David Jang’s Olivet University Ordered to Shut Down in California

A California judge has ordered Olivet University to be shut down for violating education regulations, dealing a major blow to the obscure Christian sect that runs the college and its controversial leader David Jang.

The university and Jang followers are at the center of a federal criminal investigation into money laundering, visa fraud and labor trafficking, the latest in a series of legal controversies that have plagued the sect for more than a decade

Administrative Law Judge Debra D Nye-Perkins found against Olivet University on all 14 allegations made by California’s Attorney General on behalf of the state education regulator,

The complaint, filed after education inspectors searched Olivet campuses in 2022, accused the university of failing to keep students records, teaching poorly designed courses with improperly qualified faculty and breaking financial rules.

Judge Nye-Perkins said the Olivet demonstrated a “cavalier attitude” toward the regulations.

“….the only degree of discipline that would ensure public protection is the revocation of the respondent’s permission to operate,” she said in the proceedings posted on the website of the Board of Private Post-Secondary Education.

The judge gave Olivet University until January 10 to propose a plan to have its remaining students complete their courses.

California is by far Olivet’s most important state regulator: it is the only one in the United States to confer degree-granting authority on the college founded in 2000 by Jang, a Korean-American cleric whose organizations and disciples have faced a series of legal cases over the past decade. The rest of Olivet’s 10 campuses in seven states and the District of Columbia function as satellites of the university.

Olivet University is also at the center of a criminal investigation that became public in 2021 when agents of the Homeland Security Department searched the Anza campus looking for evidence of labor trafficking, money laundering and visa fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in California’s Central District is investigating the case against Olivet University and any charges would need to be filed “soon” before the statute of limitations run out, a document filed in a civil suit against Olivet showed in April.

Newsweek is owned by two former members of the Olivet sect. Their departure from Jang’s church triggered a flurry of lawsuits, a few of which are still working their way through courts. Olivet did not respond to a request for comment on this article. The request was sent before the judge’s order was made public.

Newsweek has reported extensively on Olivet’s legal problems for the past six years, even while the magazine’s owners were members of the sect. More recently, Olivet has characterized that reporting as a weapon in disagreements between the company’s owners and the sect

The Los Angeles Times published a story on September 20th, echoing most of Newsweek’s reporting on Olivet, including of the mistreatment of students. The Times story included a previously unreported account of two former Olivet University students, Tingbo Cao, 41, and Qilian Zhou, 35, who arrived in the U.S. from China in 2011.

The two students were forced to work, had little time for study, never received the scholarships they were promised and were financially exploited by Olivet University, the Times reported.

A 2023 lawsuit filed by Texas-based 8fig accuses the World Olivet Assembly, the church founded by David Jang, of using a network of online storefronts and other companies to defraud it of more than $6.5 million. One of the defendants in that case, Park, was named this year as president of Olivet University. The parties to the suit are in settlement talks.

If Olivet is shut down in California, Jang could potentially maintain his foothold in religious education via the sect’s other colleges. One of those schools, Jubilee University, billed as a Christian music college, was the subject of an investigative report published last month by Missouri-based television affiliate Fox4.