Liberty University (LU or simply Liberty) is a conservative, private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer L. Towns as Lynchburg Baptist College, Liberty is among the world's largest Christian universities and one of the largest private non-profit universities in the United States by total student enrollment.
Liberty University consists of 17 colleges, including the Helms School of Government and the Rawlings School of Divinity. Most of its enrollment is in online courses; in 2020, the university enrolled about 15,000 in its residential program and 80,000 online. Liberty's tuition fees are among the lowest in the United States. Liberty's athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Liberty Flames. Their athletics program joined Conference USA as a full member in 2023.
The university requires undergraduate students to take evangelical biblical studies classes. Its honor code, called the "Liberty Way", prohibits premarital sex, cohabitation, any kind of romantic relationship between members of the same sex, and alcohol use. Liberty University is perceived as a "bastion of the Christian right", playing a prominent role in Republican politics under Falwell and his son and successor Jerry Falwell Jr.; Falwell Jr. left in 2020 amid allegations of sexual and professional impropriety and was later sued by the university. Dondi E. Costin is the current president of Liberty University.
The university has faced multiple controversies, including allegations of mismanagement of sexual assault cases, racial and LGBTQ discrimination, censorship, and regulatory violations, the last of which culminated in a $14 million Clery Act fine in 2024 for systemic underreporting of campus crimes.
History
Establishment and early years (1971-2007)
The school was founded as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971 by televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer L. Towns. Falwell, already a pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, served as the first chancellor of the school. From 1979 to the late 1980s, Falwell Sr. also headed the Moral Majority, a right-wing political organization. In the first years of the university, students stayed in a variety of locations, including a hotel in downtown Lynchburg, a previously abandoned hospital, and an entire floor of a Ramada Inn. It wasn't until 1981 that all students lived on campus.
In 1974, Lynchburg Baptist was given a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by the IRS. The school changed its name to Liberty Baptist College in 1976. Officials said the change aimed to distance the school from the name Lynchburg, which is often mistakenly associated with lynching; co-founder Towns also said that Falwell Sr. wanted to use the name "Liberty" to ride the enthusiasm for the Bicentennial of the United States.
The name changed again in 1984, to Liberty University. In 1985, the university launched a distance-learning program by mailing VHS tapes to students; this was the forerunner to Liberty University's current online program. From 1987 to 1991, Liberty underwent an IRS probe that resulted in no change to Liberty's status. The probe began in the aftermath of the PTL Scandal, and was a part of wide spread investigations by the IRS into the activities of Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Oral Roberts.
In its early decades, the university was kept afloat financially by major donors; it was placed on probation multiple times in the 1990s by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools due to heavy debt loads. In 1990, the university's debt totaled $110 million; but by 1996, this had decreased to $40million. In 1994, Sun Myung Moon's Women's Federation for World Peace funneled $3.5 million to Liberty University, and in 1996, Moon's News World Communications loaned a further $400,000 to Liberty. Liberty was able to finally pay off all of their debt in 2007 after Falwell Sr. died, as a result of $29 million in proceeds paid out from a life insurance policy taken out on Falwell Sr.
In 2006, Barron's Profiles of American Colleges ranked undergraduate admission to LU as "competitive", its fourth-highest of six ranks. When high-speed Internet connections became more widespread around 2005, Liberty began to offer exclusively online courses to a larger adult population.
Modern history (2007-Present) After Falwell Sr. died in 2007, his son Jerry Falwell Jr. became the university's second chancellor and fourth president.
In May 2009, Liberty University withdrew official recognition of the student Young Democrats club, saying that the club's political positions, including support of abortion rights, conflicted with the school's. Liberty's College Republicans club remained officially recognized, and continued to receive University funding. After criticism however, Liberty announced new policy that would treat all political clubs as unofficial, allowing students to meet on campus, but not providing any funds to such clubs. The new policy also stated that Liberty reserved the right to refuse a club's ability to meet on campus if a club endorsed "candidates whose views are contrary to the university’s Christian mission."
In 2011, Liberty blocked campus internet access to the website of a local newspaper, the News & Advance, after it reported that the university received more federal financial aid than any other school in Virginia. Falwell Jr. refused to say why the block was imposed, said it was unrelated to anything published in the newspaper, and said that the News & Advance had been blocked on campus before. The block was lifted one day after the financial-aid article was published.
In spring 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Liberty allowed some students to return to campus after spring break over the objections of the city's mayor and contrary to the practices of most U.S. colleges and universities. When a ProPublica reporter and The New York Times photographer investigated why the university remained partially open, the university pushed the local district attorney to charge them with trespassing.
A few months later, then-president Falwell Jr. posted a picture of Virginia's then-governor Ralph Northam's black face in a tweet that many found racist. Some staff resigned in protest; some black students pursued transfers, many contending that the tweet was a symptom of a larger problem at the university. In response to internal and external criticism, Liberty University officials hired Kelvin Edwards, an alumnus and former NFL player, to lead diversity initiatives on campus, then fired him three months later. Edwards sued the university, alleging a breach of contract but the lawsuit was dismissed.
In November 2020, Liberty University graduate and athletics booster Bob Good won a seat in the US House of Representatives, making him the first Liberty graduate to be elected to the House.
In fall 2021, an outbreak of COVID-19 forced all classes on the Lynchburg campus to go online-only for two weeks. More than 400 students and 50 staff members tested positive for the virus. The campus did not require COVID-19 vaccinations, masks, or social distancing. A football game continued as scheduled with no restrictions in place, while a convocation originally scheduled to be held inside the Vines Center was instead held outdoors in Williams Stadium.
On March 31, 2023, Dondi Costin was named president of Liberty University.
Liberty University was a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power in advance of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.
In July 2024, Liberty was sued for $300,000 by Ellenor Zinski, whose lawsuit alleges that the university violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it fired Zinski, who is transgender, since the university explicitly cited Zinski's gender as the reason for her firing. Liberty University contends that Zinski's contract was violated by knowingly breaking LU's policies that are based in their religious beliefs and thus protected by the Constitution. Liberty University's doctrinal statement lists "denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender" is an example of "sinful acts prohibited by God."
Presidents No.NameTerm 1 A. Pierre Guillermin 1975–1997 2 John M. Borek Jr. 1997–2004 3 Jerry Falwell 2004–2007 David L. Young 2004–2007 4 Jerry Falwell Jr. 2007–2020 5 Jerry Prevo 2020–2023 6 Dondi E. Costin 2023–present
Campus
The 17-story, 245-foot Freedom Tower, completed in February 2018, is the tallest building in Lynchburg. The tower holds a 25-bell carillon that includes a replica of the Liberty Bell, the latter of which was originally created as a part of a fundraising campaign for Liberty in 1976.
The Hancock Welcome Center celebrated its ribbon cutting ceremony on December 7, 2012. It is a three-level, 33,000-square-foot Jeffersonian-style building featuring an atrium, boardroom, theater, lounges, a banquet hall, several smaller counseling rooms, and a patio with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Champion Center, a 68,000-square-foot extension to the Welcome Center, is a memorial to Falwell Sr.'s vision for Liberty, and is set to open sometime during the 2026-27 school year.
Liberty University's Center for Music & Worship has hosted the Miss Virginia beauty competition, which sends the winner of the state to represent it in the Miss America Pageant.
Construction was completed in August 2009 on the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre, a synthetic ski slope. The centre was designed by England's Briton Engineering. The first of its kind in the United States, it includes beginner, intermediate, and advanced slopes.
The Observatory Center opened in spring 2013 next to the Equestrian Center. The dome has a classroom that can fit up to 20 people. It houses a RC Optical Systems Truss Ritchey-Chrétien and several Celestron CPC 800 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes on pedestals, able to roll out under a roof. The observatory serves three purposes: instruction, public nights and research. Student Activities controls the use of the observatory and is open to all students.
In 2018, Liberty University opened a $3.2 million on-campus shooting range to train students to protect themselves against shooters and terrorists.
Libraries and museums
Jerry Falwell Library The four-story, 170,000-square-foot Jerry Falwell Library opened in January 2014 with more than 250,000 items and room for another 170,000. They are accessible via a robot-assisted storage and retrieval system, which locates requested items within a large storage room and delivers them to the front desk. There are 150 public computers throughout the building for electronic archive research. The library has group study rooms, writable walls, balconies, terraces, and a vegetative roof. At its entrance stands a 24-foot media wall, powered by three Microsoft Kinect units and integrated using a custom program that allows visitors to scroll through university news, browse pictures contributed from students, and learn about upcoming university events.
The $50 million library is part of a larger $500 million building and expansion plan announced by Liberty University.
National Civil War Chaplains Museum