Education · Binghamton, NY Metro · September 14, 2026
SUNY Broome, Whitman College Deny Recognition to Christian and GOP Clubs
Two lawsuits and a legal threat have emerged this year over campus recognition of Christian and Republican student groups on opposite coasts, according to Just the News. At SUNY Broome Community College in New York, Campus Bible Fellowship and, separately, InterVarsity have sued after the college refused to renew recognition because CBF's constitution requires leaders and voting members to affirm "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." The college says its "open access" policy bars such requirements; Alliance Defending Freedom and Becket argue this violates free exercise, speech, and assembly rights, noting the college inconsistently applies the rule to other groups. CBF has been recognized continuously since 1996 until this denial. Separately, Whitman College's student Senate in Walla Walla, Washington, voted 25-0 to deny recognition to a new Republican club after subjecting its founder to an hour-long questioning on Trump, ICE, and Title IX — allegedly violating the Senate's own bylaws against discrimination by political belief. FIRE has sent a letter demanding a response by September 14; neither college has commented on the litigation or the letter.
Source: justthenews.com
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Why Bible-Believing Christians Should Care
Public universities and private colleges that promise free expression are contractually and, in SUNY Broome's case, constitutionally bound to viewpoint-neutral treatment of student organizations. When administrators strip a decades-recognized Christian ministry of funding and campus space because it requires its leaders to actually believe what it teaches, that is not neutrality — it is coercion dressed as nondiscrimination policy. The same pattern extends to conservative students denied recognition after ideological interrogation. Bible-believing Christians should recognize this as part of a broader jurisdictional dispute: civil authorities asserting the right to define who may lead a religious body, a decision Scripture reserves to the body of believers itself. Institutions that once tolerated orthodox Christian identity increasingly treat doctrinal fidelity itself as the disqualifying offense.
Can two walk together, except they be agreed? — Amos 3:3
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From the book
The primary control mechanism is a weaponized Rule 2. Never go outside the expertise of your people implies its corollary: define expertise so that it excludes your enemy. The capture of a department rarely happens through a dramatic purge. It happens through the slow bureaucratic filtration of hiring committees. Prioritize ideological fit or social impact over scholarship and conservative voices disappear from the applicant pool before anyone has to reject one. New disciplines then generate their own peer-reviewed journals, producing a closed loop where radical ideology is validated by experts who are themselves products of the system that produced it.
— Chapter 19, “Capture in Higher Education”
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