Dinesh D’Souza is perhaps best known as a social conservative pundit. D’Souza, a former domestic policy adviser to the Ronald Reagan administration and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution at Stanford, has since 2010 been the president of King’s College, an evangelical Christian college in New York City.
And that’s how he got into trouble recently. Warren Cole Smith reported yesterday in World that last month D’Souza attended a conference at First Baptist North in Spartanburg, S.C., “to hear high-profile Christians speak on defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview to their lives.” And then the longtime conservative public intellectual signed books and the event organizer, Tony Beam, escorted D’Souza and Denise Odie Joseph, a 29-year-old woman D’Souza introduced as his fiancee, back to a room at a nearby Comfort Suites.
D’Souza, the author of The End of Racism, Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, Godforsaken: Bad Things Happen. Is There a God Who Cares? Yes, Here’s Proof and Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream, has been married for 20 years to Dixie Brubaker, though the two appear to be estranged.
Now, in the real world no one cares if a 51-year-old man who is separated from his wife shares a hotel room with his girlfriend. In this weirdo evangelical Christian world where people buy books called Godforsaken: Bad Things Happen. Is There a God Who Cares? Yes, Here’s Proof and The Roots of Obama’s Rage, however, this matters a great deal.
At King’s College the school’s board of directors is apparently looking into the situation. According to Smith:
D’Souza said King’s board chairman Andy Mills has known about his marital trouble for at least two years. Mills confirmed that through a spokesman, Mark DeMoss, who added that Mills was “hopeful about restoration and both he [D’Souza] and Andy were praying to that end.” DeMoss said The King’s College board met by conference call to begin “looking into the situation.” D’Souza participated in a portion of that call, DeMoss said. Following that meeting, on Oct. 15, D’Souza wrote in a text message to me: “I have decided to suspend the engagement.”
The status of his engagement, of course, is not really the point.
