Cornerstone University, a Christian institution in Michigan, is hosting an event focused on the dangers of communism, featuring academics and people who survived authoritarian regimes.
Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño, Cornerstone’s president, said the university selected the topic months ago after becoming concerned about shifting public attitudes toward communism and socialism. Scheduled for Oct. 1, the program is titled “Why Not Communism? A Wisdom Conversation on Freedom, Faith and the Future of America.”
“Frankly, we became alarmed and concerned because the history of communism, socialism is a dark one,” Moreno-Riaño told Fox News Digital.
He said Cornerstone felt an obligation to use its role as a university to educate its students and the broader public about what he described as the “moral bankruptcy” of communism and socialism.
The university is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in Kent County, where Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed received more than 61% of the vote in the primary, according to state records. El-Sayed also campaigned with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has called communism the “honorable end goal” of socialism—adding political context to Cornerstone’s event.
The speaker lineup includes Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, Soviet communism scholar Dr. Gary Saul Morson, Cultural Revolution survivor Xi Van Fleet and North Korean defector Yeonmi Park.
Moreno-Riaño said the firsthand accounts of Park and Van Fleet are central to the discussion because their experiences reveal parallels between communist revolutions and conditions in North Korea and China under Mao Zedong.
Park told Fox News Digital that support for communism is growing among some students who study the ideology in comfortable classrooms, far removed from the realities of life under authoritarian rule.
“I had to live through [a] real socialist government every day until I escaped from North Korea,” Park said. “And I know it is not nice when it is actually enforced [in] real life. Many people think it’s [an] amazing thing as a theory, and they have no idea if we do bring this policy in our government, what that’s going to [do to] our local population.”
Park grew up in North Korea during the devastating famines of the 1990s, enduring hunger, extreme poverty and political persecution. At 13, she and her mother fled across a frozen border river into China, where they were forced into human trafficking. After Park’s mother endured sexual assault to shield her daughter from smugglers, both were sold to trafficking networks.
They spent two years in hiding and under exploitation before Christian activists helped them travel from China to Mongolia. From there, they obtained political asylum and eventually reached freedom in South Korea.
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Park said some American students, unaware of her past, have told her she does not “understand oppression” because she is Asian. She said they have also described her as a “White-passing person.”
“They have no idea that I was, at 13 years old, being sold as a sex slave in China for two years of my life. I do understand oppression,” she said.
She argued that many students in the United States take their civil liberties for granted and lack a broader understanding of political conditions around the world.
“Most people are not free right now in the world. More than 70% of humanity right now live under authoritarian governments,” Park told Fox News Digital, apparently referring to research from the Varieties of Democracy Institute. The organization’s latest report estimates that autocratic governments rule 74% of the world’s population.
Park said freedom is “a very special thing” and warned that she does not “want us to lose this amazing country, because if America falls, we do not have a place to escape to.”
“For me, I was fortunate that I had a country to escape to from North Korea to America, but if we lose this country, we are all going to die, actually,” she said.
Moreno-Riaño said Cornerstone’s emphasis on defending freedom is inseparable from its Christian mission. In his view, liberty is “at the bedrock” of the Christian faith.
“I mean, we believe that the gospel sets us free. So, liberty and freedom are at the core of our Christian faith through the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.
He also pointed to the Christian teaching of Imago Dei—the belief that people are created in God’s image—as a foundation for human dignity. For people to thrive, he said, freedom and liberty are indispensable.
Ultimately, Moreno-Riaño hopes to encourage students to take action and to resist the urge to “sit on the sidelines watching.”
“As people of faith, Christians here at Cornerstone University, we want our students to be involved to be great citizens, modeling their faith and modeling what it means to be a great citizen of our great country. That to me is the ultimate outcome for not just the students, but even for the community at large who will come to the event,” he said.