Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. has bashed his university’s students and faculty in dozens of emails since he started leading the school in 2008.
Falwell is son of the televangelist and pastor Jerry Falwell, who died in 2007. Since taking over his father’s Virginia-based university, Falwell Jr. has been caught up in several scandals and has asked federal agents to investigate recent leaks of his communications for evidence of lawbreaking.
In the latest round of leaks, emails show Falwell bashing students at Liberty, their parents, and certain members of the school’s faculty, according to Reuters.
A student at Liberty “is emotionally imbalanced and physically retarded. He is a very nice kid but is an easy target for anyone who will give him a little attention,” Falwell wrote in a 2010 email.
In 2011, Falwell referred to former engineering school dean Ronald Sones as “a bag of hot air” who “couldn’t spell the word ‘profit.'” Falwell called campus police Chief Richard Hinkley “a half-wit and easy to manipulate.”
In 2012, Falwell wrote an email directing staff to “only get [then-associate athletics director Kevin Keys] involved in something if you want it not to work.”
Students’ parents contacted the university in 2012 concerned about a plan to move freshmen into off-campus housing after the school started rebuilding its on-campus dorms over Christmas break. After one mother’s letter, Falwell wrote to a staff member to “tell them, if they keep complaining, we’ll tear [the dorms] down over Thanksgiving break!”
Falwell complained in a 2013 email of Liberty students using an off-campus gym to work out in instead of the university’s gym. Falwell called the students who worked out there “social misfits” and considered barring students from working out off-campus.
