Until this week, Larycia Hawkins was a professor of political science at Wheaton College.
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In the same Facebook post, Hawkins encouraged women to wear a hijab in support of Muslims, and vowed to do so at work, throughout town, at social events, in airports, and on airplanes in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
College officials considered Professor Larycia’s theological statement as “inconsistent with Wheaton College’s doctrinal convictions, and is in no way related to her race, gender or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent”.
Wheaton College professor Larycia Hawkins has been placed on administrative leave after she posted a picture on Facebook Friday wearing a hijab, endorsing a view that Christians and Muslims “worship the same god”.
Wheaton College spokeswoman LaTonya Taylor did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for information about how long the suspension would last, how unusual it was and who would conduct the review. The school also suspended Hawkins through the end of the spring semester.
Suppose, in the wake of a series of anti-Semitic incidents, a teacher at Wheaton College were to write the following on her Facebook page: “I stand in religious solidarity with Jews because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book”.
I love my Muslim neighbor because s/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity.
The college said in a statement that it placed her on leave because of statements she made on social media about similarities between Islam and Christianity.
Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian institution, has disciplined a professor who put on a head scarf in solidarity with Muslims and said they worship the “same God” as Christians.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book”, she wrote, in part. Slate asked some Muslim women who wear the hijab what they thought of Hawkins’s gesture, and found responses both wary and welcoming. Instead, it was a statement about one God that led to her suspension.
“Wheaton College believes the freedom to express one’s religion and live out one’s faith is vital to maintaining a pluralistic society and is central to the very reason our nation was founded, enabling us to live together despite our deepest differences”. Wearing the hijab is a piece of her own push to show solidarity with Muslims, who have confronted reaction in the fallout of late mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif. furthermore, Paris. Other students and alumni started a petition to reinstate “Doc Hawk”. “Thus, beginning tonight, my solidarity has become embodied solidarity”, she said. David Burnham, a 21-year-old junior business and economics major from Florida, said the college suspended Hawkins over her statement, and had no other choice but to do so.
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She noted that Hawkins quoted the pope, and that the Rev. Billy Graham, the evangelical minister and a graduate of Wheaton, had made similar remarks about other religions, including Muslims being “called by God”.
