Falwell Jr. sparking diploma sacrifice

Dozens of Liberty University alumni plan to return their diplomas in protest after the university’s leader, Jerry Falwell Jr., defended President Donald Trump’s response to the recent whitesupremacist rally and deadly car attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.

When Trump declared last Tuesday that there had been “very fine people” among the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville, and suggested a moral equivalency between those groups and what he called the alt-left, he found few prominent allies.

But Falwell — the conservative evangelical leader who became Liberty’s president after his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., died in 2007 — responded glowingly, tweeting the next morning: “Finally a leader in WH. Jobs returning, N Korea backing down, bold truthful stmt about charlottesville tragedy. So proud of realdonaldtrump.”

One alumnus created a Facebook group called “Return your diploma to LU.” By 10 a.m. Monday, it had 292 members. While not all of those were alumni, Georgia Hamann, one of the organizers, said a conservative estimate was 50 people so far planned to send their diplomas back.

“It felt like a shocking yet appropriate response to shocking and inappropriate comments,” said Hamann, 31, who graduated from Liberty in 2006 and is a lawyer in Phoenix.

“As alums, we have the power to say something,” the Facebook group’s description says, urging alumni to mail their diplomas to Falwell’s office on Sept. 5, along with explanatory letters. “Our public demonstration of revoking all ties, all support present and future, and urging the Board of Trustees to remove Falwell from the administration of L.U. will send a message to the school that could jeopardize future enrollment, finances and funding.”

Falwell told ABC that he praised Trump for “calling the Nazis and white supremacists evil.”