NEW YORK — The conservative scholar behind a high-grossing film that condemns President Barack Obama resigned Thursday as head of an evangelical college following a report about his engagement to a woman while still legally married to his wife.
The board of The King’s College announced school president Dinesh D’Souza was stepping down immediately after their discussion with him during a marathon meeting to decide his future.
D’Souza, director of the anti-Obama documentary “2016: Obama’s America,” has said he’s done nothing wrong. He could not be immediately reached for comment today.
The resignation was announced two days after the evangelical magazine WORLD reported that D’Souza spoke at a Christian values event in South Carolina and brought along his fiancée Organizers said they confronted D’Souza after concluding that he and his fiancee had shared a hotel room while attending the gathering.
D’Souza said he’d been going out with 28 year old Denise Odie Joseph II for 3 months. The Kings College students have said the now former fiancée had been hanging around the NY campus longer. It is also being reported she is married. (according to her Facebook page she married the end of 2011). He has been separated from his wife since 2010, and has a daughter.
D’Souza came out swinging at World Magazine, denying he and the 29-year-old shared a room, or that he was having an affair, and say the North Carolina conference organizer or World Magazine quoting him about ‘nothing happened’ was pure libel. D’Souza’s denial interview with Christianity Today yesterday was awkward.
In another interesting twist, the pr department at the 300 student college released a resignation statement for D’Souza he had not approved of.
CORRECTION: Due to a premature press release from The King’s College, Mr. D’Souza was quoted saying “[his actions] have not been consistent with the standard of leadership required for the position of president at The King’s College, and have created a distraction that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to continue in my role without adversely affecting the students and school I have grown to love.” This quotation was drafted by a press officer and not said or approved by Mr. D’Souza himself. King’s has attempted to correct the error but the erroneous quotation has been picked by some media.
The use of ‘premature’ is ironic.:^) His resignation statement:
I am grateful for the past two years that I have spent as president of The King’s College. But now it is time to move on. My resignation will enable The King’s College to go forward without distraction. And it will also enable me to address personal matters in my life as well as to pursue new opportunities made possible by success of my recent book and film.
Fred Clark at the Slacktivist points out that D’Souza’s politics, his racism and homophobia endeared him to many evangelicals. He commanded about 10 thousand dollars per speech at various religious/political conferences. No, no, no –we were fine with the racism, but the adultery is upsetting:
But D’Souza wasn’t embraced by the evangelical tribe just because he affirms the creeds and C.S. Lewis. What made CT and King’s College and the rest of mainstream evangelicalism decide that D’Souza was one of us was his political history — a former policy aide in the Reagan White House, D’Souza is fiercely opposed to abortion, gay rights, feminism and progressive taxation.
Yes, conspiratorial warnings about Africans and anti-colonialism contributed to D’Souza’s legitimacy among evangelicals.
As Sarah Posner said, “D’Souza’s … rise in the evangelical world is due in no small part to his conspiracy-minded claims about President Obama’s ‘Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.’”
The film 2016: Obama’s America, directed by D’Souza and based on one of his books, is fourth highest US grossing documentary and has brought in over 33 million dollars.
The King’s College statement
The small college was formed in NJ in 1938 and closed in 1944. Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) started it up in NY five years later. The college teaches business, politics and philosophy.
The student newspaper reports the school may now move away from being known as a politically conservative institution and more toward its original branding as a Christian college.
Update: Ms. Joseph II FB page is still up:
I know that schadenfreude is not really a Christian emotion, but really!
Hey Dave, good to hear from you:^)
Yeah, eh?
I would like to point this out to my evangelical colleagues. Read it for yourselves, biblical teaching supports polygamy. Amen.
The school bought themselves a celebrity boss and it came back to bite them; I hadn’t heard of the school until D’Souza came on board. There’s no good excuse for his love life as a boss of a Christian school.
As far as racism is concerned, it looks more like pro-Anglospherian ethnocentrism, going after the anthropologist mom and a pro-other-culture leaning that such folks have. If you have more than rap of him as a racist, let me know.
Oddly enough, FWIW, I knew about him best from his days at the cosnervative vstudent newspaper The Dartmouth Review and his subsequent book Illiberal Education.
If Obama’s crew doesn’t use this to discredit the film, I’ll be amazed…
He should go hang out at Morningstar, record a video apologizing and get his ‘Certificate of Restoration’. Problem solved.
Let the Lord defend the right of Dinesh to have a few wives, it is taught in the holy writ, that we should at least have two wives:
“Deuteronomy 21:15-17
15 If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, 16 when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. 17 He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.”
Rick-It will be used to discredit the film, but the more secular conservatives will tend to look the other way; there’s no shortage of GOP types that have been on second or third wives (Reagan, McCain, Newt, Rudy). It will hurt him with more religious conservatives, but others will just ignore it and revel in the liberal-bashing.
Nice quip, DG, but D’Souza is about as far away from the NAR types as you can get as a Catholic who was cool with Reformed theology. He’s got some issues, but that isn’t one of them.
And to be biblical, the Pauline criterion for choosing a bishop, is to find a man of one wife. Well, if the early converts all have one wife, that statement is not needed. Rather, it is common knowledge that some has one and others may have many wives. He does not condemn the polygamous practice of his day. If it were so, St Paul would have laid down strict rules about monogamy. It is only for the poor, but the rich who could afford larger homes, and more women, he does not condemn. Why mock the teachings of the holy scriptures when it specifically spells out polygamy is a common and biblically sanctioned practice? Would there not be an honest man here to defend the liberty and freedom granted to us from the holy and sacred writings of the Jews?
In short, Dinesh should have quote the Deuteronomy text, and writings of St Paul. He does not have a fiancee. Indeed, that was his woman, the second wife. He has already ‘lorded’ over her and she has found grace in his eyes. This is how ancient Jews views marriage, that is, is a woman has found grace and favor in the eyes of her master, such that he lords/masters over her and becomes his man. This is the will of the God and Jesus Christ our Lord. So be it, Amen.
Can anyone comment why it is wrong to have more than one woman? Biblically it makes perfect sense.
This is feeding the Troll Lord, but I’ll bite.
The NT points towards a one-wife-per-customer ethic; you don’t have either Jesus or Paul discussing polygamy. The closest it comes is the trick question the Sadducees ask Jesus about a guy who was widowed multiple times as who which of the wives would he be married to in Heaven. That seems to imply the concept that polygamy was no longer an option.
Culturally, polygamy results in a surplus of single males, which is rarely a good thing. China will be facing that in the future as the one-child policy results in a shortage of females being born, since parents want the one kid to be a boy and kill off girl fetuses when they can.
I don’t believe it was God’s laws. It appears to me that it was a set of principles. These resulted in laws set up for human relationships. In God’s creative work He created woman from man. In the marriage of Adam and Eve, they were created for each other. Even with todays world the marriage can be desolved by a set of laws, made by man. I look at a lot of the Bible like one big history lesson. It can go on and on. Yet you can always trace some pieces of history to tie it together.
mr chung…are you still living in O.T times?
I am the Lord and I changeth not, and so saith the Lord, Brano.
Mark, the Chinese people can find other solutions to their marital problems. There are places in China, as a cultural practice to share their wife, that is, one woman can be married to two or three other husbands. I am not sure why this is not acceptable. In Abraham’s days, his wives were all taken as spoils of war, same as David. Had they not been recovered, they would have to marry to their captors.
Polygamy is scriptural. Question is, modern evangelicals find it disgusting. But why question the word of god and its legal status?
I didn’t realize that the word of god is subject to “the times.” Or that a perfect god tweaks and hones his perfect plan through the course of time through trial and error and cultural norm. The author of “In the beginning…” himself had two wives and still found favour in the sight of the lord. Jesus compared himself to the bridegroom of the ten virgins. Multiple wives – no negative connotation, completely acceptable. Emphasis isn’t on the number of wives, but on the relationship of husband and wife.
It might be wise to note that the B-I-B-L-E was written by ancient middle eastern “men”. Why wouldn’t multiple wives be kosher? Coincidentally, the god they invented bore a striking resemblance to themselves – their needs and desires, and this god largely conformed to cultural practices of the day, including polygamy. Monogamy is celebrated today not because of the word of god, but in spite of it.
Ah, exactly.
Let us make gods after our image, in our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the seas, over the birds of the sky, and over all the living creatures on the earth. So we bless them, saying to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Gods were made in the images of men, after their likeness, and in the image of man, gods were fashioned, male and female created us them.
…What in the blazes are you quoting,Dood!?…It’s kinda like some ass backwards,toist,buddist,drunken,..texas scramble,mumbo jumbo,I have been up for 3 days straight…thing??
I am the Lord, dude. Which part do you not understand?
ok then…Lets define “Lord” ,for the daily double Alex
I am the Lord and I changeth not. Yaweh. I am the Lord, and I also changeth not, the Lord Ben Chung. Both are guilty and change. So be it, Amen. Dinesh also has a few women, and he too changes his marriage vows. Do you have a few more women also? I only have one.
I would ask Dinesh what he actually has done in private with the girl. Did he or did not having any sexual contact with the girl. And if he did, was it legal, that is, woul dhe be able to stand in front of his deity and defend the act. Or is it better to say that his deity is his own stomach, that he will it as he wishes as long as this deity brings him wealth, status and women? I find it difficult to believe that Dinesh is a Christian. A man is not a Christian by profession, but by his lifestyle. If he cannot keep his pants unzipped, and his hands to himself, he is the latest idolized god of the Right who falls like the log in my backyard. Are there Christians out there condoning this Religious Right god figure? Are you also practicing the same? I am a Free Thinker, and also the Lord, but I do only have one wife. No, I am not gay, but I suspect St Paul and Jesus could be.
madness & heretical…
Brave, courageous and God!
…I am going for a Guinness
Try to find a Dinesh thing! Find a strange woman, it is biblical!
Brano, where are you? Says the Lord.