Hamline U. Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job

[marshwiggle]

Going out of one's way to signal one's vices seems worse, to me, than going out of one's way to signal one's virtues. Buut I guess opinions differ.

I disagree. "Signalling" one's virtues is not remotely the same as living them out when there is actually a cost involved.

All kinds of people like to think they'd run into a burning building to save a baby. First responders actually risk their lives to do it.

Talk is cheap. (And actually, if virtue signalling gets people rewarded in public opinion, then talk actually pays.)

[Stockmann]

[. . . ]

(2) the student behaved more poorly than we initially thought (but still, 'student is an idiot' isn't breaking news).

[. . . ]

The student is worse than an idiot, she's a religious bigot trying to force the rest of society to conform to her narrow and selective beliefs.

This. Also, in terms of precedent, what would stop, say, an Evangelical student from, if depictions of saints by Catholic artists were shown in a discussion of Christian imagery, from complaining that it is anti-Christian on the basis that the student considers Catholics to be polytheists and not Christians? It definitely opens a can of worms, as anyone can claim that their specific branch or sect are the only true Muslims/Jews/Christians/Buddhists/whatever.

[Parasaurolophus]

I disagree. "Signalling" one's virtues is not remotely the same as living them out when there is actually a cost involved.

All kinds of people like to think they'd run into a burning building to save a baby. First responders actually risk their lives to do it.

So what? I didn't claim that trying to show how good you are is the same as actually being good or doing good deeds.

What I said was that if you ask me to choose between someone who brags about how kind they are and someone who brags about how nasty they are, I pick the former.

If person A is telling the truth, then they're at least a kind person, even if somewhat tasteless. But if person B is telling the truth, they're a bad person and tasteless. If A is lying, then we know they fall short of the standard they profess, and we're left to wonder how far short. If B is lying, then we're left to wonder why they think it's so important to inflate how bad they are, which suggests they don't have a firm grip on morality at all. (And, really, the implication there is that they are bad, just not as bad as they claim.)

In other words, even in the worst case scenario, person A comes off better than person B. George W. Bush wouldn't be any more admirable if he openly admitted he was responsible for torturing hundreds of people. As you pointed out, talk is cheap, and actual actions count for a lot more. In this case, his war crimes significantly outweigh whatever brownie points we might give him for honesty (which we can't even do, of course, because he hasn't fessed up to his crimes).

Put in simpler terms, it seems like any rational person should prefer virtue-signalling to vice-signalling. They're both cases of signalling (and that seems to be what you and others actually object to), but one is signalling morally good character traits, the other morally bad traits. And good traits are preferable to bad. Unless, of course, what you object to is virtue?

Now, you may answer that what you object to is the extension of the term 'virtue'. And certainly, reasonable people can disagree about what counts as a virtue and what doesn't (the ancient Greeks, for example, included anger; presumably, we wouldn't). But in that case, you need to establish that what's being signalled is a vice rather than a virtue--and then it turns out that you're preferring virtue-signalling to vice-signalling, which is what you started by denying.

[marshwiggle]

I disagree. "Signalling" one's virtues is not remotely the same as living them out when there is actually a cost involved.

All kinds of people like to think they'd run into a burning building to save a baby. First responders actually risk their lives to do it.

So what? I didn't claim that trying to show how good you are is the same as actually being good or doing good deeds.

What I said was that if you ask me to choose between someone who brags about how kind they are and someone who brags about how nasty they are, I pick the former.

If person A is telling the truth, then they're at least a kind person, even if somewhat tasteless. But if person B is telling the truth, they're a bad person and tasteless. If A is lying, then we know they fall short of the standard they profess, and we're left to wonder how far short. If B is lying, then we're left to wonder why they think it's so important to inflate how bad they are, which suggests they don't have a firm grip on morality at all. (And, really, the implication there is that they are bad, just not as bad as they claim.)

A person can admit their own vices without bragging about them. That is vastly more honest than trying to convince people of the virtues you may or may not actually exhibit.

Humility is better than "signalling" anything, and involves trying to be as honest as possible about one's shortcomings.

In other words, even in the worst case scenario, person A comes off better than person B. George W. Bush wouldn't be any more admirable if he openly admitted he was responsible for torturing hundreds of people. As you pointed out, talk is cheap, and actual actions count for a lot more. In this case, his war crimes significantly outweigh whatever brownie points we might give him for honesty (which we can't even do, of course, because he hasn't fessed up to his crimes).

Put in simpler terms, it seems like any rational person should prefer virtue-signalling to vice-signalling. They're both cases of signalling (and that seems to be what you and others actually object to), but one is signalling morally good character traits, the other morally bad traits. And good traits are preferable to bad. Unless, of course, what you object to is virtue?

No, what I object to is society giving people so much credit for the "right" words, and criticizing people who don't use the "right" words, without reserving judgement until actual concrete behaviour has been observed, preferably across a range of circumstances and over time.

In other words, don't pay attention to "signalling" at all; judge behaviour. (Which, of course, means that judgement in the vast majority of cases must be reserved until some possible point in the future which may never in fact occur. In other words, people should not be high and mighty about their assumptions about others unless and until they have actually seen concrete actions which reveal character.)

[Parasaurolophus]

The student is worse than an idiot, she's a religious bigot trying to force the rest of society to conform to her narrow and selective beliefs.

The student knew exactly what she was doing. Both Hamline and the student should have known that accusing someone of Islamaphobia could put that person on a terrorist hit list (the attack on Salman Rushdie and the Charlie Hebdo massacre are just a couple of examples).

I don't disagree at all.

[apl68]

She may be legally in the clear, but in this country, you can file a suit just because you don't like someone's shoes.  It may still be worth the prof's while to include her in a suit, drag her through the legal system and make her spend $10,000 on lawyers before she is dismissed from the suit by a judge.  She's not at risk for paying damages, but she could still come out of this well screwed up.  And if I were the faculty member, I'd think seriously about fvucking around with her just because she appears to be an a$$hole looking to put another notch on her gun of "social justice".

Eh. THe faculty member has two options at this point: sue the entity that actually hurt her, which makes enemies, but also earns the occasional 'you go girl' from people like me; or sue the person who hurt her plus a twerpy little student and lose all respect I have for her by stepping away from the good fight and into the dirty fight. I'll be disappointed if she goes the second route.

It seems to me that this is a fight worth fighting.

We have a cancel hysteria consuming our campus cultures (that's some alliteration!) and more people need to speak up about it.

I'm not saying the faculty member shouldn't sue or keep quiet. I'm saying she shouldn't sue the student. I'm thrilled she's suing the institution. 'Cancel hysteria' should be combatted at the level where change can actually made. Students need to be safe to whine, attracting scorn and opprobrium, for sure, but not crippling legal fees. Institutions need to learn when they have to listen to whining, and when they need to ignore it.

Bad though this student looks, I'd be reluctant to assume the very worst about her motives absent more knowledge about her than we have so far.  As Para said above, a student having a foolish overreaction to something isn't exactly news.  The institution should have done a far better job of mediating the issue between the student and the instructor.  So the institution would seem like the proper object of any litigation.

[Langue_doc]

She may be legally in the clear, but in this country, you can file a suit just because you don't like someone's shoes.  It may still be worth the prof's while to include her in a suit, drag her through the legal system and make her spend $10,000 on lawyers before she is dismissed from the suit by a judge.  She's not at risk for paying damages, but she could still come out of this well screwed up.  And if I were the faculty member, I'd think seriously about fvucking around with her just because she appears to be an a$$hole looking to put another notch on her gun of "social justice".

Eh. THe faculty member has two options at this point: sue the entity that actually hurt her, which makes enemies, but also earns the occasional 'you go girl' from people like me; or sue the person who hurt her plus a twerpy little student and lose all respect I have for her by stepping away from the good fight and into the dirty fight. I'll be disappointed if she goes the second route.

It seems to me that this is a fight worth fighting.

We have a cancel hysteria consuming our campus cultures (that's some alliteration!) and more people need to speak up about it.

I'm not saying the faculty member shouldn't sue or keep quiet. I'm saying she shouldn't sue the student. I'm thrilled she's suing the institution. 'Cancel hysteria' should be combatted at the level where change can actually made. Students need to be safe to whine, attracting scorn and opprobrium, for sure, but not crippling legal fees. Institutions need to learn when they have to listen to whining, and when they need to ignore it.

Bad though this student looks, I'd be reluctant to assume the very worst about her motives absent more knowledge about her than we have so far.  As Para said above, a student having a foolish overreaction to something isn't exactly news.  The institution should have done a far better job of mediating the issue between the student and the instructor.  So the institution would seem like the proper object of any litigation.

I agree that the institution should have done a better job of mediating the conflict; the instructor appears to have discussed the syllabus with the chair, and also given numerous warnings to the students regarding the content of the course and that images of holy figures would be shown in class. The student could have discussed her objections as soon as she read the syllabus and also after seeing the announcements, instead of claiming that she was blindsided.

The instructor appears to have taken the necessary precautions: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/hamline-university-islam-prophet-muhammad.html?searchResultPosition=2

Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, said she knew many Muslims have deeply held religious beliefs that prohibit depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. So last semester for a global art history class, she took many precautions before showing a 14th-century painting of Islam's founder.

In the syllabus, she warned that images of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, would be shown in the course. She asked students to contact her with any concerns, and she said no one did.

In class, she prepped students, telling them that in a few minutes, the painting would be displayed, in case anyone wanted to leave.

Then Dr. López Prater showed the image — and lost her teaching gig.

The student, however, went public with her objections:

In a December interview with the school newspaper, the student who complained to the administration, Aram Wedatalla, described being blindsided by the image.

"I'm like, 'This can't be real,'" said Ms. Wedatalla, who in a public forum described herself as Sudanese. "As a Muslim and a Black person, I don't feel like I belong, and I don't think I'll ever belong in a community where they don't value me as a member, and they don't show the same respect that I show them."

The student has also had at least one press conference: https://religionnews.com/2023/01/11/cair-backs-hamline-student-who-says-instructor-hurt-muslims-by-showing-image-of-muhammad/

[Wahoo Redux]

I wonder, pure conjecture on my part, if the student was put up to this by someone.  Her reasoning, at least as far as we know, was remarkably melodramatic and superficial.  She sounds like someone who doesn't have much imagination; her comments seemed staged and cliché. 

[marshwiggle]

I wonder, pure conjecture on my part, if the student was put up to this by someone.  Her reasoning, at least as far as we know, was remarkably melodramatic and superficial.  She sounds like someone who doesn't have much imagination; her comments seemed staged and cliché.

That's exactly what "virtue signalling" is; it's very formulaic so that everyone who hears it knows when to cheer (or clutch their pearls, etc.). For example, saying it made her fell like she "didn't belong" is one of those clichés that are to be interpreted as ALWAYS a terrible thing.

[Langue_doc]

I wonder, pure conjecture on my part, if the student was put up to this by someone.  Her reasoning, at least as far as we know, was remarkably melodramatic and superficial.  She sounds like someone who doesn't have much imagination; her comments seemed staged and cliché.

The student is a senior business major and president of the university's Muslim Student Association, according to several news articles, all of which advocate for academic freedom.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2023/1/20/23562671/hamline-university-islamophobia-prophet-muhammad-picture-gene-lyons-column

Here is the article from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/hamline-university-minnesota-muhammad-academic-freedom/672742/

Who's Afraid of a Portrait of Muhammad?
When Hamline University cut ties with a professor who showed a painting of Muhammad, it sided with the most intolerant element of the American Muslim spectrum.
By Graeme Wood

JANUARY 18, 2023

A mosque in Kandahar houses a relic of the Prophet Muhammad: a cloak preserved, splendid and unpilled, almost 1,400 years after its owner's death. The mosque's caretaker claims that the cloak has extraordinary qualities, such as a color that transcends the visual spectrum. The color can be seen, but it has no name. I asked the caretaker whether I could take a look. He said no; unbelievers may not see it. And even if I did, God would delete the memory from my mind immediately afterward, like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black. So I went home without seeing it—to the best of my recollection.
These tales of the supernatural have no basis in Islamic scripture (except in the general sense that God's powers are limitless, so if he wanted to produce a technicolor dreamcoat, he could do so). But as a matter of theology, I greatly prefer this version of the Islamic God—who does as he pleases, and simply performs a neurological reboot on those who displease him—to the one that requires defending by Fayneese Miller, the president of Hamline University, a small Methodist school in Minnesota.
Last year, Miller severed Hamline's ties with an art-history professor, Erika López Prater, after she showed her students a 14th-century Persian painting of Muhammad. A Muslim student complained that she found depictions of Muhammad offensive. The administration agreed that López Prater's act was "Islamophobic," and that the offense taken "superseded" any claim that this masterwork of Islamic art needed to be seen to be understood. The punishment: banishment. "In lieu [sic] of this incident," Hamline's administration told the student newspaper, "it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community."
After the story ignited the attention of the national media, Miller defended her decision. And the student, 23-year-old Aram Wedatalla, held a press conference where she wept over her distress at having looked at the painting. The usual defenders of academic freedom, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and PEN America, have raced to López Prater's side. Most encouraging, though, is the range of allies she has found in Muslim groups. Last week, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) supported her unequivocally. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which in the past has focused on its irritation at perceived slights against Islam, likewise called on Hamline to reconsider its position.
Who will save Muslims from their saviors? Miller's administration pronounced the class "Islamophobic," and said that such atrocities should prompt the community to "listen rather than debate the merits of or extent of that harm." In this case, "listening" meant listening to Muslims. The positions of some of the most prominent Muslim advocacy organizations in America now complicate that advice. It turns out that Muslims have different views on this matter and many others, and that the fatwa from the president of a Methodist college in St. Paul, Minnesota, has somehow sided with the most intolerant element of the American Muslim spectrum. Miller invited a Muslim speaker to campus who compared the professor's art-history class to a pro-Nazi or pro-child-molester class, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Then he suggested that a Muslim might want to kill her, and that these murderous feelings deserved recognition. "You've seen what happened in the horrible tragedies of Charlie Hebdo," Jaylani Hussein warned the faculty and students of Hamline. "Muslims revere our Prophet in a meaningful way, and regardless of whatever you are teaching, you have to respect them." (Hussein runs a local chapter of CAIR, which distanced itself from his comments—perhaps because "American-Islamic relations" are not improved by reminding people to watch what they say, because some Muslims might want to kill them.)
Perhaps Miller received poor counsel, which led her to assume that all Muslims are reduced to tears when they fail to read the syllabus and cast their eyes upon paintings. But the statement she wrote under pressure last week suggests conviction. She wrote that "faculty have the right to teach and research and ... publish under the purview of their peers." Did she mean "review"? This sentence alone calls into doubt her commitment to academic freedom, because academic freedom is not, in fact, limited by the scrutiny of one's peers. They can scrutinize all they like. I'm scrutinizing right now. But they can't stop her from teaching and publishing what she likes. Citing an op-ed published by Inside Higher Ed, Miller went on to say that the right to academic freedom infringed on the right not to be "emotionally, intellectually, or professionally harmed."
Miller is deferring to the most fragile Muslims. She must think Muslims have skulls like crepe paper, and brains that can be bruised by a light gust of academic inquiry. Such people exist, and her student may be one. But most Muslims—including some who would object strenuously to a depiction of the Prophet—navigate the world without the shelter offered by the Hamline administration. The Muslims I know generally realize that the world is full of insults and challenges, and that education requires willingness to live with them and learn from them. Miller wants to make this resilient Muslim majority, and everyone else, hostage to their most brittle and blubbering brothers and sisters. If any Hamline students really need this kind of protection, I suggest they enroll at a university in Kabul.

[spork]

[. . .]

Bad though this student looks, I'd be reluctant to assume the very worst about her motives

[. . .]

I'm quite comfortable assuming the very worst about her motives. She is demanding that only her personal version of a religion be regarded as authentic and acceptable by society at large. She is claiming a religious justification for having power over everyone else in the public sphere. No freedom of religion there, which actually goes against the tenets of the religion she claims to profess. Similarly, her opposition to the existence of any depiction of Muhammed, and attempts to prevent anyone from viewing such a depiction, is strictly speaking idol worship, also contrary to the tenets of Islam.   

[Wahoo Redux]

The one thing I would say is that, even though the student is 23 and should have developed a mind of her own at this point, religious mania is a thing, particularly among fundamentalist groups, and she may have been programmed to respond this way from a very young age.

On the other hand, she may have thought she would be a heroine, again because her world is (possibly) so hermetic. 

[kaysixteen]

Are we all agreed that the university's action was unacceptable, and that the prof will win her suit, esp given the obvious defamation of character, and threat to her life from terrorists, etc?

[ergative]

Are we all agreed that the university's action was unacceptable,

Yes, I'm with you here.

and that the prof will should win her suit, esp given the obvious defamation of character, and threat to her life from terrorists, etc?

With edits, I'm with you here too.

[Langue_doc]

Hamline U. faculty call on President Miller to step down over Islamophobia controversy
Hamline's full-time faculty say the dismissal of an adjunct professor has harmed the university's reputation.

https://www.twincities.com/2023/01/24/hamline-university-faculty-call-on-president-fayneese-miller-to-step-down-over-islamophobia-controversy/

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/hamline-university-fayneese-miller/