This seems to be one of the rare cases where everyone, from left to right, is on the side of the adjunct.
Note also that FIRE, the organization that champions free expression in college, filed a complaint with Hamline’s accreditor, saying it violated the mandate that institutions provide faculty academic freedom.
I agree that the college goofed big time. The professor gave ample and fair warning. Just like parents of schoolchildren are given ample warning ahead of time when certain topics are brought up in “health class.”
Going to college, in my opinion, means that sometimes you will encounter ideas and points of view that are totally contrary to your own. One of the many purposes of art (again, in my opinion) is to view a subject, topic, etc. in a different way.
Art (especially 2D and 3D art) is often used to bring light to and a unique perspective to hot topics.
If you just want to look at Renaissance paintings, then go take an art history class about that.
Some of the “big issue” movements have started in the US from college campuses. Art is just one type of format which brings that stuff to the foreground of discussions. And if we can’t even TALK about it in a college class, then that’s a sad state of affairs.
That’s still my first guess though, if, as written, there was a bit of notification first. Students aren’t totally clueless most of the time and a few (nowhere near all) definitely have an agenda.
The attraction of being “cool” for the student body is very strong in a small LAC which is very enrollment-driven. In this case, I feel that the president was trying to establish her “progressive” credentials, and to demonstrate that she “listens to the students’ concerns”. While this is laudable, doing it at the expense of the most vulnerable faculty members is not.
I would normally think that this was the case. However, she was the president of the Muslim Student Association, so she was more likely than most other students to be aware of what is taught in classes which focus on topics related to Islam, and is engaged in these sort of issues. Moreover, she is a business major and psych minor, so this isn’t part of her required classes, this is a class that she chose because she was supposedly interested in the topic. So I’m less inclined to believe that she was taken by surprise.
This is great insight. Thank you for offering this. It’s the university’s behavior, rather than the student’s, that I’m concerned about, but it’s still enlightening to consider this perspective.
I agree with @MWolf. The audience could be fellow competitors in the Woker-Than-Thou Olympics and its sister event, the We’re-Student-Centered Super Bowl. I don’t see it as scoring points as much as acting defensively to ensure they are not criticized for being hostile to minority groups. But they sure screwed it up big.
Whether the student was trying to stir up trouble or not, it’s normal for undergrads to be wrong, and to be wrong at the top of their lungs. That’s almost their job. It’s the job of the adults at the college to push back on the wrongness. IMHO, it’s ridiculous for colleges or professors to grant exemptions to viewing art in an art history elective, but I’ve clearly lost that battle, so I give up on that. When it comes to offensive art not being shown in an art history course at ALL, though, that’s a line I’ll fight to the death to defend.
I agree that in an art history class, viewing/discussing work should be mandatory. Those who don’t want to make that commitment should stay away from that elective. And if they need it for their major, I would say that they need to consider changing majors. I worked at a graduate art school. In recent years, there were so many discussions about student A’s work offending student B. Faculty handled it well, but those weren’t always easy situations. Experts were brought in to supplement the discussions, providing additional perspective. After seeing how difficult this was to navigate, I can understand why some administrators might just want to make what they think is an easy decision … but every decision has consequences, and administrators have to think things through very carefully.
I wonder if that would still be the case had the work of art been, say, Immersion (Piss Christ), and the student Catholic.
Maybe not universally, but it would be for me. Of course, I live in a state where many public schools have prayers at awards ceremonies, graduations, athletic practices, etc. But I can only imagine the uproar if it was suggested that any non-Christian prayers take place.
It would not have changed my mind.
This student’s complaint was obviously an intentional setup. The teacher put warnings into the class listing, the syllabus, and gave warnings that art depicting Muhammed would be shown, right up to immediately before it was shown. There is no way that that student was blindsided - they deliberately chose to be there, in order to make a scene, and to try to force the school to comply with their own extremist religious ideology. Shame on the school for having acquiesced.
Throughout history, Muslims have made Muslim art depicting Muhammed. Extremists forbid depiction of Muhammed. Even more extreme extremists consider it their holy obligation to murder those who make an image of Muhammed. Imagine that - draw Muhammed and it is the holy obligation of true believers to murder you. And that’s the ideology that the school caved in to.
Shame on the university for having caved in to this extremist pressure. They should have told that student that there had been ample warning, and that he had ample opportunity to not have registered for the class, or to have left the class for a few minutes when warned that that image would be shown. Instead, they accommodated a religious extremist whose views infringed on others’ rights to learn, and the teacher’s right to teach. In some parts of the Muslim world, the teacher would have been put to death for having dared to teach Muslim art’s history of depicting Muhammed.
It seems the school’s position that this was “clearly Islamophobic” is way off-base. As the spokesperson from Council on American-Islamic Relations indicated, “Intent and circumstances matter . . . especially in a university setting, where academic freedom is critical and professors often address sensitive and controversial topics.”
That said, I think @ColdWombat makes a good point regarding how merely providing an “opt-out” option can itself be alienating and isolating. “Diversifying” a campus is the easy part. It is more difficult to create a campus where diverse students feel like welcome, included, respected, and important members of the community. Perhaps an “opt-in” arrangement where the students who wanted to could go to a separate site to see the image would have helped, or perhaps setting a viewing policy after getting input from the actual stakeholders would have been a more sound approach.
Turning back to actions that are “clearly Islamophobic” . . .
IMO it is “clearly Islamophobic” to portray all Muslims who do not believe they should gaze upon depictions of Muhammed as dangerous “extremists.” It is even more Islamophobic (and frankly outrageous) to try to link this student’s complaint to those who think they have a “holy obligation” to “murder” those who would portray the image.
I think that even Oberlin administrators are thinking “WTH?”.
So what would you do? In any diverse group someone is going to get offended or turned off. If not feeling “included” is the main thing to avoid then some people have to censor themselves or be censored but then the censored will not feel “included “. It becomes a power struggle and education is the casualty
Learning to censor oneself is an important yet undervalued skill, as is learning how to productively and meaningfully interact others who may not share your viewpoint. Common courtesy need not be adversarial.
As for this particular situation, I’ve already said the school didn’t handle it well, and provided a few ideas on what the professor might have done differently. Inclusion isn’t easy, but IMO enhances education more than it hinders.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council put out a statement in support of the fired adjunct. Two key quotes from the article:
We issue this statement of support for the professor and urge the university to reverse its decision and to take compensatory action to ameliorate the situation.
The professor should be thanked for her role in educating students, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and for doing so in a critically empathetic manner.
It must be getting pretty lonely for those at Hamline that recommended her termination.
Repeatedly blasting the administration for getting rid of the professor may be satisfying and even appropriate, but it doesn’t really address the OP’s question . . .
My approach is that history should not be erased because some people don’t like it. But when it comes to controversial material, intent and approach matter.
Consider the swastika, something that may cause a visceral reaction among some Jews. If some are offended by it, does that mean it should not be shown when discussing World War 2? Or for that matter, its continued use in eastern cultures with no association with Nazism?
No, IMO the swastika should be shown for it was, a symbol co-opted by Hitler to represent hate, including its continued use to represent hate in some places.
Just as a point of clarification, to me there is a big difference in whether something is being shown to the whole class, being barred from the whole class, or a student is receiving an individual exemption with an alternative assignment.
When I wrote this below, I was thinking of the class still seeing the content that individual students may have issues with, but that those individual students would have an alternative assignment (i.e. you can step out of the room while we view this image and instead you can analyze this alternative image, and we’ll let you know when we’ve finished viewing the specified image).
In no way do I think that an accommodation for an individual student should mean that the remainder of the class should not be exposed to the topic. So in the science example, the whole class dissects a real animal while the objecting student does an online dissection of the same species.
Of course no one is suggesting that history be erased. And I don’t think anyone is suggesting that such works of art should never be taught. But could the parties involved have handled it more productively from the beginning?
In this regard, there have been a lot of comments (including some nasty, Islamophobic comments) about the student who complained. And while I agree she could have handled it differently, I think @ColdWombat’s comment on such opt-outs is worth considering.
But how about the professor, the department, and/or the college? Suppose the teacher had provided an opt-in arrangement, vs. an opt-out arrangement, would that be erasing history, or a huge burden on academic freedom? Or suppose the teacher and/or school had sought input from the stakeholders on the best way to respectfully teach the material before the class. Would that be erasing history or a burden on academic freedom?
Opt in? How is that better than what was offered here? Or talking in advance with someone (how to identify that person?)about how or what to teach? What if they just say no and cancel the whole subject?
This teacher did everything reasonable to anticipate and deal with a sensitive subject. One can speculate about different ways to handle it but I don’t see any practical solutions that are any better. And the administration firing her was craven submission to a loudmouth (I won’t use the extremist label).