Hamline University President at Center of Prophet Mohammed Controversy Announces Retirement
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Hamline University president Fayneese Miller, who became embroiled in a national debate on the propriety of showing an image of the prophet Mohammed as well as the scope of academic freedom, announced on Monday that she will retire next year.
Miller defended her university’s decision not to renew the contract of an adjunct professor who showed her art-history class a well-known 14th-century painting of the prophet Mohammed. For a majority of the faculty at the private university in St. Paul, Minn., that decision was a tipping point. In January, full-time faculty members voted overwhelmingly to release a statement that they “no longer have faith in President Miller’s ability to lead the university forward.” They also asked for her immediate resignation.
The announcement that Miller would retire in 2024, which skirted mention of the controversy, came just a few months after that and other condemnations of the university’s actions.
In October of last year, Erika López Prater was teaching a global-art-history course, and she planned to show her students depictions of many religious figures, including the prophet Mohammed, according to the New York Times. Depicting him is controversial, with many Muslims regarding it as forbidden and offensive.
However, Prater took several precautions. She explained in an approved syllabus that she was planning to show a depiction of Mohammed, and she also prepped her students on the day of the class, giving each the opportunity to leave the room. One Muslim student, Aram Wedatalla, decided to stay despite the repeated warnings and later complained to the administration. Other Muslim students not in the course also complained, saying their religion had been attacked. The administration responded by getting rid of Prater in an effort to avoid a nationwide controversy. But it would wade into one nonetheless.
Defending the move, Miller signed an email in which she said: “It is not our intent to place blame; rather, it is our intent to note that in the classroom incident — where an image forbidden for Muslims to look upon was projected on a screen and left for many minutes — respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.”
An email from a different administrator called Prater’s behavior “Islamophobic.” And the administration even sanctioned the invitation of a speaker who would compare showing an image of Mohammed to teaching that Hitler was good.
Prater sued the university in January for religious discrimination and defamation, among other things, leading Miller and other administrators to backtrack on the same day.
“Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep. In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed,” wrote Miller after the lawsuit was filed.
The full-time faculty voted 71-12 later in January in favor of condemning Miller, with nine abstaining. “We are distressed that members of the administration have mishandled this issue and great harm has been done to the reputation of Minnesota’s oldest university,” they wrote.
Her retirement brings an end to a rocky presidency that saw protests and declining enrollment, the New York Times reported, though Miller was able to find success in her goal of increasing diversity on campus. The president touted her campus’s values of social justice, equity, and inclusion in her retirement message, emailed to National Review.
Chairwoman of the Hamline board of trustees Ellen Watters also kept the focus on the positives in a statement, calling Miller “an innovative and transformational leader for Hamline.”
While Miller was viewed as giving in to student activists during the Mohammed controversy, she has also angered activists several times.
She was protested for refusing to punish four white student athletes who were seen in a video singing along to a popular song that included a racial epithet. Student activists also protested Miller after she told a group of students they ought to donate to the university while they are still studying there. To the activists, this comment did not take into account their financial struggles.
While a group of activists supported Miller’s actions in the Prater case, the instructor was able to amass support from far and wide. Most supporters zeroed in on Hamline’s violation of Prater’s academic freedom.
“Hamline’s nonrenewal of the instructor for showing an image of Muhammad violates the instructor’s pedagogical autonomy — protected by basic tenets of academic freedom — to determine whether and how to introduce or approach material that may be challenging, upsetting, or even deeply offensive to some,” wrote the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in a December letter to Miller.
“The chilling effect of your actions is inevitable,” wrote a group of more than 400 professors and college instructors from across the country.
Even Muslim groups demanded Prater’s reinstatement, calling the university’s behavior misguided.
“Given the ubiquity of Islamophobic depictions of the Prophet Muḥammad, it hardly makes sense to target an art professor trying to combat narrow understandings of Islam. There is an unmistakable irony in the situation, which should be appreciated,” the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group, said in a written statement. “Misusing the label ‘Islamophobia’ has the negative effect of watering down the term and rendering it less effective in calling out actual acts of bigotry.”
Prater’s case against Hamline is still pending in district court in Minnesota.
