1/ Respectfully to @JillFilipovic, @Lollardfish & many others who condemned what happened at Hamline as an attack on academic freedom but insist it has nothing to do with cancel culture, campus politics etc I think this POV misses the central role played by DEI logic & admin here

2/ The prof. was dismissed on the grounds that her activity was "disrespectful" and "Islamophobic," as asserted by the VP of Inclusive Excellence, an increasingly common and powerful DEI position in higher ed that goes by a variety of different names. Now look at the language...

3/ used by the President herself. She uses words like "safety," "harm," etc. to argue that "respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.” This language is the lingua franca of DEI...

4/ Check out the language used by CAIR MN in the petition below. They celebrate the admin's conduct b/c it prioritized "the safety and inclusiveness of its students and community." Take a stand "affirming diversity" it says, connecting this incident to a

www.cairmn.com/

5/ broader struggle against "institutional racism," "hate" and "Islamophobia." As @mehdirhasan said: "Islamophobia, sadly, is everywhere. But it wasn’t in that art history classroom at Hamline University." Liberals and progressives (and I'm in this camp)...

6/ shouldn't be afraid to discuss and debate the fact that the logic, rhetoric and, most crucially, ADMINISTRATIVE power of DEI offices often comes into conflict with academic freedom and free expression. Through campus speech codes, bias response teams, etc., the DEI bureaucracy

7/ has been weaponized to chill everything from academic inquiry to student activism. E.g., critiques of the state of Israel are labeled anti-semitic. Protests against human rights abuses in China are racist and express anti-Asian hate. See link

www.jeffreyaaronsnyder.com/_files/ugd/5c295d_5dd20a43b0dc459cafd21fbee22c0ef1.pdf

8/ The terms *cancel culture* and *wokeness* may not be the best terms here, esp. b/c they are used as cudgels by the right, but what happened at Hamline is INDEED part of a larger story about CAMPUS POLITICS and CULTURE. If we don't pay attention to the ways in which DEI...

initiatives have created the conditions for what happened at Hamline, we are willfully ignoring some serious and troubling trends in higher ed. /end

cc: @glukianoff, @sarahemclaugh, @NicoPerrino, @pebonilla, @JeffreyASachs, @NAChristakis, @kewhittington, @mcmoynihan, @AAUP

Links to pieces I'm referencing:

slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/01/hamline-university-what-to-think-firing.html?fbclid=IwAR2ii6N_T24...

www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/opinions/hamline-university-prophet-mohammed-academic-freedom-ctrp-perry/