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Some Point Loma Nazarene University alumni are raising concerns about the Christian university’s dean of students, alleging he told student leaders that identifying as being “in Christ alone” reflected “white privilege.”
The controversy centers on PLNU Dean of Students Jason Cha, whose 2023 dissertation at Azusa Pacific University is titled “Raging Waters of Whiteness: Addressing White Evangelical Racism in Higher Education.”
Cha’s dissertation examines the “lived experiences of diversity professionals addressing whiteness at Christian colleges” through frameworks including “critical race theory, critical white studies, and evangelical postcolonial studies.”
Cha became PLNU’s dean of students in March 2025. In this role, he oversees several areas of student life, including multicultural and international student services, new student engagement, and residential life.
Two of Cha’s most prominent critics are PLNU alumni Lidiya Harvey and Madison Simmons, who say his hiring reflects the university’s broader progressive direction.
In late August, Harvey and Simmons published a joint Instagram post alleging that during an official 2025 student leadership training, Cha told students that if their identity was “in Christ alone,” they “have white privilege.”
They cited student leaders who attended the fall leadership training as their source. Their eight-page slide show also shows a picture of Cha, who is Asian, wearing a “Jesus Wasn’t White” T-Shirt, and flags his dissertation.
It also shows a picture from the 2026 presentation by Cha focused on “white people engaging racial justice,” as well as a speech he gave in 2020 titled “Whiteness as Witness: Re-conceptualizing Diversity in Christian Higher Education.”
Reached for comment, Cha declined to comment regarding the “in Christ alone” claim or other concerns about his pedagogy, and referred to the statement given by the university’s media relations division.
A PLNU spokesperson said Cha’s views fit within the context of a Christian education.
Lora Fleming, associate vice president of communications and public affairs at PLNU, told The Fix that the university’s responsibility to “confront racism, love our neighbors, and seek justice is not separate from our Christian discipleship. It flows from it.”
“Dr. Jason Cha’s academic scholarship has engaged questions of race and racism as part of his work in Christian higher education,” Fleming said via email. “We do not believe that selected quotations or academic concepts, removed from their broader context, provide a fair characterization of Dr. Cha.”
“Christian discernment requires more than pulling selected information out of context to support a conclusion already reached,” Fleming added. “It asks us to seek context, resist caricature, listen to one another, and pursue truth with both conviction and humility.”
In an email interview with The Fix, Harvey said her main point is that Cha “isn’t just a professor exploring an academic theory in one classroom,” but someone “actively helping shape student life, events and panels, campus culture, leadership, and formation.”
“My concern is not that PLNU discusses racism, injustice, or difficult cultural issues. It should,” Harvey said. “My concern is when contemporary categories of race, identity, privilege, and oppression become so central to the framework through which students are formed.”
Another Instagram post that Harvey published this week focused on a poet the university invited to campus “who imagines Jesus as ‘agnostic and horny,’ writes about Jesus experiencing arousal and lust, and portrays Him as an erotic lover.”
“Our Holy Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” she wrote. “What are we doing here, @plnu?”
Speaking specifically about the “in Christ alone” claim, Simmons told The Fix that Christian identity does not erase race or racism, but said “our identity in Christ is a blood-bought reality given equally to every believer.”
“That is not a minor disagreement, but a theological question about who gets the final word on reality: Christ and His Word, or an unbiblical ideological framework that reinterprets Christianity through its own categories?” Simmons added.
Harvey said Cha’s emphasis on an “identity-conscious approach” reflects what she believes is a wider ideological shift at Point Loma Nazarene University, a private institution located on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a San Diego neighborhood.
“Progressive ideological frameworks are increasingly being woven into Christian formation rather than simply examined and tested against it,” Harvey said, adding that she raised concerns about Cha’s dissertation during an October 2025 meeting with PLNU President Kerry Fulcher.
“His hiring shows us the kind of leadership the university is selecting and the ideas it is comfortable with,” she said. “At the very minimum, the president knew.”
Harvey said Cha is “not an isolated example,” pointing to broader concerns involving sexuality, gender, abortion, race, identity, and campus programming.
The Fix previously reported that PLNU has hosted events including “pronoun pin making,” and “decolonizing yoga.”
“What we, and many other students and alumni, are asking for is transparency from PLNU about the theological and ideological framework through which students are actually being formed,” she said.
“Families deserve to know not simply what PLNU’s mission statement says, but what students will actually encounter in classrooms, chapel, spiritual formation, and student life.”
The College Fix previously reported on PLNU’s refusal to recognize a Turning Point USA chapter, which led several students and alumni to speak out about the university’s “ongoing divergence from its evangelical roots.”
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