“Not Renewed” is Used as an Excuse at Hamline and Elsewhere

by Michael Dorf Hamline University, a liberal arts college in Minnesota, has been the scene of recent controversy following the university administration’s dismissal of adjunct professor Erika Lopez Prater, whose actions the university’s vice president for inclusive excellence publicly condemned as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.” Lopez Prater’s offense? In her art history class, she displayed (among many other works of art) a well-known and historically important 14th-century painting of the prophet Muhammad—but only after warning students both in her syllabus and during class that she would do so, thus allowing any Muslim students who might wish to avoid the […]