When Dr. Larycia Hawkins controversially donned a hijab this Advent in solidarity with her Muslim sisters, little did she know she was also standing in solidarity with some professors who have been denied their basic academic freedoms: to speak, to research, to teach.
The political science professor of Wheaton College was placed on administrative leave less than a week after posting to Facebook that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God” in her official statement of solidarity with Muslim women on Dec. 10.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” Hawkins wrote.
According to Wheaton College’s “Statement Regarding Dr. Larycia Hawkins” on the institution’s online News & Media page from Dec. 15, this message conflicts with the college’s statement of faith, a contractual employment agreement regarding the institution’s religious beliefs.
The resulting conflict is a theological quandary stemming from inter-religious Abrahamic roots pitted against a progressive desire to maintain academic freedom in a modern university setting.
According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — the oldest cross-disciplinary organization dedicated to protecting academic freedom as well as faculty tenure, government and due process — punishment of a professor under religious pretense is in violation of his or her right to academic freedom: the freedom to teach, the freedom to research, and the freedom to engage in extracurricular utterances.
According to the 10th edition of the AAUP’s “Policy Documents & Reports,” the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” states that restrictions on academic freedom were once acceptable in religious institutions with the existence of explicit clarification regarding limitations. In its 1970 reinterpretation, the AAUP recanted this statement. Today, it no longer endorses the restriction of academic freedom on the grounds of religion.
In the case of Dr. Hawkins at Wheaton College, the AAUP was unable to intervene.
“From the AAUP’s standpoint, Larycia Hawkins, working at an institution like Wheaton College, never had academic freedom,” said Dr. Steve Macek, professor of communication and delegate of the AAUP at North Central College.
According to Macek, the entirety of Wheaton College is in violation of academic freedom due to its mandatory contract as well as the inexplicit requirements of said contract. As a result, Hawkins lost all rights to academic freedom upon signing.
“If a statement of faith is codified in a vague way, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation,” said Dr. Alyx Mark, professor of political science at North Central. “And that interpretation on the part of the administration at Wheaton allows them a lot of wiggle room to decide how they choose to interpret that statement of faith.”
Such vague definition ultimately allows a college to limit the teachings and practices of its institution without check or balance, leaving even tenured professors under such contractual restrictions in a vulnerable academic position.
“Belief is involuntary,” Macek said. “Even if you believed it at the time, you’re saying, ‘I’m never going to change my mind,’ and of course, that’s the one thing a scholar should never say.”
In response to these events at Wheaton College, North Central’s Religious Studies Department organized a panel discussion titled “Hijab, Higher Education, and Religious Harmony: an Interfaith Dialogue on Larycia Hawkins and Wheaton College” in Smith Hall on Feb. 2. Hosted by Dr. Wioleta Polinska, professor of religious studies and executive member of the AAUP chapter at North Central, the panel witnessed the perspectives of Islamic scholar, Professor Omar Mozaffar; Rabbi Marc Rudolph; biblical studies professor, Dr. Shelley Long; and campus chaplain, the Rev. Eric Doolittle of the United Methodist Church.
According to the panel, institutional religious affiliations and doctrines, such as Wheaton College’s statement of faith, exist to create a sense of identity within a community.
“There can be a sense to doctrine that can help identify a community to say, ‘We have a shared vision of who we are’,” Doolittle said.
As a Protestant evangelical liberal arts institution, Wheaton College’s own statement of faith allows the institution to build and maintain such identity, even at the expense of certain academic freedoms. Doolittle compares such institutional relinquishment of freedom to the individual practices and prohibitions of people of different faiths, for instance: the inability to consume pork or to engage in pre-marital sex. Such abdication of freedom exists institutionally as well as individually. From a religious perspective, Wheaton has its own rights to define this personal theological identity.
“There’s always going to be friction between a fully open dialogue of academic freedom and a doctrine of any sort,” he continues. “I think it’s up to an individual community to say where the best practices of academic freedom need to be limited in order for us to be authentic to who we are.”
According to Doolittle, harmonization of this religious identity with academic freedom requires constant dialogue between doctrine and the modern world. Through modernization of an institution’s statement of faith, the two may potentially coexist.
“I think it’s something that has to be in constant dialogue,” Doolittle said. “Any statement of faith of an institution has to be continually in conversation with society because our understanding of how the world works is constantly in motion.”
Politically, modification of imprecise terms and definitions of an institution’s statement would be another step toward coexistence.
“Schools that do have statements of faith might be in a position (now) where they might think of revising or making more explicit these definitions that are sort of unclear in the Wheaton case,” Mark said.
Such modification would adhere to the 1940 “Statement” of the AAUP policy handbook.
In a statement on the institution’s News & Media page on Jan. 21, Wheaton College wrote that its “President … and the Faculty Council have discussed a review of current policies and processes, with a view to addressing or clarifying areas of concern.”
Wheaton College issued a Notice of Recommendation to Initiate Termination-for-Cause Proceedings of Dr. Hawkins on Jan. 4. On Feb. 5, a group of 78 faculty members wrote a letter to President Ryken and Provost Stanton Jones of Wheaton requesting its withdrawal as well as the revocation of Hawkins’ administrative leave.
In a statement on the institution’s News & Media page on Feb. 6, the college wrote that it and Hawkins have conclusively agreed to “part ways” after having found a “mutual place of resolution and reconciliation.” The statement provided no further details regarding the specifics of this agreement to end both Wheaton and Hawkins’ battle of political and religious controversy.
