Leaving SPU Statement
I wanted to try to provide some sort of explanation to those of you who may have questions about why I am leaving my tenured position at Seattle Pacific University. I have been a professor of Art for over twenty years. From 2000-2012 I served at Whitworth University, and I was at SPU from 2012-2023. I was fortunate to work with amazing students and colleagues in both institutions, and I had a great adventure doing all the glamourous professor things: Working as a teacher, curating gallery spaces, getting grants, hosting visiting artists, serving as a department chair, helping buildings get built and starting programs. But if the truth be told, the job was always more about doing the less glamorous things: Going to meetings, janitorial tasks, IT support, printer maintenance, fixing broken plumbing and building contraptions out of 2X4’s and duct tape because the institution wouldn’t provide a budget to buy the proper equipment, and trying to say something helpful to crying colleagues and students.
It has all been a privilege. These jobs are impossible to get. The competition is insane and the chances of someone at my age/identity/career progression finding another full-time position someplace else is incredibly slim. In all likelihood this is the end of my career as a professor. I’m a crazy fool to leave this job. But one of the values instilled in me by my very conservative religious upbringing is that sometimes living according to your convictions will cost you. You need be willing to pay the price. I remain grateful for all the lessons those folks passed along, and even when we disagree I hope they will respect my desire to live according to my conscience.
The short answer about why I am leaving is that I can’t continue working for an institution that discriminates against fellow human beings who happen to have LGBTQIA+ identities. The story behind all of this is long and complicated. For anyone interested in knowing more the SPU faculty have attempted to explain themselves here: https://scholars.spu.edu/spufacultyaction/.
I didn’t know that these specific policies existed when I accepted the offer to come and work at SPU, but of course I was well aware of the current state of evangelical Christianity and all its attendant difficulties. I should have done my homework more carefully. Once the full extent of the conflict was uncovered, I stuck it out hoping to help change the institution from the inside. The vast majority of the faculty, staff, and students at SPU have been laboring patiently and in good faith for many years to change the policies that have caused these conflicts, but the SPU Board of Trustees has consistently resisted the will of the constituents they serve, and they have given no indication that they will budge on this issue. All signs point to an institutional leadership that is doubling down on the harmful culture wars ideology that has led to so much pain over the last few decades. And while the marketing and propaganda from the school will most likely continue to be full of social justice language, they will also continue to refuse to hire people who are committed Christians but happen to be in same-sex relationships and/or express queer identities.
The institution currently languishes in a state of contradiction due to the ideology that drives the few people who actually have the ability to exercise power within the governance framework they have created (Faculty/Staff are essentially powerless in the current system). The individuals who run SPU love to point to the open and moderate mission statement they have allowed the faculty to create when it helps them look good in the eyes of the world, and they downplay the closed and conservative ideology they uncompromisingly cling to because they know it makes them look bad at this moment in history. The mission statement SPU faculty and staff are expected to live out is completely undermined by the official ideology/hiring/lifestyle policies faculty and staff have to live by. This creates an ethically compromised environment where students (and many Faulty/Staff) aren’t told the whole story before they arrive, and then Faculty/Staff are left to deal with the harm that these exclusionary ideologies cause (without the power to change things in any way that would help). The link above explains the entire history of this conflict and lays the narrative out quite clearly.
Since they are opposed to collaboration or compromise the individuals who wield power in the institution need to decide what kind of institution they are going to force SPU to be. They could change their policies so the current mission statement is accurate (truly reflecting the ecumenical goals listed in the lofty language of the statement). They have repeatedly refused to do this in spite of numerous public votes/calls for change and even Faculty initiated offers of compromise. Their other option is to remove the parts of the mission statement that don’t align with their conservative ideology and make everyone sign off on it (Students/Staff/Faculty/etc). This is what most of the other ideologically rigid higher educational institutions in the United States do. They are resistant to do this because they know the result will be a very small and academically irrelevant university. Instead the leadership of SPU continues to allow this discordant state of affairs to exist, and they leave the people who are actually working in the trenches with students and the outside world to deal with the consequences.
If I continued working at SPU I would need to be able to represent the institution to the world and enthusiastically work to recruit students. Doing this would make me complicit in something I consider to be a serious injustice. I just can’t do it.
Due to how I grew up and the institutions I have worked in, I have spent my entire professional life working to moderate between dramatically different communities - the community I grew up in (conservative evangelical Christianity) and the community I chose (the creative arts). I knew what I was getting into, and I take full responsibility for my failures and complicity. It is clear that I have run out of options for helping change things at SPU (other than politely protesting, continuing to take a paycheck, and waiting for the old guard to transition out of leadership). I don’t know how many years I have left on this planet but I have come to realize that I don’t want to spend it living that way. Life is too short.
A predictable consequence of the decisions made by the SPU Board of Trustees is that the institution has experienced catastrophic budget problems, and in the fall of 2022 they announced that large scale faculty layoffs were just around the corner. I had always hoped to make losing my dream job count. I daydreamed that there might be some sort of collective labor action by the faculty that might lead to my termination or some other “going out in a blaze of glory” thing that would help me feel self-righteous and cool. However, it has become apparent that the faculty have no stomach for such things. As soon as the pending layoffs were announced everyone’s attention turned from resisting injustice to trying to keep their jobs. So I volunteered to be laid off in the hope that it will help one of my art department colleagues who would like to stay.
I will be done working as a Professor of Art at Seattle Pacific University in June 2023.
My “severance” will allow me to take a sabbatical and give me some time to think about what I should do next with my life. My family recently had the once in a lifetime chance to purchase some property next to a couple of our dearest friends north of Bellingham Washington. The plan is to move our life up there and see if we can live more simply and more intentionally. It is time to start anew. I am looking forward to the next season of my life. As I think about what is next, I hope it is defined by the following things:
1. Be an artist. I will keep making lots of work and sending it out into the world. Feel free to follow along at www.scottkolbo.net and via my Instagram @scott.kolbo https://www.instagram.com/scott.kolbo. Purchase some artwork. I’m going to be pretty broke!
2. Live a quiet life and work with my hands. I’ll need a day job and I’m getting older so I don’t know if laboring with the proletariat is all that realistic:), but I’m hoping to find some way to pay the rent that involves moving my body around a bit and doing honest work. If I get the chance to teach again I’ll take it - but I am happy to move into a new phase of my career with less responsibility and stress.
3. Stay as far away from evangelical Christianity as possible. I’m exhausted by all of the madness built into this worldview. I am afraid that the tragic fruits of recent history will only continue to ripen and rot off the tree. I’m curious to see what life is like outside of the shadow of the “evangelical Christian industrial complex” where I have spent my entire academic career. There are any number of expressions of faith that don’t see exclusion as a central requirement for “good” religious practice, and those expressions of faith are where I intend to spend my time from here on out. I hope to lead a life of love and joy for whatever time I have left. I wish the same for all of you!
I’m always happy to talk more with anyone who is interested. For any of my current or former students who read this I hope you know that working with you was one of the highlights of my life. I was twenty-seven years old and fresh out of grad school when I started this gig. I had no idea what I was doing. I will be fifty and I still have no idea what I am doing here at the end. For those of you I was able to help in some way I hope you pass it along and make the world a better place. For anyone I was not able to help I hope you will forgive me. Being a professor is a strange role. We all run into each other at such different and unpredictable moments in our development process. At the very least, I trust you know that I was trying my best and putting in the hours. I am choosing to focus on the good and joyful moments as I look back. The laughing and goofing off in the studio, the discovering and making and even the sadness and grief. It’s all a gift. I remain humbled and grateful to have had some sort of part in your life. Thank you.
Blessings, peace, and grace to you.
Scott Kolbo
April 26th, 2023