https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/22/wheaton-professors-ask-college-drop-case-against-colleague
Will be interesting to see if Wheaton’s board of trustees, which according to the article “would have the ultimate say in (Hawkins’s) professional fate,” will stand their ground and overrule the college’s very own theologians on a matter of theology.
Michael Mangis, one of Hawkins’s supporters and a professor of counseling at Wheaton, said there’d been a “hopeful mood” around campus Thursday, ahead of the listening session. He said he thought many faculty members’ concerns about Wheaton’s actions against Hawkins centered on process – such as whether she should have been put on leave and notified of possible termination before any peer-based review of her case – but also the case against her in its entirety.
“Based on the conversations that I’ve had with a lot of people, the feeling is that there was room within the boundaries of the statement of faith to have said what she said and it’s not clear, the logic the administration is using to say that it wasn’t,” he said. “We all expect that as tenured faculty, especially, the administration would give us space to explore and investigate and have conversations without being jumped on.” The matter has had a “stifling effect” on other faculty members’ sense of academic freedom, he said.
Mangis added, “I’ve given 30 years of my life to this place. I want to believe that it has the potential to be more than this.”
Thursday’s meeting began with statements from (President Philip Graham) Ryken and Provost Stanton Jones in which they expressed a desire to restore collegiality and trust within the faculty, Mangis said. Ryken also expressed frustration that what should have remained an internal issue became a public event.
Similar to Wheaton’s earlier statement, the administrators said they didn’t intend to reverse their decision, despite the council’s recommendation, Mangis recalled. But Ryken noted that the outcome of the dismissal process was not a foregone conclusion, and said he intends to take seriously whatever recommendation the faculty committee provides.
In response, some faculty members voiced strong disapproval, Mangis said – in particular several members of the Bible and theology department, who said they saw no problems with Hawkins’s statements on a theological level.