A college professor in Illinois who is at risk of being fired for her remarks on Islam and Christianity spoke out on Wednesday, saying she was grateful for her supporters.
Wheaton College, a private evangelical Christian institution, had put Larycia Alaine Hawkins, an associate professor of political science, on leave last month over “the theological implications” of her remarks that Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. On Tuesday, the college said that it had started a process that could lead to her termination, but gave no time frame.
The college’s actions drew criticism on social media after it put Dr. Hawkins on leave with pay in mid-December for her remarks.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she wrote on Facebook, in part, on Dec. 10. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”
While the college defended itself against any impression it was anti-Muslim, saying it did not take a position against her decision to wear an Islamic head covering to show solidarity, Wheaton said Dr. Hawkins’s theological statement seemed “inconsistent” with the college’s doctrine.
On Wednesday, as the termination proceedings loomed, Dr. Hawkins wrote on Facebook about her gratitude for the support she had received from friends and family, as well as from people she had never met: “You will never know how your support of an unknown woman has moved my soul.”
Her case is not the only one in which a professor has been caught up in a controversy involving freedom of expression.
Also this week, the University of Missouri faced renewed pressure over one of its faculty members when Republican lawmakers called on it to fire an assistant professor, Melissa Click, for trying to eject journalists from a student protest in November. A General Assembly statement said that more than 100 Republican lawmakers and 18 members of the Senate Majority Caucus sent the letter to the university.
“In any other setting, an employee who violates the rights of the employer’s customers and threatens them with physical harm would be fired on the spot,” wrote State Representative Jason Chipman, a Republican who signed the letter, on his Facebook page on Monday. “However, in the People’s Republic of Columbia, it’s just another day at Liberal Land.”
In response, Ms. Click’s supporters released a letter calling on the university “to defend her First Amendment rights of protest and her freedom to act as a private citizen.”
Ms. Click had cut her ties to the school’s journalism program after the video showed her calling for “some muscle” at a protest seeking increased action over racial issues on campus, but university officials could not immediately be reached on Wednesday about her status in the department.
Source: NYTimes
