Wheaton Director of Media Relations LaTonya Taylor confirmed in a statement to TPM that Hawkins had been delivered a notice of recommendation to initiate termination proceedings.
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Hawkins will now face a hearing before the Faculty Personnel Committee, after which President Ryken will make a recommendation regarding her employment status to the Wheaton College Board of Trustees. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God”.
Hawkins attracted global attention this month when she announced – in the wake of anti-Muslim statement by American politicians and others – that she would wear a hijab as a sign of solidarity with Muslims.
Unlike Wheaton’s announcement, Hawkins quotes the termination letter as saying she is being targeted in part because of her “unqualified assertion of religious solidarity with Muslims and Jews”. Hawkins, a Christian teaching political science at the private evangelical school west of Chicago, who is wearing a headscarf to demonstrate solidarity with Muslims was put on leave Tuesday after making statements about the faiths’ similarities that the college said conflicted with its “distinctively evangelical” identity.
Expect a sea of hijabs among Wheaton College students to protest the pending firing of Prof. The school takes religious adherence seriously; in 2006 a philosophy professor was dismissed for converting to Catholicism.
Wheaton College said in a statement at the time that she had been suspended to allow time for a full review of the “theological implications” of her statement.
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Muslim and Christian religious leaders have joined a public campaign calling for Hawkins to be reinstated in her post that has attracted more than 80,000 signatures to an online petition. She also rejected an offer that would have allowed her to return next fall if she gave up tenure for two years. Hawkins plans to speak on the matter Wednesday. Several years ago, she landed in hot water over a paper the school thought might endorse Marxism, which is also seen as incompatible with the statement of faith.
