The situation at Hamline University, which I blogged about a few days ago, has gotten stranger. President Fayneese Miller’s recent statements suggest that the non-renewal of the contract of a lecturer for including Islamic art in an art course is the manifestation of some strange obsession.

The lowliness of the lecturer plays an important role in Miller’s raving. She emphasizes repeatedly that the lecturer was a mere “adjunct instruction” and insists that “the adjunct instructor chosen to teach the course in art history did not ‘lose her job.'” Easy for a university president to say. Not so easy to hear when you’re told you aren’t coming back next term. Miller adds that “the decision not to offer her another class was made at the unit level and in no way reflects on her ability to adequately teach the class.” That’s exactly the issue. A fully competent lecturer isn’t coming back, not because of any problems with her teaching, but because she didn’t follow the commandments of a conservative branch of a religion. But defending a lowly lecturer against a university president’s wrath is, says the university president, a “privileged reaction.”

The notion that outsiders should stay quiet is a favorite excuse of scoundrels, and Miller uses it in blasting “so-called stakeholders” such as PEN America. Having previously decreed that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom,” she’s now pretending there’s no academic freedom issue at all. “We now find ourselves at the heart of a purported stand-off between academic freedom and equity.” Can someone be at the heart of a purported stand-off when it doesn’t exist? Yes — in the sense of having invented it. I don’t think Miller intended to admit that she’s made up the opposition between freedom and equity, but that’s what her statement implies if you try to make sense of it.

Another weird piece of argumentation: “To suggest that the university does not respect academic freedom is absurd on its face. Hamline is a liberal arts institution, the oldest in Minnesota, the first to admit women, and now led by a woman of color.” This seems to be saying that because Hamline has had a good reputation in the past, it can’t be guilty. It’s an argument from social standing, the kind celebrities like to make when caught doing something awful.

She’s upset that “little has been said regarding the needs and concerns of our students.” My previous post dealt with exactly that, specifically with the administration’s apparent intimidation of a student publication. When a university’s policies declare religious commandments binding on everyone, they’ll hit students the hardest. Muslims from other countries who come to the US sometimes start taking their religion’s traditional doctrines and practices, such as the subordination of women, less seriously. I don’t know if any students at Hamline fall into this category, but knowing that the administration enforces an arbitrary Islamic rule to the detriment of another Muslim tradition would have to make their situation harder.

She claims that “I, members of my executive staff, other campus staff and, most sadly, one of our students now receive daily threats of violence.” This could be true. We live in a time when some people will threaten or engage in violence in response to any controversial issue. I hope that if any of these threats are serious and credible, the people responsible will be caught and punished.

At the same time, I hope that Hamline’s directors will work on removing Miller from her post. She’s an embarrassment to the university.

More background: After posting, I did some more searching for articles related to Miller and Hamline and found a Hamline Oracle article on a student protest. One of the organizers said, “We have had professors turn us down not because they don’t agree…but because they feel that if they do speak on the subject, that there is a high chance of them being fired. I think that is something that is absolutely outrageous and should be highlighted because as an institution Hamline boasts about being equal, about being fair, about being different from everybody else. But if there are professors here who are so worried about being fired that they will not speak out on issues that they feel powerful about, then what are we doing? What is the point of this institution?” If that’s true, it suggests that intimidation of faculty who step out of line isn’t new with the recent Islamic art incident.

One more update: Here’s a new commentary from FIRE on Miller’s statement, which it quotes in full. I neglected to note that Miller smears the lecturer and accuses her of “personal vilification” in the same statement. (I’m intentionally omitting the lecturer’s name, since I get the impression she doesn’t like the unwanted publicity she’s gotten out of this. It’s easy enough to find anyway.)