Grove City College President Bradley J. Lingo ’00 delivered a version of these remarks at The Institute for Faith & Freedom’s Annual Conference in April.
One of the great figures in the history of Grove City College, J. Howard Pew, hoped the College would “encourage and inculcate into the minds and hearts of students an abiding faith in God and country, a love for freedom, a respect for truth, an acceptance of personal responsibility, and a desire to contribute to the betterment of the human race.”
That statement is not merely a description of Grove City College. In many ways, it is a description of the American experiment itself. They are Grove City values, because they are American values: Faith in God and country; love for freedom; respect for truth; personal responsibility; and service to others and the common good.
Those are fundamental to the moral architecture that has sustained this nation for nearly two and a half centuries. They are convictions that animated the founding. They are the virtues that made it possible for our nation to flourish for 250 years. And they are the very values that Grove City College has sought to preserve and pass on for 150 years.
Considering that remarkable convergence of anniversaries this year, I want to suggest that Grove City College may be the most American college in America – a phrase inspired by an alleged quip of Theodore Roosevelt. I suggest this because Grove City College, from its early days to the present day, has been committed to the principles that made this country free and flourishing in the first place.
And I want to unpack what I mean by that in three steps: first, by reflecting on what the nation’s semiquincentennial asks of us; second, by remembering Grove City College’s own declaration of independence in Grove City College v. Bell; and third, by exploring what lessons that story has for today.
This College is committed to both faith and freedom. Some people don’t immediately see why those commitments belong together. Here’s the answer, and it’s as old as the founding. Freedom requires virtue, liberty depends on moral formation, and institutions matter – especially educational institutions – especially our “small platoon,” as Burke would have said, here in Western Pennsylvania.
As John Adams wrote in his 1798 letter to the Massachusetts militia: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He wasn’t the only Founder to believe this. James Madison likewise warned in Federalist 55 that self-government requires “sufficient virtue among men,” because without it, “nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”
What did they mean? They meant that human nature – selfish, ambitious, quick to anger – doesn’t govern itself. Without virtuous citizens, Adams warned, people can “break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
In short, founding documents and founding principles alone won’t keep us free. A free people must also be a formed people – moral, educated, and, as the founders would have said, religious.
Freedom requires virtue, and liberty depends on moral formation. But faith also requires freedom; the freedom not just to worship but also to live according to one’s beliefs. Faith cannot be practiced without freedom, and it cannot be compelled by a central planner; it must arise by God’s grace in the heart of the individual.
In other words, faith grows in the garden of freedom. Together, they grow when that freedom is ordered toward truth. The virtue that arises from faith sustains freedom. And that freedom, in turn, allows faith to spread and grow. And that faith cultivates virtue, which, in turn, allows freedom to flourish.
From its founding in 1876, Grove City College has been shaped by a joint and indivisible commitment to faith and freedom. That understanding places the College squarely within the American tradition – one that recognizes that liberty is not self-sustaining, and that education is not merely about skill, but about formation. Lincoln warned that the philosophy of the schoolhouse in one generation is the philosophy of the government in the next. Reagan reminded the country that freedom is never self-sustaining – that it must be renewed, defended, and handed on with each successive generation.
As we mark the nation’s semiquincentential, this College has never been so needed or so vital. Semiquincentential means half of 500. We’re halfway to being 500 years old as a nation. Embedded in there is an assumption that this country will endure for another 250 years. It expresses a hope – President Reagan’s kind of hope – that the American Republic will endure. Yes, Reagan also warned that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” and yet he was not a cynic. He believed renewal was possible. That is why he spoke of America as a “shining city on a hill” and “morning in America” for a nation capable of rediscovering its moral confidence. That vision matters as we observe these twin anniversaries.
The semiquincentennial calls on us to ask: Will we, can we, preserve the preconditions for liberty long enough, and faithfully enough, to pass them on? Institutions like Grove City College exist precisely to answer that question. At this College, like the founders, we also believe that independence – whether personal, institutional, or national – is worth defending, even when it is costly.
So as we celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is worth recalling a smaller, quieter declaration – Grove City’s own declaration of independence, made more than forty years ago, when the College decided to refuse federal funding to preserve its independence.
Federal money may arrive as help, but it rarely comes as a no-strings gift. It follows Washington’s version of the golden rule: Whoever controls the gold makes the rules.
We are seeing that lesson play out again in real time. Across higher education – even at institutions very different from Grove City – leaders are relearning a simple principle: If a school depends on government funds, it should not be surprised when government tries to shape what the school can do. The details change from decade to decade; the dynamic does not.
And as I recount the story of the landmark case Grove City College v. Bell, I want to acknowledge Robb Jones ’75, an alumnus and lawyer on the case who witnessed these events firsthand and recently recounted them in a Grove City Journal of Law and Public Policy article, and I also want to acknowledge legal scholar John McGinnis, who recently wrote about the case for Law & Liberty. I consulted both articles when preparing this talk.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government had begun to play a far more expansive role in higher education. This expansion rarely occurred through direct mandates. Instead, it came through funding – especially student financial aid. The logic was straightforward: If federal money flowed to students, and students attended private colleges, then the colleges themselves should be subject to federal regulation.
In other words, Washington found a way to govern without passing a direct command. It could attach conditions to funds and let the funding do the persuading. The question was no longer only what colleges believed, but what they could afford to resist.
One such regulation was Title IX, a civil rights statute, that among other things, prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs receiving federal assistance. Grove City College did not oppose the law’s stated goal. And as the courts noted – there was absolutely no evidence Grove City had ever discriminated on the basis of sex. But we did object to the underlying principle and the mechanism by which compliance was enforced.
The federal government required Grove City to sign an “assurance of compliance” form stating that it would comply with Title IX across the institution. And every other regulation related to Title IX that the government might impose down the road. Signing that form would have acknowledged federal authority not merely over a specific program, but potentially over all aspects of institutional life.
The College refused – and that set up a David vs. Goliath showdown between the small college we love and the federal government. That refusal triggered nearly a decade of litigation, culminating at the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1984 case of Grove City College v. Bell.
Grove City took the position that it did not accept federal funding and therefore did not have to sign the certificate of assurance, because it had consistently refused direct federal grants and other institutional aid.
But the College did accept payments from students who had received federal funds – in the form of financial-aid grants from the government. As to those dollars, the College argued they were not truly “federal funding” to the institution; they were funds that came through students, who were – and should be – free to use them wherever they chose, including at Grove City College.
The College analogized the students’ choice about where to spend the money to a welfare recipient who uses a government check to buy groceries – and noted that no one would call the grocery store a recipient of federal funds in that circumstance.
In short, the College argued that allowing students to use government educational grants – what later became known as Pell Grants – should not become a back door for subjecting the College itself to federal regulation.
The arguments in the case were nuanced – in part because the case spanned a change in administrations, from Democrat Jimmy Carter to Republican Ronald Reagan, by the time it reached the Supreme Court.
The Reagan administration made an admirable effort to prevent federal civil rights law from becoming a tool for regulating all the operations of a private college simply because students brought federal aid dollars with them – arguing that accepting federal dollars subjects a college to federal regulations but only with respect to the specific office or program that was receiving the federal dollars.
In the end, the Court largely adopted that limiting principle. It ruled 6-3 that Title IX would reach Grove City in a real way – but not everywhere. The nondiscrimination obligation attached to the particular part of the College connected to the federal assistance (in this case, the financial-aid operation), not automatically to every other domain of campus life.
That meant the College’s aid processes had to comply, while other areas – athletics for example – were not swept in unless they, too, received covered federal funds. And it meant enforcement could be calibrated to the program at issue, rather than threatening an all-or-nothing cutoff across the institution.
In essence, in that 1984 decision, the Supreme Court split the question in two. First, it agreed with the government that government dollars – though paid to students – were enough to treat Grove City as a “recipient” of federal financial assistance, triggering Title IX coverage. But second, the Court rejected the government’s broader claim of institution-wide jurisdiction. Title IX applied only to the specific “program or activity” that received the aid – here, the College’s financial-aid function – rather than to every classroom, hiring decision, and campus policy.
That program-specific holding made Grove City a flashpoint in a much larger national argument: Should civil-rights conditions attach narrowly (only where federal funds are used) or broadly (to an entire institution once any federal dollars touch it)? The country did not wait long for an answer. And, it turns out that the way that part of the story unfolded has profound implications for the current administration's attempt to use federal funds to rein in Ivy League institutions today.
Congress responded to the Court’s split decision by passing the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which was designed to overturn the Court’s program-specific limitation and make clear that accepting even a cent of federal funds in one area would result in complete and comprehensive regulation of all areas by the federal government. And that all federal funds received by an educational institution were subject to cutoff if any unit was found to be in violation.
Both the House and Senate passed the Act in 1987. Reagan vetoed it, warning that it “would diminish substantially the freedom and independence” of universities – what he pungently labeled a “big government power grab … cloaked in the mantle of civil rights.” Democrats in Congress nevertheless overrode that veto, transforming the federal funding relationship with higher education.
The practical consequence was enormous leverage. Once institution-wide coverage became the rule, the threat was no longer confined to a single office or department. An alleged violation – defined and pursued under an administration’s interpretation – could endanger federal support across the university. And because modern universities are deeply enmeshed with federal dollars – through student aid, research funding, and more – many receive the majority of their budget in federal funding – that leverage is a very real existential threat.
The bill was known informally as the “Grove City Bill” because its central purpose was explicit – to overturn the program-specific limitation the Supreme Court had recognized. Under the Restoration Act, if a college accepted any federal financial assistance – whether through research grants, direct institutional aid, or student-aid mechanisms that flowed through campus systems – then federal nondiscrimination rules would apply across the institution’s operations.
And with that, the new rule of the game became clear. Federal money would no longer come with program-level strings; it would come with institution-wide strings. At that moment, Grove City College faced a clear and consequential choice.
From that point forward, Grove City’s earlier, legally careful middle ground – limit federal reach to the particular program implicated – was no longer available. The College would either accept the federal aid ecosystem and the broad compliance regime that accompanied it, or it would withdraw from federal grant programs entirely and ask families, alumni, and private donors to shoulder what Washington had been subsidizing.
President Charles S. McKenzie faced what would be one of the most consequential choices in Grove City’s history. The College chose independence by withdrawing entirely. That decision was not merely symbolic. It was costly. It required sacrifice. We chose faith and freedom and decided to operate without the benefit of federal taxpayer dollars. That choice preserved something essential, the freedom to operate according to our faith, our mission, and our conscience. I
Forgoing federal largesse imposed financial discipline and forced the college to control costs, find alternative sources of funding, and avoid the administrative bloat that plagues many universities. It was the hardest, and best, decision ever made at Grove City.
So, what relevance, what lesson, does that history have for today?
Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve surely seen that the current administration is once again trying to use federal funding – and the strings that come with it – to exert influence on institutions of higher learning. Today, it’s Harvard University rather than Grove City. The shoe may be on the other foot, but the fundamental dynamic is the same.
As I wrote in World about my two alma maters: “Harvard University and Grove City College are very different schools. Grove City is a small, conservative, Christian college. Harvard is a large, progressive, secular university. But soon, they might have something significant in common. To preserve its independence, Grove City College has long rejected all federal financial assistance. Now, Harvard may be forced to do the same.”
As a Harvard Law alum, I received a letter from Harvard President Alan Garber explaining their predicament. He wrote: “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Those words reminded me of what Grove City College President John Moore said when I was a student: “As a private Christian college, we have a legitimate concern about federal interference in what we teach and how we teach it.”
What Harvard and other Ivy League institutions are now finding out is that independence comes at a price. Listening to the jeremiad from many in the higher education community might lead one to think that attaching strings to federal educational dollars is a new idea. It is not.
It’s what happened in the Grove City case. And it’s what happened when the Obama administration threatened the loss of federal funding if schools didn’t limit process for those accused of sexual harassment on campus or interpret Title IX to require letting transgender students use bathrooms, locker rooms, and compete on college sports teams in ways that correspond to the students’ self-identified gender identity rather than their sex assigned by biology at birth.
So this is not a new issue. But what is new is that until now, its been easy for a school like Harvard to accept federal funds because there has not been much daylight between Harvard’s priorities and those of the federal government.
And just to be clear, I think Harvard’s community should have the freedom to pursue the goals it deems most worthy, just like Grove City College should have the freedom to pursue its distinctly Christian and conservative vision of higher education. But after the events I just described neither of them can expect the government to foot the bill. I, for one would love to see a ceasefire in this arms race that would lessen the imposing power of the federal government on private educational institutions.
But there’s a deep irony here, as legal scholar John McGinnis has pointed out – the left bears direct responsibility for establishing the legal mechanism – some might say legal weapons – that have now been turned against the universities it controls. As McGinnis puts it, “progressive confidence that state power would reliably serve their ends overlooked the reality that government authority, once unleashed, recognizes no ideological master.” The names change. The issues change. But once the funding relationship is established, conditions and expectations inevitably follow.
When a school accepts money from the federal government, it subjects itself to hundreds of pages of regulations – and whatever conditions the government might impose down the road. Few schools would accept a gift on those terms if the donor’s name were John Smith instead of Uncle Sam.
Federal money comes with strings attached. Those strings compromise a school’s independence and threaten its mission. Independence is not an abstraction. It is the practical condition that makes everything else possible, the ability to govern ourselves, to hire for mission, to teach without compulsion, and to form students in faith and freedom.
It allows us to remain faithful to our commitment to being a conservative institution, one that conserves those things we care deeply about, including the values that have animated this country and this College for generations. When I say conservative, I mean the enduring commitments that have long shaped Grove City graduates: Orthodox Christian belief; free markets and limited government; objective truth; ordered liberty rooted in faith and freedom; and the great ideas, the permanent ideas and traditions of Western civilization.
We want to conserve what we love most – this College, and what we believe is best about this world. We believe some ideas are better than others – and we teach them. We believe some things are good and true and beautiful – and we point our students to them. Conserving and sustaining those things requires that we form students with the moral courage, intellectual seriousness, and wisdom to preserve the preconditions for flourishing life in a free society.
We stand for truth, we stand for faith, and we stand for freedom, even when that stand is costly. We want to do that as a college, and we hope that will inspire our graduates to do the same in their own lives.
That comes at a cost. Just as our nation’s independence came at a cost. The signers of the declaration pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” and many paid dearly for the freedom they proclaimed. Their courage still inspires us because it reminds us that the blessings of liberty are always purchased, and always worth defending.
I’m led back to where we began, with one of the great voices in our College’s story, J. Howard Pew, who understood that the most enduring work isn’t what we build with our hands, it’s what God builds in people.
Listen to his words – inspired by Daniel Webster: “If we work on marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work upon men’s immortal minds, if we imbue them with high principles, with just fear of God and love of their fellow man, we can engrave on these tablets something which no time can efface and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.”
Mr. Pew understood how vital a college like Grove City was in his time. I doubt even he could have imagined how much it would be needed today, how urgently our nation needs men and women ready to think clearly, live faithfully, and serve joyfully in a changing world.
The twin milestones we celebrate this year belong together because the same convictions that have sustained our nation for 250 years have animated our College as well – faith in God, love for freedom, respect for truth, and a desire to serve something greater than ourselves. It calls to mind President Ronald Reagan’s sense of “morning in America.” From where I stand, it’s morning at Grove City College, too.