Hamline University Controversy: Faculty Votes Calls for University President to Resign

Hat tip Volokh Conspiracy

We have been following the controversy at Hamline University in Minnesota, the state’s oldest university. An adjunct professor of art history,  Erika Lopez-Prater, was terminated by the university after complaints from Muslim students that she showed an example of Islamic art that actually featured an image of the Prophet Mohammad, something that goes against Islamic teaching and doctrine. University administrators labeled the teacher’s actions as “Islamophobic.

This led to a nationwide firestorm against Hamline on grounds of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Hamline’s president, Fayneese Miller, had issued a statement that academic freedom should have been superseded by respect for the Muslim students in the class. The university was flooded with letters, articles were written by academics supportive of Lopez-Prater, and a petition letter gathered over 18,000 signatures (including mine). The American Association of University Professors also came to her defense.

Last week, the university retracted its charges of Islamophobia against Lopez-Prater and admitted they had overreacted. That came on the same day Lopez-Prater filed a lawsuit against Hamline.

Not surprisingly, there isn’t much else the student newspaper, The Oracle, has to write about these days. It has been revealed that they first published, then took down a letter to the editor in defense of Lopez-Prater from Mark Berkson, professor and chair of the Department of Religion. The letter has now been re-published.

Now the latest shoe has fallen. The Hamline faculty has voted overwhelmingly for Miller to resign saying she badly mishandled the crisis. This is reported in an article by David Perry in The Nation, a major liberal news/opinion organ.

Let’s be honest: If a university professor or secondary school teacher cannot show a benign image of the Prophet Mohammad in a classroom, how do you think there can be any honest and open discussion about Islam at all in any classroom? It shows once again that our educators really have no clue about how to handle this super-sensitive topic. It would be much more comfortable if they could simply present Islam as a peaceful religion and talk about Islamophobia.