A professor fired to have showed images of Mohammed to a warned public....

[The Brain]

Are forensic medicine students in the US still allowed to see disturbing images?

[grumbler]

Where does the "teacher fired" in the title come from?

[The Brain]

Where does the "teacher fired" in the title come from?

It's "professor fired" in the title. L2R

Likely from the same place as the grammar.

[garbon]

And?

Does that mean you agree this is something the prof really had to apologise for?

No but I'm also not sure we need a new thread for us to talk about Islamic iconoclasm. Haven't we done that to death?

Seems like the real issue here is that a university in the US appears to be endorsing and enforcing the hardline religious dogma.

I guess but then they describe themselves as a "church-related university" and "strongly affirm the United Methodist emphasis on ecumenical openness to other faiths."

[garbon]

Where does the "teacher fired" in the title come from?

Interesting as yeah not even the title of page in the link...

[Sheilbh]

Nah. Imagine a similarly hot topic issue for Christians in a similar university classroom setting, for example historic Christian stance on homosexuals or birth control, implying that the current main trend has not been eternal. If some guy made a big deal out of it in a zealous rage, we WOULD dismiss it outright, and there'd be no apologies necessary.

Right but those are social issues about which society has a view.

There were protests in Birmingham around Muslim faith schools not wanting to teach parts of the curriculum about LGBT+ rights and sexuality. The approach that was taken, correctly, was that those rights are part of our society and you can't opt out of teaching them. Same as other bits of citizenship or guidance classes. It might be something Muslims or Christians disagree with but it's not core to their beliefs in the same way.

So I don't think that comparison holds. It's why I also think it's more difficult to think of a Christian example that there's fewer shared concepts of the blasphemous. The one that sprang to mind was doing something with sacramental bread or wine and there's a Catholic in the class which might be similar.

And faith schools -no matter the faith in question- should just not exist, period. Indoctrination, pure and simple.

I think a third of state schools in the UK are faith schools

I don't personally have an issue with them. Though I mainly went to school in Scotland which has some Catholic schools (none near where I lived) but is otherwise mainly secular/non-denominational. So I don't have personal experience.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Where does the "teacher fired" in the title come from?

I think he was an adjunct so his contract wasn't renewed.

[Sheilbh]

Where does the "teacher fired" in the title come from?

I think he was an adjunct so his contract wasn't renewed.

From the NYT article they're a really precarious role and it sounds a little like the gig workers of the academic world.

I think again this is a story about offence and consequences of people taking offence, but could (and I think should) be looked at from the perspective of labour rights and how strong the imbalance of power is in certain industries and states.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'd already read / discussed this extensively in another forum:

1. The teacher was an adjunct professor and was not fired. Adjuncts receive term-to-term contracts, she was told they would not be offering her a contract for the next term.

2. The adjunct was initially not all that upset--she said she was ready to move on anyway, a lot of adjuncts are kind of cultural nomads and some of the people who actually enjoy the fairly thankless and lower paid work do like that aspect of being able to travel around the country and work different places. She took umbrage not to her contract not being renewed, but to the statements from the university that came out a few days later that essentially phrased her running the class as if she was an anti-Muslim bigot.

3. I defer to the experts here--a tenured Professor of Religion at Hamline wrote an article and gave a lecture basically denouncing the university. He said the art history professor was behaving reasonably, and the university was treating a simple difference in doctrinal opinion that exists among Muslims as a matter of "bigotry" if you don't accept one (admittedly majority) Muslim view.

4. A tenured head of art history in Michigan (can't remember the school), said that showing this painting is considered "standard" part of the curriculum of classes like the one being taught, and it is entirely in the norm and commonly done at almost any school that offers such a class--she even said not showing the painting would basically be out of the norm for an entry level art history class on religious art.

It basically seems like Hamline's administrators just immediately caved to the thinnest bit of student pressure, which in itself I think started from a bad faith conservative Muslim rabble rouser. If the individual involved had real concerns why did they not bring up before the painting was shown, given the huge number of pre-display warnings the professor gave? This is a Muslim activist who wanted to have an incident, the school accommodated them.

CAIR, an Islamic fundamentalist group in America that pretends it is a civil rights group, stood behind the student because they are largely anti-secularist bigots. They also said that "only a few extremist outliers in Islam" are okay with depictions of the prophet, further showing how biased and bigoted CAIR is.

[DGuller]

I think the distinction between "fired" and "not renewed" has no practical difference, especially when contract renewal is normally a formality.  There may be a legal difference, and there may be plausible deniability, but the practical outcome of both is that you had a job before and don't have it now.  Both cases are equally problematic if the reason you don't have a job now is because you ran afoul of some religious hadliners.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I don't think the sacking/non-sacking is of much importance. The problem is that we have a university that can now no longer teach the basics of Islamic art due to a complaint by a puritanical fundamentalist.

The university will also need to change its motto "Religio, Literae, Libertas" huh 

[OttoVonBismarck]

The particulars of sacking vs not, I agree are not important. I was simply clarifying what did actually happen--and the adjunct herself was basically nonplussed over not being renewed, it was her being called a bigot publicly a few days later that she took issue with. FWIW I think the reason she wasn't that worried about not being renewed is it isn't really just a formality, adjuncts are basically treated like temp workers in most respects, if you are a "career adjunct" you likely have cycled through many universities, and it is generally well understood that is how it works. The shittiness of adjunct teaching positions and how universities way over-rely on them is a whole other thread.

[crazy canuck]

This story is concerning for a couple of reasons.

1) The precarious existence of adjunct professors and really all non-tenured instructors at colleges and universities.  I don't think there is any meaningful distinction between a contract not being renewed and employment being terminated.  The end result is the prof is without a job. 

2) University administrators utterly failing in their obligation to assiduously protect and foster academic freedom within their institution.  The issue is not whether the material selected by the prof was normally part of an art history course.  The issue is that this prof is entitled to exercise her academic judgment as to what art history materials should be included in her art history course.  The university administrators should have told the people complaining about the content that one of the reasons a university exists is to expose its students to a variety of views, beliefs and ideas.  If a student wants to be isolated from that experience, choose a different venue for study - like a religious school which conforms to their particular view of the world.

[Sheilbh]

3. I defer to the experts here--a tenured Professor of Religion at Hamline wrote an article and gave a lecture basically denouncing the university. He said the art history professor was behaving reasonably, and the university was treating a simple difference in doctrinal opinion that exists among Muslims as a matter of "bigotry" if you don't accept one (admittedly majority) Muslim view.

On this, this section of the NYT article was striking. From a forum that was held by the college:

Mark Berkson, a religion professor at Hamline, raised his hand.

"When you say 'trust Muslims on Islamophobia,'" Dr. Berkson asked, "what does one do when the Islamic community itself is divided on an issue? Because there are many Muslim scholars and experts and art historians who do not believe that this was Islamophobic."

Mr. Hussein responded that there were marginal and extremist voices on any issue. "You can teach a whole class about why Hitler was good," Mr. Hussein said.

During the exchange, Ms. Baker, the department head, and Dr. Everett, the administrator, separately walked up to the religion professor, put their hands on his shoulders and said this was not the time to raise these concerns, Dr. Berkson said in an interview.

But Dr. Berkson, who said he strongly supported campus diversity, said that he felt compelled to speak up.

"We were being asked to accept, without questioning, that what our colleague did — teaching an Islamic art masterpiece in a class on art history after having given multiple warnings — was somehow equivalent to mosque vandalism and violence against Muslims and hate speech," Dr. Berkson said. "That is what I could not stand."

It basically seems like Hamline's administrators just immediately caved to the thinnest bit of student pressure, which in itself I think started from a bad faith conservative Muslim rabble rouser. If the individual involved had real concerns why did they not bring up before the painting was shown, given the huge number of pre-display warnings the professor gave? This is a Muslim activist who wanted to have an incident, the school accommodated them.

The other frustrating thing about this story is that it seems like the lecturer thought there would be a complaint, reported everything to the administrators. The chair of the department emailed her afterwards "It sounded like you did everything right [...] I believe in academic freedom so you have my support."

And then seemed it was Islamophobic - which is why I can understand how angry the lecturer must be.

CAIR, an Islamic fundamentalist group in America that pretends it is a civil rights group, stood behind the student because they are largely anti-secularist bigots. They also said that "only a few extremist outliers in Islam" are okay with depictions of the prophet, further showing how biased and bigoted CAIR is.

The other point on this is that if there's one sector that should be able to make a nuanced, informed decision on this - surely it's a college. I don't see why they needed to outsource their judgement.

[The Brain]

I think there's a difference between not getting a contract renewed and getting fired. Assuming that a customer will renew a contract is not The Way. A politician who doesn't get reelected hasn't lost their job.

Of course this doesn't change this particular event from bad (and it is bad in so many ways) to something else, but IMHO it would have been even worse if the teacher had been fired.