Why Wheaton’s move to fire controversial professor makes sense

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/08/why-wheatons-move-to-fire-controversial-professor-makes-sense/

 

The school's accrediting agency shouldn't tolerate this.

 

If they're private and have a given belief system, they can make it a part of their requirements for faculty or students, they can require the signing of statements of faith if they wish. Most evangelicals do not believe that Muslims and Christians worship the same God in any meaningful sense, and while that may be a point for reasonable debate, it does not change the fact that Wheaton has every right to do this. If they were to do this to the janitor or CFO, that isn't a bona fide occupational qualification for that sort of position and would be a violation of the CRA.

I wouldn't think it right to demand that Yeshiva keep faculty who believe Jesus was the Messiah on board at the point of the accreditation sword, and I'd feel the same about the rights of a private Muslim, Hindu or atheist institution.

 

The problem is, as Steve notes, that it depends greatly upon what the contract says and how much academic freedom a professor at said school is given.

Naturally, a professor at a strictly religious school is not going to have the same academic freedom as a professor at a state school. No one disputes that.

But the situation presented is not comparable to a professor at a Yeshiva saying that Jesus is the Messiah. It's more like a professor at that Yeshiva saying "Christians and Jews worship the same God" and getting fired because the school chose to narrowly interpret that statement as an endorsement of Jews praying to Jesus (i.e. "If Jews and Christians worship the same God, and Christians worship Jesus as God, therefore, Jews worship Jesus...).

It's a debatable point. And it's a point made by others, with far less drastic consequences, even within conservative Christian circles.

Have a core statement of belief, by all means. But if you're going to tell faculty that they can't even hint at controversy then you aren't a university; you're just a school of theology and we should really reconsider giving you Title IV Funds.

 

Perhaps a church and a university should be two things, not one. If you're a church, you can be as strict religiously as you want in hiring your clerics. But a university should not be able to do this, just as any other employer would be prevented from doing so.

 

In a free society people should be able to enter into contracts of their choosing. A contract is a meeting of the minds where both sides agree on certain stipulations. I'm sure no one forced the professor to sign the contract. If she broke the contract, regardless of its stipulations, the other party involved should be able to release her from employment.

Accreditation means that a school meets minimum standards as set forth by the accrediting agency, nothing more. I am unaware of any religious test, whether for or against, that the school's accreditor(s) could use against the school. The school and the professor they hired entered into a legal contract. If the professor broke the contract, then the school has a right to seek a remedy.

 

Not so fast. Just because an employee (or prospect) agrees to something, that alone doesn't make it legal. We have all kinds of laws to protect employees from employers' actions, even if they sign something.

As for the accreditor, this kind of behavior bleeds all over what should be a university. There are academic freedom issues at hand here. It's not as simple as "you don't wear the paper hat so you don't get to work her cooking the fries."

If there is a religious test, perhaps they should not be a university. They should be a church. I recently had an offer to teach as an adjunct at a private school with a religious affiliation. All I was asked was if I could stay consistent with their values which, I'll add, were more about how people treat each other and almost nothing about religious beliefs. In fact, I'm sure I could have criticized the religion elsewhere and not been in breach. A university can have a religious affiliation, it can have values, but when it applies a religious test to its faculty, it now infringes on their freedoms, too. It isn't a one-way street.

In no way did this woman breach her agreement with the university. They just don't like what she said and have decided to punish her for it. I'm hoping she takes legal action for wrongful termination (if she's let go). I'd also like to see the school's accreditor step in and ask why it's acting like a church, not an institution of higher learning.

 

You have absolutely no way of knowing that. Did you personally read the contract? I doubt it.

 

I'll continue with the speculation. I'm imagining two different scenarios. The first is where there are two factions in the school administration/board, one for firing her and one for not firing her. There is an internal struggle to see which faction wins. The second scenario is one where the school would like to dismiss this Professor but, knowing that they'll be sued for wrongful dismissal, they are consulting with attorneys in order to determine the likelihood of winning such a suit.

 

Well, as long as I have 45 more minutes to kill before my DOT clock starts again, I shall pontificate. I won’t even throw up to “twodocdoug” (who, as I recall, is an atheist, which would explain his naïve position in this thread) that both of my grad degrees carried a major in church-state law.

Bottom line: The college has every right to can her. Without people whining to the accreditor. And the accreditor will even back them up because they’re more realistic than the those who are moaning about academic freedom.

There are fine points here that non-theologians (including two-doc atheists) will not get. To wit, the key question:

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same god? Insofar as we are speaking of God the Father, first person in the Trinity, yes. But the key question in Christianity is: Who is Jesus? What, essentially, is his nature?

Christians believe that Jesus is God the second person of the Trinity. Muslims believe that Jesus was simply a prophet: There is one God (Allah), and Mohammed is His prophet. Yes, Jesus was a prophet, but Mohammed was the biggest and best prophet. Insofar as they do not acknowledge the Godhood of Jesus, ultimately the answer is that they do not worship the same God as Christians. You just have to get into the fine points of Christian theology to realize that.

Remember that Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” Would Muslims buy into that? Nope. C.S. Lewis got it right when he said that those who simply credit Jesus as a great philosopher or prophet don’t get that He Himself climas to be God. Which mean that he either has to be a lunatic, liar, legend, or Lord. Christians obviously interpret him as the latter based on the primary source evidence – Jesus Himself.

It’s on this basis that Dr. Hawkins (the Wheaton professor who should be enjoying her 15 minutes of fame) fails the college’s doctrinal standard. Muslims and Christians cannot be equated as compatible theologically, in the same way that Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Christian Scientists would also fail Wheaton’s test.

So, can they fire her on that basis? Legally, yes. Wheaton is a “pervasively sectarian” institution, and the matter at hand is clearly a theological one. The same principle that allows other Christian schools to discriminate against women in some roles (such as the teaching of pastoral theology). (One school at which I used to teach, Biblical Seminary, had a unique solution to gender roles. Women were permitted to earn an M.Div. degree, but they could not take courses in homiletics or preaching. Go figure.)

But it’s my understanding that Dr. Hawkins was invited to defend her position to the appropriate academic committee and declined the opportunity. On that basis alone, they can kick her butt out. She’s obviously out to make a political statement, and I believe they’ll do the right thing.

Why? Believe me, any college would love[ not to be in the position they’re in. Our illustrious professor is female and black, and any academic institution would love to keep someone like that to make their diversity statistics look good. But not at the expense of compromising their doctrinal standards.

The question is Why is she jeopardizing her tenured status for this so-called cause? I have no idea. Most academic would give their right nut to be in her position – a tenured professor at a highly respected college. But she appears willing to blow it. Okay, more power to her. And to the college as well.

Um, I have spoken. So there.

 

Should their accreditor stop this? Probably not. Not because what they are doing is "right" but what they are doing is legal and there is no good way to stop them without stepping on religious freedom, in general.

Can adults enter into contracts? Of course. And they can review those contracts with lawyers and try to make informed decisions. But you're talking about a weird little nuance of theological debate, as Steve has noted.

She isn't a secretary at a church. She's an academic. She's supposed to have some degree of academic freedom. That she works at a religious school means that she should exercise that freedom within theological confines. But because the confines of a particular theology aren't clearly defined and are absolutely debatable within that religion's circles, it creates an environment where the contract is virtually meaningless.

There was a situation some years ago at a Lutheran school where a teacher was asked by a student about certain antisemitic comments made by Martin Luther. To my recollection, the teacher's response was something like "Yeah, those were some pretty awful comments. But we don't take everything Luther ever said about everything in the world as gospel truth. So it's totally possible that he was wrong about being an antisemite but his theology was still well formed and validly provides the theological basis of our church."

Canned. Apparently they would have preferred that she simply not answered said student at all rather than do anything that criticized ML. She sued. She lost. The school cited that she agreed to adhere to Lutheran doctrine which, as they were interpreting it right then, meant "we don't talk smack about Martin Luther."

Legal? Yes. Moral? Well, I'd argue "no." But I have this funny notion that "because I said so" isn't a valid argument to raise in educational settings when it comes to responding to legitimate intellectual inquiries.

As Steve notes, there are many who would love to be sitting in her tenured position. And I'd like to think that if I made a relatively innocuous statement that was being met as though I had attempted to revive Arianism, I'd take a stand as well. Because the reality is that if her replacement never ventures outside narrowly defined lines and only ever just says things that are completely non-controversial, well, it's unlikely that individual will offer much by way of a legacy when all is said and done.

The fact is that the statement wasn't particularly controversial. And the administration got all huffy because it involved treating "them mooslims" as something other than a caricature to be despised and reviled. And so they lashed out. They didn't have to. They could have just let this non-issue pass into obscurity. So, if they really wanted to not be in this position, then they probably should have rethought making a mountain out of this particular mole hill.

All of that aside, if you want to be affiliated with a religious school as a teacher, staff member or student, this is your world and you have to accept that. The University of Scranton was incredibly open to all sorts of differing viewpoints. But they also would have been legally permitted to one day abruptly stop and tell us that anyone who ate meat on Fridays during lent would be expelled on the spot. If you can't handle that reality then you should probably seek out another institution.

That is something I'm completely OK with. I'm less OK with the idea that schools like this are permitted to discriminate against faculty and students while receiving federal funds. Don't accept the government money if you don't want to treat people equally under the law.

Render unto Caesar and such.

But, unless and until Congress decides it's time to ween fundy schools from the government welfare teet and have them either stand on their own or, more likely, allow many to fail I cannot expect that to change.

 

Yeshiva would have every right to fire a professor for saying that so long as they have some kind of statement of faith establishing that such a belief would not fit within their core values (I doubt that they do, by the way). If people want to take away the accreditation of schools that have statements of faith that establish real core tenets of belief for faculty, policy-setting administrators and students, then by all means say so and we'll debate that issue. But the law as it stands in my not-so-humble opinion protects Wheaton here, and I doubt the north central accreditors are likely to touch that with a ten foot pole. Wheaton has some pretty strong evangelical beliefs (which they have every right to hold without the threat of loss of accreditation), but I doubt many would question their academic integrity.

 

Doggone it, Rich, I like you, but I teach this stuff (and have for many years) at a public university, I've taught and developed courses in constitutional law, have been published in the area of wrongful termination and CRA issues. I know this stuff. Wheaton has every right to hold their beliefs and enforce them. Academic freedom includes the right to hold your own beliefs about religious and metaphysical matters and to associate with those whom you please. This is a private institution and there are First Amendment issues at stake. They have every darned right in the world to fire her. By the way, I do not wish to work for a religious institution because I'm a little queasy about signing statements of faith, but this professor apparently signed one (I assume Wheaton requires as much, tell me if I'm wrong) and she has the right to work elsewhere. It IS a one way street when she decided to work for them, that was her decision. Darn it, you're wrong!

 

Let me soften my position a bit after snarling off that last post in a fit of pique (stressful right now, classes just started yesterday, administrative issues, interviewing for a new job in a couple weeks, new dean's a horse's lee side, etc., those are my lame excuses for flaming a decent guy, Rich).

If Wheaton hasn't defined their beliefs particularly well vis-a-vis faculty, then it is certainly possible that the Muslim solidarity prof could have a good claim for wrongful termination, Rich would have a point in that case. I doubt that a CRA suit would be successful, however, because she chose to work at that institution, she knew it was conservative evangelical going in (why I shouted that it was a one-way street in my previous post) and they do have First Amendment rights to establish even very narrow belief systems (though Wheaton is not really that narrow as evangelical institutions go). In any event, if Wheaton poorly defined their belief systems or didn't follow their own contract, then certainly, they could be dinged.

But they have every right to uphold even tightly evangelical positions and fire Muslim solidarity profs so long as such beliefs are fairly on the table up front.

 

A fundamental precept of the university is academic freedom. Normally, the standard for firing a professor for his/her speech is a very, very high bar. This ain't that.

If Wheaton College wants to be a private club, fine. But it isn't. It uses public funds, it has governmental recognition, it provides public accommodations, and a lot more. With all of that comes a responsibility. Besides, WWJD? I doubt he'd try to fire her.

We'll see how this turns out. I'm thinking it won't result in termination. Some sort of face-saving settlement is on the way. Again, we'll see.

 

Here's an idea; if you don't agree with, or aren't comfortable with, the doctrinal position of a religious school, don't apply to teach there.

What is Dr. Hawkins planning to do for an encore, buy a house next to an airport, then complain about the airplane noise?

 

Because it's 2016 America, you don't just complain, you sue the airport and all the individual airlines.:haha:

 

That's the most dumb-ass interpretation of "Lutheran doctrine" I've ever heard. I'm sure Dr. Luther himself, an accomplished academic, would not agree to this patent nonsense. But, well, I guess a group can hold to this hillbilly Lutheranism if they so choose. In the country where Scientology is legal and a church...

 

On topic: yes, canning a prof for heterodox statements is probably legal. I'd say it's not particularly wise if it's just for that statement; however, if the prof is intent to keep promoting that statement, there may be to much conflict to keep her on faculty.

Do Christians and Muslims pray to the same God? I do not know, and lean to a heavily qualified "yes". But again, I don't teach at Wheaton.