A few days ago, a reporter from the News-Gazette, the local Champaign paper asked me some questions. They probably will not be used since the issue may now be settling down but for the record, here is how I responded:
Paul,
I apologize for the delay in responding but our summer session is wrapping up and a host of other issues makes this a very busy time for me so I was only able to grab a minute here and there to jot down some responses to your questions:
“what reason the religious department gave you for not rehiring you as an adjunct“
Technically, I was not an adjunct but I was on visiting professor status. I explain this more fully in my blog post here (http://cosmos-liturgy-sex.com/2010/07/14/they-finally-won-background-on-ken-howells-firing/ ). In that post I also explain the events surrounding the Program for the Study of Religion’s (as it was then called) decision, but in sum: I was informed about 2/3s of the way into the fall semester (2006) that I would not be granted an adjunct appointment for the following year. Dr. Robert McKim, the director of the Program for the Study of Religion, called me into his office to tell me that evaluations of my classes by two faculty members from the Program had indicated that I was not suited to teach with them. He would not share with me any specifics of the evaluations but he said in general the problem resolved around the fact that I had appeared “too much like I believed what I was teaching.” I am not sure what other disciplines for which this is a problem, but for Dr. McKim and at least a voting majority of the faculty for the Religious Studies Department, belief when it comes to teaching about the Catholic Church seems to be a problem.
“Do you think your case is similar to Dr. Howell’s?”
Yes I do. Dr. Howell’s case is much clearer of course. He has taught at the U of I for almost a decade and at least since 2005, I believe, every semester he has been ranked by his students as an outstanding professor. Many of these times, he was the only one in the religion department to receive such recognition. Thus, he has a long and stellar record as an outstanding teacher with the department. In his case, he was also told the explicit content which the University decision makers found objectionable. This happened to be an articulation of the Catholic Church’s use of the classical natural law tradition to show its conformance with Church teaching in the context of same sex attraction. The content of the class had been approved by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as is the case with all approved classes. The inability to teach what the Catholic Church teaches and why she does so when it is the explicitly approved topic of the class, simply because it does not comport with current dominant ideology about same sex attraction is unmistakably an infringement on the purpose of a university and the academic freedom that lies at the heart of a university’s mission. To do so in this case was called “hate speech” in a complaint. It seems to me that in this context, the phrase “hate speech” is being used as an ad hominem attack to censor discussion that calls into question an accepted popular dogma, in this case the belief by many in academia about what we might call the “secular sacredness” attached to same sex attraction. In my case, it was the very fact that I “appeared to believe” what the Church taught that was enough to disqualify me to teach. The similarity in both cases is that academic freedom seemed not to apply to Christians teaching about the content of their religion merely because they also accepted that content as true. It is important to note that no claim was made against either of us that we expected the students to believe, pressured them to believe, graded students based upon belief, or that we did not maintain academic standards. I “seemed to believe” what I taught and Dr. Howell’s belief, which violated U of I’s (or at least LAS’s) “standards of inclusivity,” both were the reasons for our departure.
“Does the UI have a problem with Catholics expressing themselves?”
We will have to wait to see the results of the Faculty Senate Committee’s investigation to see if such a charge can fairly be made against the university as a whole, but this clearly seems to be the case within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of Religion.
“Do you have the right as a professor to express your personal opinions?”
I think that a professor has a duty to allow students to know where he is coming from. In journalism this is often referred to as “full disclosure” I believe. If students are to critically assess what is being presented, they should have the opportunity not simply to evaluate the arguments, they should also have access to information about the professor’s personal position in order to more clearly contextualize the arguments. Perhaps it may be the case that other relevant data may have been intentionally or inadvertently left out due to the professor’s position. A student has a right, in fact a duty, to fully evaluate and so make up his/her own mind about an issue in a fully informed manner. There are very few disciplines in which the professor’s personal views are deemed inappropriate to classroom discussion. This includes some of the most controversial topics of our time. That is of course, unless the views depart for accepted “orthodoxy.” Academic Freedom standards in the academy actually protect the right of a professor to discuss relevant controversial topics. The American Association of University Professors cites a Supreme Court decision in this regard on the matter of academic freedom: “As the Supreme Court said in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967), ‘Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom’” (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1940statement.htm ). Unfortunately, the “orthodoxy” demanded by LAS and the Department of Religion squelches rational dialog about the very content of which the class is supposed to be about.
“…have you kept any documents from the time in question?”
I have some documents. One that may be of interest is attached. It is a copy of the e-mail notifying Dr. Howell the Program’s refusal to allow me to teach. It is very vague and it was never explained to me what exactly was meant by the reasons given. As a result, I was never given a chance to respond to the charge that I was “not well equipped” and that point never came up as a separate issue in the discussion I had with Dr. McKim about their decision and so I am left to assume this is also a reference to the “offending” manner in which I taught. Furthermore, the topics of the classes which Program faculty evaluated were theological and philosophical matters associated with the First and Second Vatican Councils, topics about which I am well suited to teach and about which I was evaluated in my graduate studies. Thus, I would be very surprised if the two faculty members evaluating me would have been qualified to critique my expertise in these areas. Nevertheless, the e-mail’s reference to “the way in which they need to be taught at a secular university” was clearly citing Dr. McKim’s explanation to me that I taught too much as though I believed what I was teaching.
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