Mr. Falwell, the college’s president and a supporter of President Trump, agreed to a request by the school’s board of trustees.
Jerry Falwell Jr., one of President Trump’s most prominent and controversial evangelical supporters, will take an indefinite leave of absence from his role as president and chancellor of Liberty University, the board of trustees announced on Friday. The news comes days after Mr. Falwell posted, and then deleted, a photograph on Instagram of him posing alongside a woman with his pants unzipped and his arm around her. Mr. Falwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier in the week, he apologized for the photo. Franklin Graham, who leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, defended Mr. Falwell in an interview on Friday evening. “He is a great leader and he has taken this school — it is one of the largest universities in the United States,” he said. “He’s done an incredible job. He is a great leader and I certainly support him.” Mr. Graham said he had not spoken with Mr. Falwell about the photograph or his leave. About the photograph, Mr. Graham said: “All of us in life have done things that we’ve regretted. I think he certainly has regretted that. It was a foolish thing.” Under the Falwell family’s leadership, Liberty has grown in five decades from a modest Baptist college to an evangelical powerhouse with cash investments and endowments of nearly $2 billion, nearly 46,000 undergraduates and a campus that sprawls across Lynchburg and neighboring counties in Virginia.
