Well, well, well.
http://time.com/4174229/wheaton-college-larycia-hawkins-muslim-facebook/
I think firing her is silly, but they do have a right to. I don’t see it as any worse than when they fired a professor for converting to Catholicism. They have a right to do what they want to, and I have a right to think they are idiots. lol
Considering issues in the past 5 years or so, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I used to consider Wheaton an academically serious, seriously evangelical college that I’d recommend. I won’t anymore.
(However, this is a sad commentary on what being a smart, conservative Christian has come to mean to some people, that someone advocating tolerance and respect between the Religions of the Book should make one lose their job, during the time dedicated to peace, joy, and goodwill to all in the Christian calendar.)
This statement from someone at the college should be disheartening to all faithful believers.
There was also a column from the President of Wheaton, Massachusetts, a non religious (pretty atheistic in fact) college, that got confused with Wheaton Illinois. Apparently they were deluged with phone calls. An example of the content included someone wishing for the professor to be raped and shot, I believe.
Is there really so much rage, so much violence roiling underneath our friendly looks and handshakes?
“Conflict draws attention to such statements, and renews debate on whether they are compatible with academic freedom.”
The obvious answer is no. They are not compatible. When you attend a private religious school, they have the right to basically do whatever they want to in the name of freedom of religion. End of story.
Consider that when you choose a religious school.
Article in The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/01/christians-muslims-and-monotheism?fsrc=gp_en?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/christiansmuslimsandmonotheismthediscipliningofaprofessorraisesanoldphilosophicalquestion
The reason FIRE ( The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), which defended the rights of those frat boys to use the N word and takes the position that even most private schools owe students and faculty free speech rights, said it would not take up the cause of this professor is that Wheaton is upfront honest that it does not grant freedom of speech/academic freedom. FIRE says Wheaton is one of only a handful of schools that don’t promise an open dialogue of ideas and thus has the right to act in this manner. https://www.thefire.org/wheaton-college-shows-what-a-warning-school-looks-like/. Contrast that with FIRES discussion of academic freedom at another private religious college. /https://www.thefire.org/silenced-at-saint-marys-censorship-and-academic-freedom-concerns-raised-after-professors-firing
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.
Some alumni are calling for her reinstatement. IDK if these are the ones that have much influence. http://www.christianpost.com/news/wheaton-college-800-alumni-threaten-stop-financial-support-larycia-hawkins-same-god-professor-not-reinstated-155247/
Interesting that a Christian college is having trouble doing “the Christian thing”.
They can fire her and defend their bigotry as much as they like but there is only one God and no matter which name you use for a rose, it would still be a rose. Same argument goes for head covering, if Mary covered her head and nuns cover their heads then you shouldn’t stop a professor at Wheaton from covering her head or uncovering it, whichever way she may prefer at a given day.
Where did this idea that Mary covered her head come from? I have read this in several places. I don’t know if she did or not, but paintings of Mary with her head covered are not really evidence that she did.
Head covering is a Christian thing too. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2011:5-15&version=KJV
Or maybe more accurately, a Jewish thing, at that time.
I believe women (and men) have covered their heads through most of Jewish history. Many observant Jews still do.
Actually, head covering for Jewish men apparently began in the Middle Ages. I looked this up when a class was studying the Corinthians passage cited above. We first assumed that Paul was telling Christian men not to cover their heads as a way to distinguish them from Jews, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.
Wheaton College in Illinois announced Saturday night that it has reached an agreement to “part ways” with Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science whom it has been trying to fire.
We’ll probably never find out how much they had to pay her to make her go quietly. I suspect it was a substantial sum.
Apparently there will be a press conference Wednesday.
A soft landing, if not a tenure-track one: