Loss of Top Scholars Exposes A Deeper Problem At Furman

The school is in no hurry to replace stellar profs Ben and Jenna Storey

The following is reprinted with permission from the Furman Free Speech Alliance, on whose excellent substack page it first appeared.

In 2022, two of Furman’s best professors, Drs. Ben and Jenna Storey, left their posts in Furman’s Politics and International Affairs department to become fellows in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. It was a major loss for the university.

The Storeys were excellent teachers, sage advisors, and beloved by many of their students. They were also founders and directors of the Tocqueville Center for the Study of Democracy and Society, which was (and is) one of Furman’s most spirited intellectual communities. Every year, its flagship Tocqueville Fellows program brought students from all corners of the political spectrum together to read great books and discuss some of history’s most serious philosophical questions.

You may have heard of the Tocqueville Program before because of its popular lecture series, which consistently brings some of the country’s best and brightest to campus. It was the Tocqueville lecture series, for example, that brought renowned author Mary Eberstadt to campus before the threat of student protestors—who tore down flyers for the event and suggested that Eberstadt was a fascist—led her to cancel her trip and pen a piece in the Wall Street Journal indicting Furman’s campus culture.

It has been almost three years since the Storeys moved to Washington, and still, Furman has not hired new faculty to fill their shoes. Why? The answer is simple: Furman is struggling to attract and hire qualified faculty committed to liberal arts education. This is a negative reflection on the entire administration, and this failure seriously affects the student experience at Furman.

Take the Tocqueville Fellows program that the Storeys used to lead. It is now being directed by the experienced Dr. Brent Nelsen, who has done an excellent job organizing an impressive lecture series for the 2024-25 school year. However, Furman’s failure to hire professors to replace the Storeys has started causing essential components of the program to fall by the wayside.

The most obvious example is coursework. The Tocqueville Program used to require students to take several political philosophy courses to be considered fellows. These courses helped students engage more deeply with the material and with one another. They also helped students ask better questions of outside speakers. In many ways, these courses were the heart of the whole program.

But coursework like this simply isn’t possible without professors—professors that Furman has been unwilling or unable to hire. Of course, this neglect of the Tocqueville Program hasn’t stopped the university from touting it to donors, parents, potential students, and alumni.

There is no better example of Furman pretending to value programs that promote open discourse and intellectual rigor while failing to provide the resources to make those programs possible.

This is an unacceptable situation. There is no excuse for Furman to go another year without hiring new professors to replace the Storeys.