Wheaton College Wants To Fire Professor Who Wore Hijab
By Mae Rice in News on Jan 6, 2016 6:23PM
Illinois’ Wheaton College, a private evangelical Christian college, has begun the process of firing Dr. Larycia Hawkins, a tenured professor who wore a headscarf during her Advent devotions to show solidarity with Muslims.
Wheaton said in a statement:
This… follows the impasse reached by the parties. Following Dr. Hawkins’ written response on December 17 to questions regarding her theological convictions, the College requested further theological discussion and clarification. However… Dr. Hawkins declined to participate in further dialogue about the theological implications of her public statements and her December 17 response.
The statement also says that Wheaton will now begin an “established process for employment actions pertaining to tenured faculty members,” which starts with a hearing before the college's Faculty Personnel Committee.
This decision comes after several run-ins between Dr. Hawkins and the Wheaton administration, the Tribune reports. Previously, Wheaton has asked Dr. Hawkins to “affirm the college’s statement of faith” on four occasions over her nine years at the school.
On one occasion, she had written an article about black liberation theology that “seemed to endorse a kind of Marxism”; on another, she was photographed at a party on Halsted Street on the same day as Chicago’s Gay Pride Parade, according to the Tribune.
Dr. Hawkins wearing a headscarf was the final straw for Wheaton, apparently.
The political science professor had previously explained the decision in a December 10, 2015 Facebook post that she wore the hijab in “embodied solidarity” with Muslim women.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” the post said. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”
Hawkins and her attorney, Robert Block, plan to fight her termination, Bloch told the Tribune.