Hamline College

The Rest of the Story: Hamline Has To Pay, But It’s Not Enough

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

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at the time, Fayneese S. Miller, even issued an email saying that respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.”

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“Curmie’s Conjectures”: The Revenge of the Wackadoodles

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

by Curmie

One of my favorite lines from the late singer/songwriter Warren Zevon is “Just when you thought it was safe to be bored / Trouble waiting to happen.”  That lyric came to mind when I happened across an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Hamline President Goes on the Offensive.”Well, that lyric and one of my most oft-used phrases, “Oh, bloody hell!”. 

This rather lengthy article—over 3000 words—deserves to be read in its entirety, even if it involves a registration process for free access to a limited number of articles per month, but I’ll try to hit the highlights here.  The author is Mark Berkson, the Chair of the Religion Department at Hamline University.  His was for a very long while the only voice, or at least the only audible one, on the Hamline campus to come to the defense of erstwhile adjunct art history professor Erika López Prater as she was being railroaded by the school’s administration on absurd charges of Islamophobia.

You may recall the incident.  Jack first wrote about it here; my take came a little later, here.  Dr. López Prater was teaching a course in global art history, in which she showed images of a couple of paintings depicting the prophet Muhammad.  Recognizing that there are some strains of Islam in which viewing such images is regarded as idolatrous, she made it clear both in the course syllabus and on the day of the lecture in question that students who chose not to look at those particular photos were free not to do so, without penalty.

Ah, but that left too little room for victimhood.  So student Aram Wedatalla blithely ignored those warnings and (gasp!) saw those images… or at least she says she did, which is not necessarily the same thing.  Wounded to the core by her own sloth and/or recklessness, she then howled to the student newspaper and, urged on by Nur Mood, the Assistant Director of Social Justice Programs and Strategic Relations (also the advisor to the Muslim Student Association, of which Wedatalla was president), to the administration.  The banner was then raised high by one David Everett, the Associate Vice President of Inclusive Excellence.  (Those folks at Hamline sure do like their pretentious job titles, don’t they?)

Anyway, Everett proclaimed in an email sent to literally everyone at Hamline that López Prater  had been “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.”  To be fair, he didn’t identify her by name, but there weren’t a lot of folks teaching global art history.  Everett was just getting warmed up.  He subsequently co-authored, or at least jointly signed, a statement with university president Fayneese Miller that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.”  Not at any university worthy of the name, it shouldn’t.  Anyway, López Prater was de facto fired, because destroying the careers of scholars for even imaginary offenses has become a blood sport for administrators (and, in public colleges, for politicians).

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Ethics Dunces: Hamline University Administrators

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This is how my mind works: a cowardly, foolish and irresponsible university does a double-backflip policy reversal after pandering to Muslim bullies on campus, and my mind immediately goes to Emily Litella’s SNL catchphrase, the U.S. News controversy over school rankings (which was supposed to be this morning’s  opening piece) and…Cracker Barrel. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s quite conceivable that the same   weenies who were running Cracker Barrel a while back are now in charge of Hamline, a small and evidently crummy Minnesota university.

Regarding Emily: after its obviously outrageous mistreatment of an adjunct art professor in response to an in-class controversy (described at Ethics Alarms earlier this month) properly attracted harsh criticism from all sides, the unjustly maligned and sacked teacher sued. Then Hamline folded like a tyro facing Amarillo Slim in Texas Hold’em. Hamline’s president, Fayneese S. Miller, had puffed herself up like a woke bullfrog to virtue-signal about how respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.” In this case, “respect” meant ignoring the fact that some Muslim students were throwing a fit over an art teacher teaching art that some extreme sects of their religion think should be taboo (Some Muslims don’t like freedom of expression, and might kill you to prove it) even though the course instructor had given them ample warning and opportunity to avoid the Satanic spectacle of viewing this famous painting….

.After all, letting the inmates run the asylum is what a lot of wokey schools do these days. But once the notice of the lawsuit was received, and Hamline’s lawyers informed the school’s leadership that they were going to lose and lose big, Fayneese, together with the chair of the university’s board of trustees who was  probably holding a shiv to Miller’s kidney, litella-ed this pathetic retraction: Continue reading →

Cowardly And Unethical College Administrators…Again

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

The ethics of this controversy are easy. How could Hamline College administrators screw it up so badly? That’s easy too.

An adjunct professor of art history at Hamline University (in Minnesota, where strange things are always happening), Erika López Prater, knew that Islam forbids depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, so before showing a 14th-century painting of Islam’s founder, she alerted any Muslim students taking her class through her course syllabus that images the Prophet Muhammad would be shown and studied in the course. She directed students with any concerns to contact her. No student did.

Before the class in which paintings of Muhammad were about to be shown, she again alerted students in case anyone felt they needed to leave. No student left. But after Dr. López Prater showed a painting featuring the prophet, a senior in the class complained to the administration. Then Muslim students who were not in the course argued that the class was an attack on their religion. Guess what?

Hamline officials told Dr. López Prater that she was out. Emails to students and faculty pronounced the episode “Islamophobic.” Hamline’s president, Fayneese S. Miller, co-signed an email saying that respect for the Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom.” Continue reading →