Howell is a victim of the head of the Newman Center wanting to be liked by the university administration. That’s the one who’s head needs to roll. Monsignor somebody.
It’s a tad more complicated than that. Unlike nearly all other state universities in the USA, the U of I has an old agreement with the Newman Center to be able to offer religion courses for university credit. (This is common in Canada and the UK but not in the US.) The agreement goes back to around 1918.
It’s factually true that, if Howell has been fired by the university, the Newman Center’s courses taught by him would not get university credit.
I think the Newman Center caved and should not have, should have joined in a lawsuit, protested to the department head’s superiors etc.
I imagine they thought they needed to do this in order to keep their program going for fall. They undoubtedly had Howell scheduled to teach in the fall semester; students in his courses would have been denied credit and the NC wanted to ensure credit for them so they got another teacher.
I think they should have stood their ground and protested, made a huge stink about it. It seems to me that there might well be other, secular senior faculty in the university who can see that this was an egregious abuse of power. If an objective explanation of Philosophy X (with which I happen to agree personally) is hate speech, then no professor is free to make objective explanations of this or that unpopular philosophical or political or religious position.
There may have been more in the emails than we know, but I rather doubt it. The Newman Center was not so much wanting to be liked but just robotically trying to keep its program administered. That’s still bad, but different.
Stupid, yes. Naively unaware of the implications, perhaps. But I would chalk it up more to administrative inertia than just to wanting to be liked.
It’s a tad more complicated than that. Unlike nearly all other state universities in the USA, the U of I has an old agreement with the Newman Center to be able to offer religion courses for university credit. (This is common in Canada and the UK but not in the US.) The agreement goes back to around 1918.
It’s factually true that, if Howell has been fired by the university, the Newman Center’s courses taught by him would not get university credit.
I think the Newman Center caved and should not have, should have joined in a lawsuit, protested to the department head’s superiors etc.
I imagine they thought they needed to do this in order to keep their program going for fall. They undoubtedly had Howell scheduled to teach in the fall semester; students in his courses would have been denied credit and the NC wanted to ensure credit for them so they got another teacher.
I think they should have stood their ground and protested, made a huge stink about it. It seems to me that there might well be other, secular senior faculty in the university who can see that this was an egregious abuse of power. If an objective explanation of Philosophy X (with which I happen to agree personally) is hate speech, then no professor is free to make objective explanations of this or that unpopular philosophical or political or religious position.
There may have been more in the emails than we know, but I rather doubt it. The Newman Center was not so much wanting to be liked but just robotically trying to keep its program administered. That’s still bad, but different.
Stupid, yes. Naively unaware of the implications, perhaps. But I would chalk it up more to administrative inertia than just to wanting to be liked.
Uh, if you mean Msgr. Stuart Swetland, he has not been head of the Newman Center for a number of years now. You might want to check your facts before opining. He’s now academic vp at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg.
If this had happened when Msgr. Swetland was head of the Newman Center, I doubt they would have caved like this.
Yup, Monsignor X is probably a Peace & Justice guy who does not like this conservative/ orthodox teaching. It’s always ok to be persecuted for Christ’s name, in the long run.