There have been other leaders have tried to drive things one way or another. This is perhaps, as we've talked about, I think a little more directive than we have seen, right? And and Peter, you are the expert on this. I mean, it is that a fair thing to say. I don't know that since the education department's been around, it has been used quite this way.
SPEAKER_01:This is very interesting. And going back to the the four things that Linda McMahon lined out in her speech, I think it's interesting that you picked four, because the Sweezy case, which we've relied on for years for the four academic freedoms of institutions. Instead of articulating four academic freedoms, this speech articulates four academic responsibilities, which comes, and I think that's the shift that this almost this speech almost reminds me a little of Kennedy's speech when he, John Kennedy's speech when he was inaugurated. Don't ask what the government can do for you, ask what you can do for the government, sort of switching the narrative from a New Deal narrative to something more mid to late 20th century. And I and I think you've got to realize this speech was carefully constructed with these things in mind, even though there's no specific reference to a particular legal case from the Supreme Court. What Lyndon McMahon basically just said is the mission of the Department of Education is not to protect historical academic freedoms of institutions, but to insist on the responsibilities that come associated with federal funding. And these are the four.
SPEAKER_02:Well, there's a I mean, there's a a bit of a sense of not a bit of a sense, there's certainly a thread in there that higher education has failed. And that that this is this is the remedy. I want to start to wrap up though on that on that thought. I mean, it's the federal government coming in to write, set out a plan for academic success or student focus or whatever it is, and we've talked about that, and we've talked about how they've done it, what they're doing, and there's going to be potentially great, great effects on higher education. I think the question now is uh here, what do you do with that? I mean, because there are, again, we've talked in previous uh segments of the podcast about how school there are schools who are going to be deeply, deeply affected by this from a policy or a theological viewpoint that they believe in certain situations of equity, diversity, inclusion. There are other schools that are going to be affected by the revenue model, David, as you pointed out. There's there's already that effect being felt. So I think the question, I mean, there as I as I said earlier, kind of two sides of this is one, the mechanics of business models, financial models, which you've talked a bit about, David. And then we've talked in the past a little more about belief, theology, how you're going to carry this out. So best advice now or ways forward.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this is where I think I would go back to what we said in the last podcast is what do we have other than our theological convictions here in the theological education world and our beliefs? And I think the challenge, though, for institutions is to make sure that what you're articulating and the way you're articulating them are in fact theologically held beliefs. And it's been difficult, I think, for people to distinguish theological beliefs and civic beliefs. And to the extent that you're using civic language to express theological conviction, this is a time where I think you might want to go and recover the the theologic, theological language, right? And the theological roots of that language. And so be sure that you're basing what you're doing, not in kind of uh cultural hegemony around this idea, but you're you're actually drawing on the biblical roots or the the traditional roots of your faith and expressing that and living that out. In the end, then that's just that's authenticity, that's integrity. And whether you're on the conservative side of the spectrum or the progressive side of the spectrum, you know, you can you can own that. But I think it's gonna take some some work on our part to actually be honest with ourselves about how much of this is actually coming from our theological convictions and how much have we adopted civic language. To the extent that we've adopted civic language, I feel like we're more vulnerable, vulnerable to civic intrusion. And so I think I think we have to make sure that we're we're really clear that what we're doing is faith based in theological education and in the highest traditions of the academy.
SPEAKER_02:No, that's a that's a great point. And so what a but I want to make sure I'm clear on this. What you're talking about is our convictions. Like if we're talking about diversity, we're talking about inclusion, to talk about that out of a theological base and belief. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, there's language that obviously we all use. So I mean, the thing that's, you know, schools are scrubbing from their websites or the letters DEI, right? But, you know, in Christ there is no east nor west. You know, there's language there to use that doesn't use the language of the culture and that still gets to the same aims. And I would I would encourage us to dig back beyond and in front of the the civic language and make sure that we're we're mining our cultural beliefs and cultural norms to, I mean, I mean I'm sorry, our theological beliefs, our theological norms to guide our our decision making. And, you know, I I think that's the place where we have to go and just make sure that we're clear on are we expressing, you know, things that somebody outside of a faith context might hold with equal conviction and make sure that we're holding it with conviction because of our faith context.
SPEAKER_02:That's a really, I think, really good point, is that back to the mission, back to the theology we hold to express that. So, Professor Lake, let me ask you, uh, legal scholar that you are, and seriously, it you deeply understand this. What David's saying, is that going to hold up in this time?
SPEAKER_01:I think that this is the path forward. David and I have talked about this a lot independently, but I I think the strongest hand during this time is to get back to your roots and understand your traditions. I I think some of the theological entities are probably better positioned if they have the resourcing to articulate and examine views and get down to a microscopic level. But I tend to make things very simplistic sometimes to really understand them. And when I read Linda McMahon's speech, she said, you know, a lot of students come to college and they meet their spouse. You know, there's the that's part of what's happening. Immediately, you know, thinking about that for this podcast, I thought, well, if I'm studying to be a Catholic priest, I am not going into education to find a spouse. Right. And and so, and I and it's something as simple as that is articulating the value and virtue of celibacy for certain study. And I think, you know, we might not have felt the need to articulate that as a theological point because it was sort of taken for granted. I mean, everybody knows that Catholic priests are supposed to be celibate, but if we aren't saying it and living it in our everyday activities, then it potentially becomes more of a, as David puts it, more of a civic discussion. And it could easily trail into discussions about gender and gender identity and all these other sites of things that really aren't the intention of the theological perspective on this. So I say to folks, get to your roots, get to your authenticity. And I think I think the sector was kind of encouraged for a while to become a little more ecumenical. I think the law was sort of saying, hey, it's okay, you know, this this came through in the Catholic charities case. They said, hey, let's let everybody participate, not just Catholics. We won't proselytize. And then all of a sudden the Catholic charities was under fire for doing exactly what the law, I think, had been tacitly encouraging. And it doesn't mean that you have to abandon ecumenical activity, but I think you have to be able to identify your core and your roots. And I really couldn't agree more with David on this. I think that that's the path forward.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's a great way to sum it up. What a wonderful conversation. I am so grateful to you both for helping us in this sector think through it. My guest, Peter Lake, a legal scholar and expert in higher education policy. Peter, again, my gratitude for you. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. And uh Reverend Dr. David Rowe, always uh a great conversation partner. And David is a former president and now consultant in the field. Grateful for your expertise and insight as well.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Matt.
SPEAKER_02:Find out more on our podcast page, intrust.org/slash podcast, and we'll post that speech. We'll post some other things. I'll post a link to the sweezy case for those of you interested as well, and listen for more. Gentlemen, I'll look forward to future conversations. Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.com.