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Our story so far: The conservatives have won control of the Southern Baptist Convention and its seminaries. Will they capture Baylor, the "World's Largest Baptist University"? President Herbert Reynolds engineers a brilliant political coup and makes Baylor independent while the "fundamentalists" fume. Satisfied that Baylor is safe, Reynolds turns the university over to Robert Sloan, only to see Sloan unveil a plan for a most extreme makeover. "Baylor 2012" will turn Baylor—mainly a Texas undergraduate school—into a national university with Ph.D. programs and research professors. It will change Baylor from a Baptist university into an "intentionally Christian" university whose professors integrate their faith with learning. Dismayed, Reynolds and his allies resist. This produces so many controversies that Baylor becomes the Britney Spears of higher education. The Board of Regents turns against Sloan, he resigns, and the unknown John Lilley becomes president. Everyone wonders: What will happen to Baylor 2012?
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Today's episode: Supporters of Baylor 2012 publish a history.
The book is The Baylor Project, and its publication history sounds like a Texas tall tale. Editors Barry Hankins and Donald Schmeltekopf initially planned the book as a dialogue between proponents and opponents of Baylor 2012, with responses by Reynolds and Sloan. But Reynolds and all but two opponents refused to participate. The director of Baylor University Press indicated he would publish it, then backed off. The book "did not survive peer review," he said, but he refused to let Hankins and Schmeltekopf see the reviews.
Then John Lilley agreed to have the university itself publish the book, and 500 copies were printed. Enter Reynolds, shooting from the hip. He fired off one e-mail deriding the book as a "historical embarrassment," an unscholarly attempt to salvage "the concerted efforts of a few over the past decade to create a new orthodoxy at Baylor." Then he threatened Hankins and Schmeltekopf. If they published the book, he would release secret documents that he had kept in his "asbestos files." These would expose Sloan as a fraud. Claiming to be an expert in "psychological warfare," he was waiting for "the most strategic moment to strike" at "their soft underbelly." "Since you have dispensed with moderation," he closed ominously, "so shall I." At this point Lilley cancelled publication and sequestered the print run. Undaunted, the editors reworked the book and found a new publisher. Then on the eve of publication, Reynolds unexpectedly died. The secret documents remain a mystery.
The Baylor Project is not nearly as inflammatory as Reynolds' attempt to suppress it. Anyone hoping it will reveal the down-and-dirty about Baylor politics will be disappointed. Most of the Sloan-era controversies go unmentioned, including the idea of selling the 18-hospital Baylor Health Care System and the creation of a science-and-religion center devoted to intelligent design. The book consists of twelve essays on topics related to Baylor 2012, plus a lengthy response by Sloan. Though a few of the essays raise questions about how Baylor 2012 was implemented, none are critical of the vision itself. Their collective argument is that 2012 is a continuation, not an abandonment, of Baylor's traditions.
As this suggests, the war over Baylor's future has been fought on the battlefield of its past. Competition for students and money is fierce, so every college constructs myths about itself that it tends with elaborate care. History is sacrificed to the imperatives of image management. The enemies of Baylor 2012 deployed four of Baylor's favorite myths: (1) Despite Baylor's low tuition, it had already achieved true academic excellence. (2) Undergraduate education and faculty research are a zero-sum proposition. (3) Low tuition kept Baylor affordable for worthy students of modest means. (4) Individual freedom is the Baptist prime directive, and therefore individual freedom would safeguard Baylor's Baptist identity.
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