There are several people in my immediate orbit with ties to Hamline University and I can safely say none of them are pleased with the school’s response to an adjunct professor showing an image of the Prophet Mohammed in an art history class. In the recent history of self-inflicted wounds, this one — by an otherwise respectable liberal arts college — is a doozy.

The story burst to light via a New York Times story following a vigorous complaint by PEN America, the free expression advocate shortly before Christmas. (Why no local news outlet caught wind of so provocative a story as this or followed up on it is interesting in itself.)

The details are now well known. But in essence, the young adjunct — teaching an art history class, mind you — carefully and by all accounts respectfully warned her students that an image of Mohammed would be shown and that they were free to look away in the brief time it was being displayed.

But … at least one Muslim student did not, and quickly registered her offense with Hamline’s administrators who quickly caved, apologized to the student, fired the adjunct and released a gob-smacking statement saying among other, um, provocative things that, respect for Muslim students, “should have superseded academic freedom.”

Excuse me, what?

At the moment, Hamline’s knee-jerk “superseding” response is the target of most of the outrage. And yes, we live in a time when outrage is a staple of public conversation. Unfortunately we seem also to live in a time when administrators not of some insulated, fundamentalist religious school, but an American liberal arts university in a distinctly liberal-minded metropolitan area seized up in terror at the possibility of being internationally branded as “Islamaphobic.”

Had Hamline’s adult leaders sought full advice and education on the incident they might have heard something like this from the Muslim Public Affairs Council:

“As a Muslim organization, we recognize the validity and ubiquity of an Islamic viewpoint that discourages or forbids any depictions of the Prophet, especially if done in a distasteful or disrespectful manner. However, we also recognize the historical reality that other viewpoints have existed and that there have been some Muslims, including and especially Shīʿī Muslims,  who have felt no qualms in pictorially representing the Prophet (although often veiling his face out of respect). All this is a testament to the great internal diversity within the Islamic tradition, which should be celebrated.  … The painting was not Islamophobic. In fact, it was commissioned by a fourteenth-century Muslim king in order to honor the Prophet, depicting the first Quranic revelation from the angel Gabriel.”

Or maybe they did seek counsel and chose to ignore it. Whatever, again at this moment, it is Hamline’s administrators  looking at career-shredding public ignominy and not the young adjunct.

But there’s a lot to provoke in this episode.

Shall we perhaps discuss the student who complained after multiple advisories from her professor? Do we regard her intentions in tuning in regardless, getting “triggered” and summoning the wrath of nervous administrators as entirely honorable? I’ve got a few questions there.

Or how about the PR calculations Hamline’s administrators ran?

Ignoring or underplaying the student’s complaint risked … well, pretty much the indignant reaction they’re getting, only in 180 degree reverse. Instead of fundamentalist Muslims from here to Riyadh screaming “Islamaphobia!”, by shouting Islamaphobia first and Hamline’s seers have triggered and angered the kind of good, check-writing alumni liberals who they presumably once educated to believe that … wait for it, academic freedom supersedes religious superstition. (“Superstition” being my word.)

And then, perhaps above all, we have the fascinating discussion of when and where exactly some one’s religious “beliefs” take a back seat to science or full, bona fide scholarship/academic freedom?

During the COVID pandemic it made no scientific (or ethical) sense to excuse critical personnel from vaccine treatment on the grounds that the shots violated their “beliefs”. Believe whatever you want in your own home, but if you’re in a position to spread a demonstrably fatal virus, you either get the shots or … stay in your home and massage your beliefs.

The Hamline situation is not physical life or death. But the ability of any lone student to raise their hand and shut down a thoughtful, scholarly college course and get the instructor fired by fretful administrators is a frightening virus of another kind for freedoms of curiosity, research and dialogue in a so-called democracy

I’m tempted to go all Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins here and rant on about I’ve about how I’ve had it with religion, and religious fundamentalism in particular, getting its pious hands around the throats of public institutions.

I won’t. But I think we can agree that Hamline is getting a well-deserved acid bath in what not to do when one person — quite possibly acting in a variation of bad faith — asserts victimhood and religious persecution.