Wheaton College professors fear fallout from colleague’s suspension

Known as the “Harvard of Christian colleges,” Wheaton College in Chicago’s western suburbs toils to attract quality faculty who can integrate their Christian faith with the topics they teach. At conferences and meetings, faculty are always on the lookout for potential colleagues.

But the attempted ouster of a tenured professor for announcing she would don a hijab because Christians and Muslims worship the same God has unearthed a latent discontent among some faculty at the more-than-century-old institution, where turnover has been an issue in recent years.

“Faculty of a certain ilk won’t stay long at Wheaton,” said Ezer Kang, a tenured psychology professor who has taught at Wheaton for five years. He will begin a teaching position at Howard University next fall. “Wheaton has potential, and Wheaton knows that Wheaton needs faculty that are not snug fits with the broader evangelical community. Those faculty don’t stay because it becomes intolerable.”

On Monday, as students and professors returned to class after winter break, some professors wore full academic regalia — hats, hoods and robes — to show solidarity with their colleague. A few also plan to hold teach-ins for concerned students this week.

Last week, Wheaton Provost Stanton Jones took the first step toward firing Larycia Hawkins, a political science professor at the college for more than eight years, who posted on Facebook last month her intentions to show support for Muslims feeling besieged after the Paris terrorist attacks.

“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she posted on her Facebook page. “And as Pope Francis stated ... we worship the same God.”

According to the private evangelical college, not clarifying what makes Christianity distinct from Islam put Hawkins in conflict with Wheaton’s statement of faith, 12 evangelical beliefs that all Wheaton professors must sign and live out.

Last week, she said the fate of her colleagues is “bound up with my fate.”

Indeed, some Wheaton professors say they worry about the chilling effect Hawkins’ termination would have on their ability to engage students asking difficult questions. They fret that talented scholars will bypass Wheaton in favor of schools that protect their tenured teachers.

There are at least a half-dozen faculty vacancies on campus, including the position of provost, from which Jones retires in May. At least one job candidate has bowed out of a department search.

“Our pool might get slightly shallower and slightly narrower in ways that make it perhaps difficult for us to become more diverse, which is one of our priorities,” said Noah Toly, director of the college’s urban studies program. “I also think that part of the problem here is that many applicants can’t see what have really been the issues. The opacity of the proceedings make people ... anxious, understandably.”

Jones, a psychology professor before he became provost in 1996, insists that Wheaton professors enjoy unfettered freedom of inquiry, adding that many who have worked elsewhere appreciate the uncommon license to express their religiosity in the classroom.

“Quite a number of faculty that we have hired from public and other nonsectarian institutions have commented that ‘Wheaton College is the first place I have worked that I have true academic freedom, because for the first time I can seamlessly relate my religious convictions to my teaching and research in my academic discipline in a context that is supportive and affirming,’” Jones told the Tribune in December. “Because we seek individuals who on their own initiative identify fully with our religious mission and identity, those individuals can take on any question with freedom in the context of this institution.”

Jones said the controversy hasn’t seemed to deter applicants for vacancies in departments including psychology, political science and history.

“The college will address any questions that candidates may raise, but we continue to see lively interest for open faculty positions,” Jones said Monday.

In fact, Tracy McKenzie, chair of Wheaton’s history department, interviewed seven candidates for openings this past weekend and none of them raised concerns, even when invited to do so.

“Wheaton College has had a run of excellent faculty hires in recent years and typically enjoys very high retention,” Jones said.

Every year, as part of renewing their teaching contract, faculty reaffirm a statement of faith.

Peter Walhout, chair of Wheaton’s chemistry department, said he doesn’t know how Hawkins breached that contract and worries that she has been punished based on a particular interpretation.

“I am concerned that there may be many more unspoken interpretations and ramifications of the statement of faith that faculty don’t know about and could unwittingly transgress,” he said.

Likewise, Michael Mangis, a psychology professor since 1989, said he worries that faculty are being measured against the “social taboos of evangelical subculture” rather than the school’s 12 core beliefs.

Mangis said the way Wheaton has treated Hawkins also undermines its desire for more diversity. He points to his own rebuke as evidence.

In the comment section under Hawkins’ original Facebook post, Mangis told Hawkins that if she got “any grief at work give me a heads-up because I’ll be leading my spring psychology of religion class in Muslim prayers.”

Jones contacted Mangis and suggested he clarify that he only wanted students to experiment with different postures of prayer. Instead of reaching out to Hawkins directly, Jones asked another faculty member to approach Hawkins about her post. Hawkins wrote a clarification on her own, without coaching from Jones.

“Unlike Dr. Mangis’ immediate apology, retraction, and collaboration in preparing a public statement, Dr. Hawkins’ second Facebook post did not adequately clarify the theological issues raised in the first post, and instead created significant concerns about her alignment with the college’s Statement of Faith,” Wheaton said in a statement provided to the Tribune.

Similarly, when Jones admonished English professor Tiffany Eberle Kriner for writing a letter on college letterhead expressing a desire to be better neighbors to the Islamic Center of Wheaton, Kriner promptly made amends, the college said.

“Dr. Kriner immediately apologized for using college letterhead for a personal statement and expressed regret for the theological confusion that could potentially follow from her statement,” the college said. “After discussion with Dr. Jones, she articulated her alignment with the theological standards of the college and worked with him to finalize a clarification that could be used publicly if needed.”

Wheaton could not immediately respond to a request for that public statement. Kriner declined to comment. But Mangis said that he readily agreed to Jones’ suggestions, the deferential evangelical code he said he has learned during his 26 years at Wheaton. Other faculty members call it looking over their shoulders.

“We have been entrenched in a white male evangelical groupthink for so long,” Mangis said. “We need to get out of that. It has to come by bringing fresh voices and new perspectives. But when you have those fresh voices, you can’t say you don’t sound enough like a white male evangelical. She was not sounding enough like the old school way of doing things.”

As Wheaton College students streamed into Edman Memorial Chapel for a mandatory prayer service Monday morning, they were met by several dozen of their peers who held signs and chanted slogans supporting Hawkins.

“This is what theology looks like!” the students shouted, their voices nearly drowning out the sound of church bells.

Mangis watched on his way to a prayer service at another nearby chapel, dressed in long black robes, mortar board and a hood of maroon, blue and cream draped down his back. He said he won’t take it off until the college reinstates Hawkins.

“There’s still a goodwill among faculty for the administration and a desire for reconciliation,” he said.

John Schmalzbauer, an associate professor of Protestant studies at Missouri State University who graduated from Wheaton in 1990, said thanks to schools like Wheaton, American evangelicals have gained a foothold in intellectual and ecumenical conversations. That progress could be set back by the current controversy, he said.

“The stakes are too high for American evangelicals’ intellectual life for them not to figure this out and come to some kind of reconciliation.”

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