One of the most nauseating displays of grovelling to student bullies and censors was the topic of this post at Ethics Alarms in January of 2023. Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor of art history at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, was going to discuss a famous 14th-century painting of Islam’s founder. Knowing that Islam forbids depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, she included a warning in her course syllabus that images of the Prophet Muhammad would be shown and studied in the course. Muslim students did not have to take the course. Students with concerns were told to to contact her, but none did. She again alerted students, at the start of the class, soany devout Islamic student could leave. No student left. But after Dr. López Prater showed the painting, a senior taking the course and who had remained for the class complained to the administration, and Muslim students who were not even in the course argued that the class was an attack on their religion.
So Hamline fired the professor. Emails to students and faculty agreed that she had engaged in “Islamophobic” conduct, and Hamline’s president at the time, Fayneese S. Miller, even issued an email saying that respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.”
This was even worse than typical university pandering; it was capitulating to unscrupulous activists looking to expand their power while victimizing an innocent scholar in the process. The backlash to Hamline’s sickening grovel was national, immediate and overwhelming, so the school tried to backtrack, saying, essentially, “Sorry! Anyone can make a mistake. We’ve learned our lesson!” It wasn’t enough.
Erika López Prater sued Hamline University alleging that the school has subjected her to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation. The ridiculous and craven Hamline president was pushed into “retirement,” and it was announced this week that a settlement has been reached, with a confidentiality agreement on the terms.
I wrote at the time this episode was roiling,
…actions have consequences, and when you accuse an honest and fair teacher of being a bigot and fire her just to avoid having to tell students they are full of it, you are going to pay even in the Age of the Great Stupid. Their use of “Islamaphobic “wasn’t flawed: the whole school is flawed. Nobody should want to work there or get a degree there….Just close the place. There are other schools.
That verdict still holds.
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Pointer: Curmie
Ethics Alarms 
Yeah, being a scholar of Islamic art is really difficult. There are all the examples of paintings, etc, of Mohammed in Islamic art, and yet images of Mohammed are forbidden. You see images of Mohammed, then they begin to put a veil over Mohammed’s face (like the veil Moses had to wear after talking with God), they there are no more images of Mohammed. The reason is that Islam changed drastically after the 14th century, but claims to be the same back to the 7th century. Islamic scholars are aware of this, but they teach something different to the rank and file. The university needed a president with a real backbone to deal with this.
This is somewhat akin to Oberlin College v Gibson’s Bakery. The university follows its narrative and the worst instincts of its students to bully someone they and / or the students don’t like.
The only saving grace here is that the university settled rather than playing out a court case to the bitter end and beyond.
For the punishment to really be ‘enough’, I think the school would have to reconsider and realize that they were in the wrong. That’s definitely not true for Oberlin. They seem primed to do it again, given a suitable victim. Hopefully Hamline is a bit smarter.
Oberlin, however, to this very day, has refused to admit that it did anything wrong.
Yep. Which means we’re likely to be reading about them in Legal Insurrection when they do it again.