Recently, several Jewell students have spearheaded projects critiquing aspects of life on the Hill and calling for change. In the last few years, we saw students challenge William Jewell College’s whitewashing of the history of campus buildings with the Slavery, Memory, and Justice project (SMJP), which eventually culminated in Jewell’s gesture of racial reconciliation and an examination of the role of slavery in Jewell’s past. Currently, Jewell is undergoing a lot of changes as a result of the recent declaration of financial exigency, and students have stepped up to demand openness throughout this process as well.

The focus of this article, however, is even more recent. Last semester, a group of students presented their findings of racial bias in the dorm lottery process, as well as detailing inadequate living conditions, particularly in Browning Hall. One of those students, Jacob Tetlow, has worked as an RA in Melrose Hall for several semesters. During this semester’s Duke Colloquium, he co-presented a further project about the Jewell experience, mentioning specific ways students’ lives could be improved by the college’s administration. 

This project was presented as a set with Mason Sullivan’s Black Freedom Struggle Symposium documentary, which addressed similar themes. While Mason highlighted the ability of Jewell’s small size to produce a tight-knit community, the stellar faculty we have the privilege of learning with, and the excellent academics, he found that Jewell has a need for more diversity and cultural knowledge within the student body. “I think in order for Jewell’s administration to improve on their recruitment practices and acknowledgement of different cultural groups they need to do more to have other cultures feel accepted on campus,” Mason stated in an interview with the Hilltop Monitor. “Recruiting students from different backgrounds is a good place to start, and over my last four years here I have been seeing major improvements in the amount of diversity I see on campus.” 

While the documentary maintains a mostly upbeat tone, Mason does acknowledge that it is “[a glimpse] into the reality of the school, not just what gets advertised, and … a critique and a call to action for administrators to see how the students feel on certain things and what that means for the future of the college.” As Jewell goes through changes, students have consistently stepped up to share their opinions and insights with administration, and call leadership to action on certain issues that affect the student body but may not be felt by higher-ups. Students often put themselves in a tenuous position by calling out the institution at which they are studying, so it is extremely important to maintain an accepting environment during this process. 

For the most part, Jewell has provided that accepting environment. Mason Sullivan noted that the response to his project was overwhelmingly positive, and that “the president of the college [then-interim president Susan Chambers] at that time came up to [him] afterwards to tell [him] how much she enjoyed it and asked what she could do to help” after his first presentation of the documentary at the Black Freedom Struggle Symposium. Mason also told the Monitor that Jewell faculty, staff, and students were nothing but supportive, expressing gratitude “for the support I got from faculty like Dr. Howard, [College chaplain] Rev. Dowling, and [admissions counselor] Will Palmer who were adamant to get this story to the people who needed to see it.”

Jacob Tetlow also recalls that “everybody that I’ve interacted with on the admin side that has talked to me about the presentation, it’s been like what you’d expect from critical thinking college,” denying that he faced difficulties from the college during the research and presentation process. However, academic freedom concerns have surfaced, especially within Jacob’s RA role and his ties to Student Life.

Mistakes Made, Mistakes Corrected 

On Apr. 17, the Student Life department informed Melrose RA Jacob Tetlow that he would not be returning to his position for the 2026-2027 school year.

When he scheduled an Apr. 22 meeting with Student Life asking why he was removed from his position, Student Life, represented by Greek Life coordinator Ryan West and Assistant Dean of Students Jennifer Herzog, originally gave two reasons. The first was that he had been too lenient regarding “room switching” in Melrose. Melrose is the only suite-style dorm not part of Greek row. Jacob told the Hilltop Monitor that “[t]o get into Melrose, you have to apply to be in a lottery, and these people wanted specific roommates and stuff, and so they just wanted to ensure that their team could make it into Melrose and then they sorted it amongst themselves afterwards.” Since Tetlow did not have the authority to unilaterally switch student rooms, he told the students that they needed to talk to Student Life. Tetlow confirms that this incident was not brought up to him until the meeting in which he was let go.

The second was that Student Life believed Tetlow had not followed the proper “chain of command” on the Browning Project he conducted last year. The project uncovered evidence of racial disparities in Jewell housing; the percentage of Black students living in Browning Hall, seen as one of the worst-quality dorms by residential students, was substantially higher than other dorms. (According to project data, about 30% of Browning residents are Black, compared with approximately 10% in Mathes, Eaton, Melrose, and Jones.) As part of the project, the team interviewed then-Dean of Students Ernie Stufflebean, Vice President of Marketing, Enrollment and Student Life Eric Blair, and others to obtain critical residential data for use in their project. 

According to Tetlow, Student Life stated that the project’s results made some College employees uneasy; Tetlow claimed that “[they] didn’t tell me who else, but [a Student Life staff member] did say that other people were made uncomfortable by that presentation that we gave, and it pushed buttons.” In a request for comment, College administrators confirmed to the Hilltop Monitor that “it was reported to leadership that a staff member’s personal opinion or response to Jacob’s research was shared and influenced decision-making to some extent.”

YikYak exploded with the news, to the point that peers in classes were asking about what was going on. On the night of April 21—twelve hours before Tetlow and colleagues presented a different documentary about campus community at Duke Colloquium—Jacob received a text from Eric Blair asking to meet with himself, President Drew Van Horn, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) Keli Braitman, who was present to resolve concerns about academic freedom. The meeting took place at noon on Duke Colloquium, and in it Tetlow was offered his position back. 

College administrators told the Hilltop Monitor that “In consultation with the President, Dr. Van Horn, VPAA, Dr. Braitman, and VPEM, Mr. Blair, Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Residence Life, Ms. Jennifer Herzog invited Jacob to stay on staff. Dr. Van Horn, Dr. Braitman, and Mr. Blair met with Jacob and a faculty advisor [who Jacob confirmed was Dr. Groninger in History] to discuss the circumstances and to assure him of his place on staff.” Dr. Braitman, vice president for academic affairs, told Jacob of her concerns that the incident represented “a violation of [his] academic integrity, and that’s one of the reasons we want to rectify it.”

Tetlow noted that he was “fired and reinstated” within the span of a week, suggesting that the College immediately recognized its error and reversed course.

Next Steps: Student Advocacy

Posts on YikYak, the anonymous campuswide social media app, were overwhelmingly supportive of Jacob and critical of the college’s decision not to rehire him as an RA. The anonymous users described him as caring, selfless and deeply committed to students. One post argued that not rehiring Jacob (JT)¹ over his study was “crazy” and accused the school of avoiding uncomfortable data. One user wrote that “[Tetlow] literally embodies who Jewell thinks they represent,” praising his service work, leadership and willingness to stand up for his beliefs. Another called him “the best RA I’ve ever had” and said he was being punished for “being a voice for the people.”One post claimed he had “done more things for Jewell than any RA has done.”

According to Jacob the YikYak reaction changed everything. “The reason that, like, I think I got this meeting … is because [of] the YikYak stuff,” he said in an interview.

The Aftermath: Academic Freedom At Jewell

This incident on its own has some disconcerting implications. However, this is not the only incident in recent Jewell memory in which the college has reacted negatively to a research organization investigating race relations on William Jewell’s campus. Back in 2020, a group of students at Jewell formed what they called the Slavery, Memory, and Justice Project (SMJP), which sought to explore the history of slavery in Clay County and how slavery shaped the early days of the college. This group, led by then-professor Dr. Christopher Wilkins, performed a deep scholarly exploration of the historical record, highlighting the lives of slaves in the community that surrounded Jewell’s campus and the pro-slavery views of Alexander Doniphan and other key figures in Jewell’s history. The SMJP received significant media and academic attention, with both the Hilltop Monitor and other KC-area news organizations discussing the SMJP’s efforts.

What made the SMJP’s work even more noteworthy is how little institutional support the SMJP had at the college. The SMJP’s official website, and many of the articles written about their work, highlight an extensive list of allegations that college leadership systematically restricted the ability of SMJP students to conduct research and discredited their work. The Pitch KC’s article on the subject portrays the relationship between the institution and the SMJP as tense, describing how the college refused to invite Dr. Wilkins or SMJP members to key meetings, refused to let the SMJP use the college archives, and used some of the SMJP’s findings without proper credit in their own historical accounts. The Pitch’s article further includes an email, sent by then-president Elizabeth MacLeod Walls, in which she asserted that “it is the sole responsibility of the Commission [a College-affiliated research team] to determine what is true.”

After the controversy surrounding the SMJP, Jewell created two key task forces to explore what happened between the SMJP and the college and to examine academic freedom policy at Jewell more broadly. The first was a special assignment for the Faculty Council, who were tasked with exploring the specific violations of academic freedom alleged by the SMJP. The second was the Student Academic Freedom Task Force to examine the state of academic freedom at Jewell and create a list of proposals for improving Jewell’s policies as regards student research. The student task force, which operated for around a month at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, produced a list of proposals for amending Jewell’s policy library. 

While both of these groups generated their own conclusions on the question of academic freedom at Jewell and shared their conclusions with college administration, none of their conclusions were ever released publicly despite requests by the Hilltop Monitor and other student organizations. It is therefore unclear if any of their recommendations were actually adopted by the college or not. 

The SMJP’s case is troubling, but it is important to remember that the college’s leadership has changed substantially since 2022, and the administration’s response to the current incident has been more promising. In their comments to the Monitor, College administrators emphasized that policy changes would result from this incident. When asked what the administration learned from the incident, Dr. Van Horn told the Monitor that

In my seventeen years as a college President, I have learned that there are best practices that every college should follow. In my eight months as interim president at Jewell, I have noted that many of these best practices were not in place. I have directed these practices to be implemented at Jewell. First and foremost is the training of faculty and staff regarding behavior expectations for all Jewell employees. Thus, we are beginning a significant annual training program that all employees must complete. When an employee violates one of these expectations, we intervene, educate, and, if necessary, take corrective action. In short, the administration has learned that it has not done a good job of educating employees of these expectations and intervening as soon as possible when one has been violated. (emphasis added)

The administration’s willingness to reinstate Jacob as an RA is a good sign that college leadership is more concerned about academic freedom and research at Jewell than they have been previously. While Jewell still has work to do in order to rebuild students’ trust in their handling of academic freedom concerns, the administration’s immediate and unequivocal decision to reinstate Jacob is certainly a step in the right direction.

Conclusions

Thankfully, this incident has a happy ending. Jewell students and faculty, when we band together, have significant power to cause change, even in administrative decisions which we often think of as disconnected from the student body. In an interview, Jacob Tetlow recalled that one of the main reasons the VPAA cited for reinstating him was that it seemed like he was “wanted as an RA here outside of just that one individual’s decision.” He also noted conversations in his classes that led to student advocacy on his behalf, specifically highlighting support from peer Sara Polovina and professor Dr. Gary Armstrong. This in-person advocacy, as well as online advocacy via YikYak, influenced the decision to bring Jacob back as an RA next year. Jacob went on to say that 

I think, you know, it is that advocation from so many people around Jewell, so many people saying that’s uncomfortable, I don’t feel comfortable with that, that’s not right. This school has been pushing us for a long time, it seems like now, and we’re not gonna let them push past the fundamental values that built this school. […] I think that’s what enraged and embroiled a lot of people to actually do something.

We hope Jewell listens to student concerns and continues to take academic freedom seriously in the future. For example, the Student Life department itself is not well funded and is experiencing a lot of staff turnover. Jacob noted within the interview that “Student Life has really been trying, especially since Ryan got there, to kind of be the unit in the admin that melds … cliques, that provides an opportunity for people to meet together as a group and build a community outside their individual interests. And I think that Ryan is really, really trying hard for that. And I don’t know if she’s necessarily fully supported. And now that we’re losing a lot of RAs, she’s definitely … going to be less supported next year.”

While student advocacy still has a long way to go, we have hope that college administration will continue to act quickly and address student concerns, protecting academic freedom and providing a safe space for Jewell students to express their thoughts about their college experience.

“We’re not just going to be able to solve it overnight, if we’re going to be able to solve it at all without tearing something to the ground, like a building. For my part in the presentation and in the documentary, I really wanted to provide a framing where people could actively do stuff to make that thing better. And really, it boiled down to just being able to see, you know, it sounds corny, but like your classmates having fun and smiling around campus and it’s like, okay, well, I want to go and do that too.” – Jacob

1. YikYak does not permit names on its platform; instead, all references to names must use the individual’s initials. ︎

Editor’s note (competing interest): The author of this article is a member of the Oxbridge Honors Program.

The end of the 2025-2026 academic year will mark the end of William Jewell College’s Oxbridge Honors Program. The program was already barely clinging on, with admissions for new students closing in 2025 and the unique small-group tutorial-style courses that defined the program being eliminated that same year. The college’s financial exigency has also resulted in significant faculty turnover, including the loss of many Oxbridge professors. The current Oxbridge Senior Tutor and the final remaining Philosophy professor at Jewell, Dr. Elizabeth Sperry, is among that list, as she has been let go by Jewell after over 30 years at the college.

While the average Jewell student had little interaction with the Oxbridge program, for those students (including myself) who were fortunate enough to be selected for it, the program was truly a life-changing opportunity. With the program officially being closed by the college this year, I’ve taken some time to reflect on just what Oxbridge has meant for me. The Oxbridge Honors Program deserves to be remembered, and the lessons of its closure must be understood if we wish to preserve what makes Jewell unique.

Why Oxbridge Mattered

The Oxbridge Honors Program was much more than just a typical honors program. Oxbridge students were offered a thoroughly specialized and highly intensive form of education, one that didn’t fit into the standard structure of Jewell so much as was added on top. In their first semester, Oxbridgers would take the Introductory Seminar, an intense crash course on writing and thinking philosophically. Even now, at the conclusion of my senior year, the Oxbridge Intro Seminar remains arguably the most influential single course I have taken in my time at the college, and my experiences there continue to shape how I read, write, think, and live.

After completing that first seminar, each of the six Oxbridge majors would proceed into a planned-out list of specialized tutorials, a specialized and Oxbridge-exclusive class with a Jewell professor who specialized in that given subject. Every week, there would be an assigned list of readings from key thinkers and researchers in that field, and most weeks would include an essay assignment about that given reading. During the course meeting, the students would share their essays and would have to defend their ideas before their professor and their fellow students. These opportunities to not only write down my arguments about a given question but to defend them under often-intense scrutiny have been incredible for developing my ability to reason on the fly.

The pre-planned structure also permits Oxbridgers in the same major to develop a close academic camaraderie. For cases where multiple Oxbridgers share the same year and major, those students take all their tutorials together, letting them build rapport over time and become comfortable sharing their ideas and critiquing each other. The students I’ve shared tutorials with have greatly shaped my thinking on many key questions in the field and learning not just alongside them but also from them is an incredible feature of the program.

While Oxbridge provides students with many wonderful opportunities during their years on Jewell’s campus, the distinctive feature of the program was the study abroad opportunity in the junior year. As the name implies, the program primarily sent students to Oxford University, allowing students to join one of the oldest and most academically rigorous institutions on the planet.Jewell maintained relationships with eight Oxford colleges (Regents’ Park, Mansfield, Hertford, Lady Margaret Hall, St. Anne’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Edmund’s, and St. Peters’), and Oxbridge students could select from any of the options based on their interests, major, and location preferences.

I cannot speak for every Oxbridge student, but for me, that year abroad was the greatest highlight of my time in the program. It not only helped me grow academically but showed me a new way of learning and a new way of life. Before that year, I would never have considered moving to a new continent, but spending a year in Oxford proved to me that I want the next stage of my academic career, and of my life, to be in Europe. Without Oxbridge and the opportunities Jewell provided, I would never have found that next step forward.

What Went Wrong

Like all good things, the Oxbridge Program didn’t last forever. Identifying an exact date of its demise is tricky, but this year, in which the college officially informed students and faculty that Oxbridge would be closed and the role of Senior Tutor eliminated, is as good a date to select as any. The actual causes of its closure are various and complex; Oxbridge was a remarkable and unique program but by its nature it placed a huge number of financial and logistical challenges on the institution. Jewell is already suffering through a crisis wholly unrelated to Oxbridge, and the college’s reactions to that crisis have largely shifted its focus away from its more specialized programs; with all those institutional headwinds facing the program, its removal is sadly unsurprising.

The start of Oxbridge’s downfall was the loss of the Hall Family Foundation’s grant. The Hall Family Foundation, built from the fortune of the founders of Hallmark Cards, spent millions of dollars on the Oxbridge program, with their 2014 report listing a grant of over $1.2 million specifically to assist with program expansion between 2014 and 2017. These grants helped fund not only scholarships for Oxbridge students but also the Journey Grants that helped Oxbridgers fund their study abroad year in Oxford.

Unfortunately, this money, initially donated shortly after the program’s founding in 1982, has since run dry, and has left the Oxbridge program financially unsustainable. While Dr. Sperry made significant efforts to reinforce the financial position of the program through fundraising efforts, her efforts came at the same time as the College’s major fundraising push for the now-abandoned Link project, and later during the financial exigency. As such, Jewell did not prioritize the Oxbridge fundraising efforts, and without a significant benefactor for the program, Jewell was unable to continue providing the Oxbridge Journey Grants and other scholarships. This, along with the rising cost of an Oxford education in the first place (visiting student fees increased 34% between academic years 2019 and 2023), has significantly reduced the ability of the remaining Oxbridge classes to enjoy the program’s key distinctive feature.

The financial exigency at Jewell has impacted not only the funding of Oxbridge but also the educational experience of Oxbridge students at Jewell. As explored in the Hilltop Monitor back in spring of 2025, 45 faculty and staff members, including tenured faculty, were laid off during the initial declaration of exigency, and additional faculty members, including Dr. Sperry, will be leaving at the end of this academic year. The Oxbridge program’s tutorial system relied on having faculty available to teach those unique one-of-a-kind classes, and with the downsizing of Jewell’s faculty, there simply were not enough faculty members available to teach those tutorials.

As such, starting with the 2024/2025 academic year, Oxbridge tutorials were turned into “embedded tutorials,” where students would participate in a regular class and would meet occasionally with their professor on the side, either during office hours or at a scheduled meeting. These embedded tutorials did not count as an additional course on a professor’s workload, since the primary class meeting time was shared with another non-Oxbridge course, which meant that professors could be scheduled for their full course load and be required to teach an Oxbridge course in addition. This stopgap measure was functional enough for Oxbridge students, and the embedded tutorials I have taken at Jewell have certainly been enjoyable. However, the additional workload placed on professors added extra stress onto faculty members who had already been pushed to their limits.

With Jewell downsizing their professorial staff even further at the end of this academic year, and with the college currently working on their Reimagined Jewell restructuring plan, maintaining even the reduced vision of Oxbridge became incredibly untenable. With Jewell’s emphasis on “developing a flexible, adaptable curriculum” in the wake of their current challenges, the Oxbridge program, with its clearly defined four-year tutorial structure and closed cohorts, would become more of a hindrance than a benefit. Other unique programs, including Jewell Theatre and the Honors Institute for Critical Thinking, have also been casualties of Jewell’s restructuring, and it’s likely that an emphasis on flexibility and broad appeal was part of the decision to cut those programs as well as Oxbridge.

While the loss of Oxbridge may have been inevitable under the current pressures facing the college, that does not make its loss less sad. Oxbridge was not just an honors program that served a few students per year, it was a core aspect of the variety and the excellence that has made this college special. The loss of Oxbridge shows a Jewell that has given up on that which once made it unique, and whatever the future of the college may hold, those unique and meaningful programs should, and will, be missed.

The NASCAR Cup Series completed the first quarter of their season this past Sunday, April 19th. A lot has happened over the first nine races, including a never-before-seen achievement, so let’s do a quick season recap to hit the highlights.

Tyler Reddick keeps winning

Tyler Reddick, driver of the #45 Toyota for 23XI Racing, had a winless 2025 campaign, and with Reddick’s contract expiring at the end of 2026, expectations for this season were somewhat mixed. There were concerns that 23XI was going to take a step back, especially since adding a third full-time car in 2025 had seemingly stretched their resources.

With nine races complete, Reddick has put those concerns, and the rest of the NASCAR field, in the rearview mirror. The #45 car won the season-opening Daytona 500 with help from his teammate Riley Herbst in the #35, before also winning the next two races at Echopark Speedway and Circuit of the Americas. This made Tyler Reddick the first driver in NASCAR history to win the first three consecutive races of a season and earned him and his team owner Michael Jordan (yes, NBA legend Michael Jordan) attention not just from the NASCAR media but from the wider sports media.

Reddick’s winning streak ultimately would end at the next race in Phoenix, but he would click off another win two weeks later at Darlington, and just this last weekend he picked up his fifth win of the season at Kansas Speedway. He currently leads the points standings by 105 points (more than a full race’s worth) over fellow Toyota driver Denny Hamlin. The questions surrounding Reddick and 23XI Racing are now focused on how many more races they can win in the coming months, and how big of a contract renewal Reddick has earned for himself.

Toyota’s dominance

Tyler Reddick may be stealing most of the wins, but Toyota as a whole has had an excellent start to the 2026 season. Besides Reddick’s five wins, two Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas have also picked up wins. Denny Hamlin, the driver of the #11, defended his race win at Las Vegas, while Ty Gibbs earned his first career win, driving the #54 to victory at Bristol. Hamlin leads the series in laps led (575), while Reddick and Gibbs lead the series in top 10 finishes with seven each.

Toyota teams also are dominating the points standings. Four of the top eight drivers in the standings are in Toyotas (Reddick, Hamlin, Gibbs, and Bubba Wallace, driving the #23 for 23XI Racing). The top 16 in points after 26 races will be eligible for the season championship, and so far, six of the top 16 in points are Toyota drivers, while Ford and Chevrolet each have five. This is despite Toyota only having nine full-time cars, the fewest of any manufacturer (Ford has 10 full-time cars, and Chevrolet has 17).

Ford gains a new top team

Part of Toyota’s dominance can likely be explained by the other manufacturers undergoing significant transitions to start their 2026 campaigns. For the last decade, Ford’s main powerhouse team has been Team Penske, a three-car operation that has won three of the past four NASCAR championships. However, this year Penske’s start to the year has been slower than expected. Ryan Blaney has brought the #12 to victory lane at Phoenix and currently sits third in points, while three-time Cup champion Joey Logano is 14th and Austin Cindric is 17th. Cindric has recovered from a terrible streak of luck, having crashed in the first four races, while Joey Logano has three finishes of 30th or worse, two of which came purely on pace. When they’re fast, the Penske Fords have earned great finishes, but their inconsistency this early on is worrisome.

While Penske has been inconsistent, another Ford team has risen to the occasion. RFK Racing’s three Fords have been the models of consistency, with Brad Keselowski and the #6 sitting 9th in points, Chris Buescher’s #17 car in 11th, and Ryan Preece’s #60 in 13th. Keselowski and Preece both have finished on the lead lap in every race so far, and the team only has two finishes below 20th, one each for Preece and Buescher. None of their cars have shown winning speed so far in a points race (Preece did win the season-opening exhibition Clash), but RFK has proven themselves more than capable of competing on a weekly basis. It remains to be seen whether RFK can one day overtake Penske, but the future of Ford’s NASCAR program looks bright.

Chevy’s early struggles

While Toyota is dominating the season and Ford is gaining a new top-tier team, Chevrolet is having its worst start to the season in decades. The flagship Chevy team, Hendrick Motorsports, only has one win through the first nine races, with Chase Elliott taking the #9 to victory lane at Martinsville. No other Chevy team has looked particularly close to winning, with Spire Motorsports being the only other Chevy team with a car currently in the top 16 in points. Trackhouse Racing, which won six races last season, has been completely off the pace so far, with New Zealand-born Shane van Gisbergen currently their highest-ranked driver at 18th in points. Two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch, driving the #8 car for Richard Childress Racing, is currently 27th in points, an all-time career low for him this far into the season.

The cause of Chevy’s troubles is complex, with much of it being due to individual teams performing poorly, Trackhouse and Richard Childress in particular. However, Chevy has debuted a new body design this season, which has made much of their simulator data and performance data irrelevant. The early part of the season may simply become a waiting game while Chevy teams refill their notebooks for the new car body. If Hendrick, Trackhouse, and others continue to struggle into the second half of the season, then there will need to be deeper conversations in the Chevy camp about how to keep up.

The current war between the United States, Israel and Iran has driven global tensions to a boiling point. Many NATO allies and other states friendly to the U.S. have been unwilling to join the war effort, and President Trump has responded to their refusals with public condemnations. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, both of whom have tried to maintain cordial relationships with the Trump administration, havesplit with Trump over the Iran war, and have since been targeted both in official policy changes and through social media.

The most surprising target of the President’s ire is Pope Leo. Selected last year to replace the late Pope Francis, Leo is the first ever American pope, and until recently has tried to remain separate from the political sphere, especially in his home country. However, Leo’s commitment to peace and diplomacy has put him at odds with the Trump administration’s more aggressive foreign policy, and the Iran conflict has driven those tensions to a breaking point.

The opening volley

The war of words began with the Pope’s traditional Easter address on the morning of Apr. 5. In his address, Leo implored that “those who have weapons lay them down” and “those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace,” and while he did not mention the current war in Iran directly, his anti-war message was clear.

While the Pope was proclaiming a message of peace, President Trump’s Easter messages were dramatically pro-war. Early on Easter morning, Trump posted a profanity-laced rant on Truth Social, demanding that the Iranian regime “Open the F—in’ Strait [of Hormuz] … or you’ll be living in Hell.” Two days later, on the morning of April 7th, Trump doubled down, claiming that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran did not capitulate.

In the ensuing days, Pope Leo continued to position himself as anti-war and criticized world leaders for seeking war rather than diplomacy. When speaking to the leaders of the Chaldean Church (a subset of Middle Eastern Catholics) on April 10th, Leo said that the world was marked by “absurd and inhumane violence,” and argued that the Church must “never [be] on the side of those who yesterday wielded the sword and today launch bombs.”

Though Pope Leo largely avoided discussing Trump by name during this period, journalists did manage to get a more direct answer from him during interviews. When asked about Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran’s civilization, Pope Leo described the comments as “truly unacceptable,” arguing that Trump had violated both international law and basic morals. Other Catholic leaders, including Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, also directly named Trump, with Coakley saying in a statement that he “[calls] on President Trump to step back from the precipice of war and negotiate a just settlement for the sake of peace and before more lives are lost.”

Trump on Truth Social

On the evening of April 12th, Trump turned his attention, and his social media ire, to Pope Leo. He made a 334-word post on Truth Social in which, among other things, he described the Pope as “WEAK on crime and terrible for Foreign Policy,” claimed that priests were getting arrested during the Covid pandemic for holding church services, asserted that Pope Leo would not have become pope had Trump not been president, accused Pope Leo of being an “Obama Sympathizer” and stated that he didn’t want “a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.” He concluded by saying that Pope Leo’s focus on politics hurts both the Pope and the Catholic Church more broadly. Later that night, he shared an AI-generated image of himself as a Christlike figure, shrouded in golden light and healing a sick man in a hospital bed.

Reactions to these posts were immediate and harsh, especially from the Catholic community. Bishop Robert Barron, a conservative Catholic and member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, described Trump’s remarks as “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful,” while numerous leaders of Catholic-aligned political organizations called on Trump to apologize. When asked about the President’s attacks against him, Pope Leo finally mentioned Trump by name, saying that he has “no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel.”

J.D. Vance and theological disputes

With tensions rising between Pope and President, observers and journalists turned to Catholic members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, to try and ease the tensions. Vance has instead held firm to the Trump administration’s platform, saying on April 14th that the Pope should be more careful when talking about theology and that his claim that God is never on the side of warmongers is historically inaccurate.

Vance has also disputed the Pope’s interpretation of Just War Theory, a Catholic doctrine originating with Saint Augustine that describes when a state can legitimately engage in war. Notably, Pope Leo is a member of the Order of Saint Augustine, and his scholarship primarily centers around Augustine’s thinking and writing. Leo began his current tour of Africa by visiting the city where Augustine lived in the 400s and has discussed Augustine’s views on just war theory (among other things) in his speeches.

Threats of Avignon

While the Trump Administration and the Vatican have been publicly feuding in the last few weeks, there are reports that further tensions between the two parties have occurred in private. On April 6th, The Free Press initially reported that meetings between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Vatican’s representatives had become tense as far back as January of 2026. Further reports have examined the context of those meetings in some detail, with most reporting indicating that the American position effectively argued that the U.S. could do anything it chose and that the Vatican should side with the Trump administration’s choices.

The most concerning part of those reports centers on the allegation that Department of Defense officials had mentioned the Avignon Papacy during their conversations with the Vatican. The Avignon Papacy occurred during the 1300s, when the King of France sent his army to arrest Pope Boniface VIII. After Boniface’s death, the French royals forced the Papal Conclave to elect a French pope, who refused to move to Rome and instead moved the papal court to Avignon, where the French monarchs could directly control both who was elected pope and what the pope could say.If those alleged threats are true, the implications are disturbing. The Avignon Papacy happened when a major world power forced the Catholic Church to obey its demands through military force. It is unlikely that the United States would use military force against the Vatican, but it was enough of a concern that the Pope has canceled his planned visit to the US amid the heightened tensions.