A Sense of Doubt blog post #2914 - College Professor Fired for Showing a Painting of Muhammad
That's not the painting above.
Calling this incident one of Islamophobia is patently ridiculous.
This is today's share.
A College Fired a Professor for Showing a Painting of Muhammad. Now, It Could Lose Its Accreditation.
"If Hamline won't listen to free speech advocates or faculty across the country, they'll have to listen to their accreditor," said FIRE attorney Alex Morey, who filed the complaint.
In December, Hamline University spurred outrage after the college fired an art history professor for showing a 14th-century painting of the prophet Muhammad in an Islamic art class. While the school was roundly criticized for its swift silencing of faculty academic freedom, the college is private, and thus largely protected from legal consequences.
However, one free speech group has found a way to penalize Hamline: filing a complaint with the school's accreditor, which explicitly requires that colleges receiving accreditation protect academic freedom.
On October 6, an art history professor at Hamline University, a liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, showed students a 14th-century painting that depicts the prophet Muhammad receiving his first Quranic revelation. The professor, who has not been named, reportedly contextualized the image for several minutes beforehand, telling students "I am showing you this image for a reason. And that is that there is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids, outright, any figurative depictions or any depictions of holy personages. While many Islamic cultures do strongly frown on this practice, I would like to remind you there is no one, monothetic Islamic culture." According to The Oracle, Hamline's student newspaper, the professor insisted in a later email that, "I did not try to surprise students with this image."
However, one student in class that day—the president of Hamline's Muslim Student Association—took offense, complaining first to the professor, and then to school administrators. According to The Oracle, the school took swift action against the professor. On November 7, undergraduate students received an email condemning the unnamed incident as "undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic." Four days later, David Everett, Hamline's associate vice president of inclusive excellence told The Oracle that "it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community." The professor was an adjunct, which is what allowed the school to fire them without due process by simply declining to renew their contract.
The incident sparked outrage from free speech advocates. The Hamline administration's assertion that "respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom," was subject to particular criticism. As Amna Khalid, a history professor at Carleton College wrote of the incident in The Chronicle of Education, "Barring a professor of art history from showing this painting, lest it harm observant Muslims in class, is just as absurd as asking a biology professor not to teach evolution because it may offend evangelical Protestants in the course."
However, Hamline's status as a private university seemed to afford it protection from real consequences. While organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have long argued that it is a contractual violation for private colleges to violate free speech and academic freedom, when they also make explicit promises of such protections to prospective students and faculty, the theory is largely legally untested. However, in this case, FIRE may have found a way to hold Hamline accountable.
On January 4, FIRE announced that it had filed a formal complaint with the Higher Learning Commission, Hamline's accreditor. The professor's "nonrenewal violates both HLC and Hamline policies clearly committing the university to free expression and its corollary, academic freedom for all faculty," wrote Alex Morey, FIRE's director of campus rights advocacy, in a letter to the accreditor.
"We gave Hamline plenty of time to reverse course, but it's clear they're not planning to deliver on their academic freedom promises," Morey added in a press release. "If Hamline won't listen to free speech advocates or faculty across the country, they'll have to listen to their accreditor."
She Lost Her Job For Showing a Painting of Muhammad in Class. Now, She's Suing.
"Hamline subjected López Prater to the foregoing adverse actions because . . . she did not conform her conduct to the specific beliefs of a Muslim sect," the lawsuit states.
https://reason.com/2023/01/18/she-lost-her-job-for-showing-a-painting-of-muhammad-in-class-now-shes-suing
Hamline University, a liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has come under fire in recent weeks after it refused to renew the contract of an adjunct professor who had shown images of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class. Now the professor at the center of the controversy is suing, alleging religious discrimination and defamation.
In October, Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline, showed students in an art history class two images of Muhammad. Both images were created by Muslim artists in the 14th and 16th centuries and were intended to show devotion and reverence to the prophet.
According to the lawsuit, López Prater was aware that some observant Muslim students would not wish to view the images and made considerable efforts to accommodate them. López Prater wrote in the course syllabus that the class would include "showing and discussing both representational and non-representational depictions of holy figures (for example, the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ, and the Buddha)," adding, "if you have any questions or concerns about either missing class for a religious observance or the visual content that will be presented, please do not hesitate to contact me."
No students expressed concerns to López Prater, according to the lawsuit. López Prater also warned students multiple times during the class itself, giving them ample opportunity to leave class or look away.
That wasn't enough for Aram Wedatalla, the president of Hamline's Muslim Student Association. Wedatalla complained first to López Prater and then to the school's administration. Within weeks, López Prater had been formally denounced by the administration, which described her actions as "Islamophobic" and insisted that "respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom."
The lawsuit alleges that López Prater was informed that, contrary to a previous assurance, she would not be welcome back to teach the following semester. As one administrator told Hamline's student newspaper, "it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community."
The school faced widespread condemnation for its actions, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations even releasing a statement defending López Prater. "Although we strongly discourage showing visual depictions of the Prophet," the statement reads, "professors who analyze ancient paintings for an academic purpose are not the same as Islamophobes who show such images to cause offense."
On Tuesday, López Prater filed a lawsuit against the school, alleging that the school engaged in religious discrimination and defamation against her, as well as violating its contractual guarantee of academic freedom.
"Instead of recognizing that López Prater had displayed the images of the Prophet Muhammad for a proper academic purpose, Hamline decided to impose Wedatalla's interpretation of Islam on all Hamline employees and students," the suit reads. "Hamline subjected López Prater to the foregoing adverse actions because she is not Muslim, because she did not conform her conduct to the specific beliefs of a Muslim sect, and because she did not conform her conduct to the religion-based preferences of Hamline that images of Muhammad not be shown to any Hamline student."
In the wake of López Prater's lawsuit, Hamline has walked back its most inflammatory claims against her, writing in a statement that "based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term 'Islamophobic' was therefore flawed … It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students—care does not 'supersede' academic freedom, the two coexist."
Defamation is very difficult to prove, and it remains to be seen whether López Prater's lawsuit will be successful.
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- Days ago = 2778 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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