Dr. John Simmons, chairman of the Board of Trustees, addressed questions about the Board’s presidential search process and the decision to announce Bruce McLarty as Harding’s fifth president ahead of schedule.
The Board planned to announce their decision in January of 2013, but Simmons said the Board reached a decision during Homecoming weekend and chose not to delay the announcement.
Simmons said McLarty’s name “continued to rise to the top” during the yearlong presidential search process, which included extensive interviews and psychological and values profiles for several candidates. The Board did not release the names of the candidates.
“(McLarty) understands himself and knows his own limitations,” Simmons said. “He is comfortable in his own skin and will craft his own administration in a distinctive way just as his four predecessors did. He had and will have his critics as any leader will, but he will prove himself to be up to the challenge of this work.”
Days after the announcement, some notable alumni questioned the appointment in posts on Malibu Church of Christ minister Rich Little’s blog. Little, who teaches at Pepperdine University, summarized the bloggers’ concerns when he surmised that the Board chose McLarty because his religious ideology agrees with the Board’s selection committee and his predecessor, Burks. Those religious ideologies, Little said, are the “very weakness that will continue to isolate Harding from the broader fellowship of Churches of Christ and Christianity at large.”
McLarty said in a Nov. 15 Christian Chronicle article that he will maintain the standards set forth in the 2008 expansion of the Harding University mission by the Board of Trustees. The mission states, “Though we live in a time of significant confusion over our brotherhood’s identity, we are determined that Harding University will become captive to neither a rigid legalism on the right nor a formless liberalism on the left.”
However, Little said the Church of Christ fellowship has changed and that Harding’s commitment is more associated with what the middle position was 30 years ago than with what the middle position is now.
Simmons responded to critiques of McLarty, saying that the Board appreciated McLarty’s communication skills, compassion and ability to delegate.
“Though (McLarty) is not from an academic and classroom teaching background, his work in teaching in ministry should not be discounted because he has successfully prepared hundreds of sermons and lessons for very discriminating audiences of well-educated people with lots of answers and young students with lots of questions and has been able to communicate to both,” Simmons said. “He has not come from an administrative background, but again he understands people and will be able to delegate to the deans, vice presidents and provosts the work that they are experts in already. As a growing university, we need to be doing more of that anyway.”
Burks spoke during the Nov. 1 press conference when McLarty was introduced as the next president. Burks said he could smile with the assurance that Harding would be in good hands.
“I’ve known (McLarty) for more than 25 years, and I know him to be a man of deep commitment and deep faith,” Burks said. “(He is) a man whose integrity is without reproach, and I know that he is going to do a very good job at leading Harding into the years ahead.”
