Recently elected U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn has been heralded by some on the right as the new, young face of the Republican Party. But his rise to prominence is wrapped in controversy, whether misleading the public about training for the Paralympics or deploying incendiary rhetoric in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol. Another notable part of Cawthorn’s background, however, is the semester he spent at Patrick Henry College, a small conservative Christian college about an hour from Washington, D.C. His campaign was forced to revise a Facebook endorsement from the school after the school’s founder, Michael Farris, denied endorsing him, thanks in part to accusations by several female students that Cawthorn was a routine sexual harasser.
But Cawthorn is only one of many former Patrick Henry students entering politics in Washington. Although it was only founded in 2000, Patrick Henry College—or, as the reporter Hanna Rosin dubbed it, “God’s Harvard”—has a legacy that reaches deep into U.S. politics. From the start, the college has been deeply focused on government and international relations. The school has several graduates who worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and administration, most notably former Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah. And its unique focus on international affairs offers a window into how the American Christian right views foreign policy as well as the United States’ role in the world.
