TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B7
school’s senior vice president of
communications until Oct. 6, was
described by several former Lib-
erty employees as the right-hand
man to former president Jerry
Falwell Jr., who resigned last year
after a series of scandals.
After participating in several
interviews conducted by an out-
side law firm that was hired by the
university, Lamb said, he was
fired on Oct. 6 for trying to call out
the university’s failures to re-
spond to concerns about sexual
assault.
Lamb’s lawsuit, filed in U.S.
District Court in the Western Dis-
trict of Virginia, alleges that uni-
versity policies violated the feder-
al Title IX law prohibiting dis-
crimination based on sex at
schools that receive federal fund-
ing. Lamb said he believes he is
protected as a “whistleblower” as
part of the investigation the
school had him participate in.
Asked about Lamb’s allega-
tions that the university failed to
respond to concerns it mishan-
dled sexual assault and harass-
ment allegations, a Liberty
spokesman said: “While we are
generally reticent to comment on
personnel matters, we would like
to make it clear that Lamb’s ad-
vice on how to publicly respond to
the Jane Doe Title IX lawsuit
played no role in his termination.
His termination was the result of
a meeting about a recent review of
the area under his management.”
While declining to comment on
the Title IX lawsuit, the spokes-
man said the university “would
like to affirm its commitment to
take all allegations of sexual as-
sault seriously and in accordance
with the law.”
Lamb, who once worked for
prominent Southern Baptist lead-
er Albert Mohler and co-wrote a
book about former president
Donald Trump’s faith, was hired
by the school in 2018. Lamb said
in an interview he had no knowl-
edge that Falwell and Falwell’s
wife were allegedly engaged in a
sexual relationship with a pool
attendant, the allegation that be-
came the tipping point for Fal-
well’s departure from the school.
He said he was not aware of Fal-
well’s alleged private business
dealings with the school.
After Falwell left, the school
hired a law firm to investigate
what had taken place under his
leadership, and Lamb said he par-
ticipated in 20 hours of interviews
about a range of topics. In addi-
tion to discussing the school’s
handling of sexual assault allega-
tions, he also said he told investi-
gators about instances in which
the school allegedly violated its
501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, in-
cluding what he described as nep-
otism by the Falwell family. Fal-
well’s two sons and their wives
were on the school’s payroll.
Lamb said he was also asked a
lot of questions about the Falkirk
Center, the think tank founded by
Falwell and conservative activist
Charlie Kirk, whose contract was
not renewed by the school earlier
this year.
The lawsuit filed by 12 women
earlier this year alleged Liberty
has fostered a campus where sex-
ual assaults and rapes are more
likely to occur than they would in
the absence of the school’s pol-
icies. Some students on campus
have been wearing teal ribbons onLIBERTY FROM B1 their wrists to raise awareness
about the alleged cases.
When the Jane Doe case was
filed, Falwell’s successor as presi-
dent, Jerry Prevo, addressed the
entire university community. The
school also issued a statement at
the time that read: “Liberty has
invested mightily in programs
and personnel to help maintain a
safe campus and to support any
and all victims of sexual assault
who came forward.... We will
immediately look into each of
these claims to determine what
needs to be done to make things
right, if they turn out to be true.”
Jack Larkin, an attorney for the
women, said he is talking with
university officials about going
into mediation. He said an addi-
tional 10 women with similar Lib-
erty-connected cases have con-
tacted him asking for representa-
tion.
Robert Locklear, a senior from
Lynchburg who writes for the Lib-
erty Champion, the student news-
paper, said the topic of sexual
abuse has been a big issue for the
campus this semester.
Some students heard allega-
tions of rape, sexual harassment
and coverups on the Gangster
Capitalism podcast about Liber-
ty’s scandals, or about the a class-
action lawsuit filed this summer.
Then students began sharing
posts from some social media ac-
counts, and a student group
called Justice for Janes formed on
campus, Locklear said. In a p eti-
tion, the group called for a num-
ber of changes, including an inde-
pendent audit of the university’s
human resources and Title IX
offices, emergency call boxes on
campus, and consistent enforce-
ment and education about the
amnesty policy for people who
report Title IX violations. A story
from ProPublica that was pub-
lished Sunday sparked more con-
versations on social media, Lock-
lear said.
“Most students who know
about it are united,” Locklear said,
wanting to learn more and to
support the Jane Does.
Matt Morris, 19, a Liberty stu-
dent from Fairfax County who has
been critical of the university in
the past, said there has been
growing concern among students
that the school’s leaders may be
trying to cover up problems such
as sexual assault. There has also
been discussion about changing
some of the rules governing stu-
dent conduct on campus, he said,
known as “the Liberty Way.”
There are also those who aren’t
paying attention to the issue, he
said, and for many students, the
university’s current leadership re-
mains popular.
At convocation, “Jerry Prevo
gets standing ovations just by ex-
isting,” Morris said. “I encourage
everyone to pray for the school
and help out in any way that they
can, whether they’re here or not.”
Daniel Harris, 21, a senior from
Loudoun County who founded
the Justice for Janes campus-re-
form group said, “We’ve seen peo-
ple deeply disturbed by what is
going on, but more people need to
know about it. We’re trying to tell
people.... This is an ongoing
matter of public safety that needs
to be discussed.”
Ultimately, Harris added, “I’m
quite optimistic that the voice of
the students will be heard.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Fired Liberty s pokesman
files l awsuit against school
needed to build nearly 2,060
turbines to create those 30 giga-
watts in the Biden plan. “There’s
all this talk about public-sector
spending, but the private sector is
going to do a tremendous amount
of spending, too,” she said. “So
that’s the synergy that’s really
going to create this once-in-a-
generation opportunity to devel-
op the ports and cities of Ameri-
ca.”
The key to that is manufactur-
ing the turbines near places
where they will be installed.
“Many of these components are
too large to transport over road-
ways,” she said. “That’s the key to
these ports, especially in Virginia.
This can be a regional hub, like
other ports in New York and New
Jersey that will serve wind farms
up and down the East Coast.”
Building blades in the United
States, Granholm said, will be
much cheaper than transporting
them from Europe. She also sees
the finishing plant as a step
toward full domestic production
of turbines, prodded by tax cred-
its.
Granholm said she did some
teaching before taking the En-
ergy Department job. One assign-
ment examined the assets of the
states for creating clean energy.
Virginia’s top asset, she said, was
its ports as a catalyst for offshore
wind energy production.
“All kinds of jobs are going to
be created here. And that is super
exciting,” Granholm added. “But
what’s really exciting is this is the
first so 10 years from now, you’ll
be able to take your grandchil-
dren to the whole suite of off-
shore wind turbines and say, I
was there at the very beginning.”
Earlier, Northam noted that
the two operating Dominion tur-
bines had become attractions for
marine life and he was looking
forward to taking advantage of
that with his coming free time.
Turning to Granholm as she fin-
ished answering questions, he
said, “And we’ll go out and fish.”
[email protected]ginia is particularly suited to
staging and supporting offshore
wind construction. The port has
deep water access — 55 feet —
which will allow the 472-foot,
$500 million wind turbine instal-
lation ship to use it as a home
port. Dominion is building the
ship, named Charybdis, in
Brownsville, Tex. It is expected to
begin service in 2023. In addition,
the channels to the port are
unencumbered by bridges, some-
thing unique on the East Coast.
“Having a blade factory in
Hampton Roads is a key step
toward a more efficient domestic
supply chain with American
clean energy jobs,” said Robert M.
Blue, Dominion Energy’s chief
executive officer.
Kris Ohleth, the executive di-
rector of the Special Initiative on
Offshore Wind, said having a
local supply chain to meet the 30
gigawatts goal is “huge.”
To reach that goal, a study by
the initiative concludes that
$109 billion in private invest-
ment over the next decade iscently announced a road map to
developing wind farms along
most of the coastline, including
plots for seven major farms by
2025.
President Biden has pledged to
cut the nation’s fossil fuel emis-
sions 50 percent from 2005 levels
by 2030 through policies promot-
ing clean energy including wind
and solar. One goal is to build 30
gigawatts of offshore wind facili-
ties in the United States by 2030.
Granholm noted the Dominion
plan would fulfill 5.2 gigawatts of
that goal.
“The president says, ‘When I
hear the words c limate change, I
think about jobs,’ ” Granholm
said. “He sees the opportunity
that is presented in this clean
energy economy globally. It is a
$23 trillion market by 2030.”
Northam said the project
would help fulfill the goals of the
Virginia Clean Economy Act,
which commits the state to
c arbon-free energy production by
2045.
The facility at the Port of Vir-ginia Offshore Wind Project
27 miles off the coast. Dominion
says the wind farm will generate
enough electricity to power up to
660,000 homes at peak and avoid
as much as 5 million tons of
carbon dioxide being dumped
into the atmosphere annually.
Carbon dioxide is a prime driv-
er of global temperature rise.
Keeping that 2 degree Celsius rise
below preindustrial levels is con-
sidered by scientists to be key to
avoiding the worst effects of the
climate crisis.
Answering questions after the
announcement, U.S. Energy Sec-
retary Jennifer M. Granholm said
the project was symbolic of a new
economy based on clean energy.
“Building and assembling these
blades here is just the start of
what we see as a whole ecosystem
surrounding offshore wind,” she
said. “I’m talking about an indus-
trial ecosystem. Right now, all of
those jobs are overseas, largely in
Europe. But there is no reason
why those facilities should not be
here.”
Europe has 5,400 turbines
with a capacity of 25 gigawatts,
powering more than 8 million
homes. It added over 350 tur-
bines in 2020. The European
Union said in 2019 that offshore
wind accounted for 210,000 jobs
across its 27 member nations and
the United Kingdom. The United
States has only seven turbines off
the coast, including Dominion’s
two in Virginia.
Jim Lanard, the chief executive
of Magellan Wind, who has been
involved in developing offshore
energy for more than a decade,
said the blade finishing facility is
part of making the United States
competitive. Coupled with wind
tower manufacturing plants be-
ing created at the Port of Albany,
Sparrows Point in Baltimore a nd
the Paulsboro Marine Terminal in
New Jersey, it puts domestic pro-
duction on a promising track.
The Biden administration re-
PORTSMOUTH FROM B1
Virginia launches wind energy project
PHOTOS BY STEVE HELBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOP: Two offshore wind turbines are seen off the coast of Virginia
Beach. ABOVE: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) hands off a pen
after signing a bill related to offshore energy production in 2020.BY LAURA VOZZELLA
AND GREGORY S. SCHNEIDERrichmond — A Pulitzer Prize-
winning novel from 1987 has
suddenly become the hottest top-
ic in the Virginia governor’s race,
as Republican Glenn Youngkin
charged that Democrat Terry
McAuliffe b locked parents from
protecting their children from
explicit classroom material,
while McAuliffe responded by
raising the specter of book-ban-
ning.
At the heart of the issue:
“Beloved,” the novel by Nobel
laureate Toni Morrison about a
Civil War-era Black woman who
kills her own 2-year-old daughter
to spare her from the evils of
slavery.
The novel, inspired by a t rue
story, contains graphic depic-
tions of sex , violence and besti-
ality as it portrays the horrors of
slavery but was praised by New
York Times critic Michiko Ka-
kutani for having “the height-
ened power and resonance of
myth.”
With only a week to go until
Election Day, Youngkin released
an ad Monday featuring Fairfax
County resident Laura Murphy,
who waged a battle against
“Beloved” in schools beginning
in 2013 after her son — a high
school senior at the time — said
it gave him nightmares while
reading it for an advanced
placement literature class.
Murphy eventually took her
fight to the Republican-led Gen-
eral Assembly, which in 2016
passed a bill with bipartisan
support to give parents the
right to opt their children out of
sexually explicit reading assign-
ments.
At the time, about half of
Virginia school districts already
followed that practice, but the
bill would have enshrined that
in state la w. The “Beloved bill,”
as it was known, would have
made Virginia the first state in
the nation to give parents that
opt-out power. McAuliffe ve-
toed it as well as a similar bill in
2017.
McAuliffe on Monday con-
demned the ad, saying Young-
kin was using “our schools and
children as political pawns.”
“In the final week of this race,
Glenn Youngkin has doubled
down on the same divisive cul-
ture wars that have fueled his
campaign from the very begin-
ning,” McAuliffe said in a writ-
ten statement. “Youngkin’s clos-ing message of book banning
and silencing esteemed Black
authors is a racist dog whistle
designed to gin up support from
the most extreme elements of
his party--mainly his top en-
dorser and surrogate, Donald
Trump.”Youngkin’s campaign released
a statement saying the bills
“w ould simply have notified par-
ents of sexually explicit reading
assignments and given them the
choice of having their child re-
ceive an alternative. McAuliffe
continues to confirm every daythat he wants to silence parents
because he doesn’t believe they
should have a say in their child’s
education.”
In the 60-second video, Mur-
phy speaks directly into the
camera.
“When my son showed me his
reading material, my heart
sunk,” she says. “It was some of
the most explicit reading ma-
terial you can imagine.”
McAuliffe’s vetoes show that
“he doesn’t think parents
should have a say,” she says. “He
shut us out.”
The ad was viewed more than
200,000 times and shared on
Twitter more than 1,000 times
in the first few hours it was up.
Youngkin has increasingly
built his campaign’s momentum
on issues of parental grievance,
as conservatives nationwide ac-
cuse local school boards of pur-
suing a liberal cultural agenda.
The tactic seems to be working;
polls show that Youngkin has
gained on McAuliffe, and the
race is a dead heat.
Youngkin routinely gets his
loudest applause at rallies when
he promises to ban the teaching
of critical race theory in Vir-
ginia, referring to a set of
academic theories about teach-ing racial history that are not
actually on the state’s public
school curriculums.
He has also tapped into pa-
rental outrage in Loudoun
County over a case in which a
student was accused of commit-
ting sexual assault at one high
school several months after be-
ing accused of a similar inci-
dent at another school.
The issue of books started
gaining ground earlier this
month when Youngkin raised it
in the second and final guberna-
torial debate, accusing McAu-
liffe of vetoing the “Beloved”
bill in an effort to impose the
will of the state on parents.
McAuliffe defended it and said,
“I don’t think parents should be
telling schools what they should
teach.”
Republicans seized on that
quote, using it to appeal to
voters in crucial suburban
swing districts.
McAuliffe eventually re-
leased a TV ad in which he
emphasized his respect for par-
ents.
[email protected]
[email protected]Karina Elwood contributed to this
report.VIRGINIA
Fight over teaching ‘Beloved’ novel becomes a hot topic in governor’s race
2012 PHOTO BY CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Toni Morrison receives the Medal of Freedom at the White House.
Her Pulitzer-winning novel is now a flash point in Virginia politics