In the fall 2006 issue of the EMU alumni magazine, university president Loren Swartzendruber wrote a four-page essay on refusing the mantle of either liberal or conservative and daring to be "different from other colleges," in keeping with Anabaptist tradition and theology. "How do we define ourselves within a cultural context that wants to reduce complex realities to simplistic clichés?" he asked rhetorically. He told the online journal Inside Higher Ed: "We are, I think, a different kind of Christian... If assume they’re going to find at EMU what they would also find at Liberty University [the nearby institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell they’re not going to be very happy here. They’re going to run into it headlong. They’re going to hear about the peace tradition. They’re going to hear a lot of language about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this world. From our perspective, that means less nationalism, and a much more global perspective, care for creation. What they would find here is a concern for personal piety … but we’re not willing to stop there because we also believe that the New Testament is pretty clear that there is a social dimension to what Jesus called us to be and to do.”