Liberty's Asia Todd to Transfer over 'Racial Insensitivity' from School Leaders

Liberty women's basketball player Asia Todd announced she is entering the transfer portal after school president Jerry Falwell Jr. sent a racist tweet that included an image of a facemask with a photo of a person in blackface and a person wearing Ku Klux Klan attire.

"Due to the racial insensitivity shown within the leadership and culture, it simply does not align with my moral compass or personal convictions," Todd said. "Therefore, I had to do what I felt was best within my heart and stand up for what is right."

Todd, a freshman, averaged 8.6 points and 1.3 assists in 31 games for Liberty this past season (25 starts), shooting 41.6 percent from the field and 41.3 percent from three. 

The message in Falwell's since-deleted tweet read, "I was adamantly opposed to the mandate from Governor Ralph Northam requiring citizens to wear face masks until I decided to design my own. If I am ordered to wear a mask, I will reluctantly comply, but only if this picture of Governor Blackface himself is on it!"

Falwell claimed in a follow-up tweet that he had been trying to make a political point about Virginia's blackface scandal in 2019 after images surfaced of Gov. Northam in blackface from his 1984 medical school yearbook:

Alumni of the school have called for Falwell to resign, while three Liberty staff members have resigned, including LeeQuan McLaurin, the school's director of diversity. 

"Some draw a direct line between the start of President Falwell's divisive, insensitive, and unapologetic approach to politics and that drop," McLaurin wrote about the school's declining population of black students, from 10 percent in 2007 to just 4 percent in 2018, according to Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News. 

In a letter written by 35 faith leaders and former Liberty athletes to Falwell urging him to step down, per Elana Schor and Sarah Rankin of the Associated Press, they said he has "belittled staff, students and parents, you have defended inappropriate behaviors of politicians, encouraged violence, and disrespected people of other faiths," adding that his "heart is in politics more than Christian academia or ministry."

They also wrote he has "repeatedly violated and misrepresented" Christian values.