Why the Hamline University Scandal Matters to Every American

 

Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Hamline University, Adjunct Professors, and America's Intellectual Future
There's A Lot Going On Here. Let's Break It Down.

A recent scandal at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has gained international attention. Dr. Erika Lopez Prater, an art history professor, after providing her students with multiple warnings, and offers to opt out if the material was unacceptable to them, showed, in an art history class, a slide of an artwork that depicts Mohammed, the putative founder of Islam. The image Lopez Prater shared with her students is widely recognized as a masterpiece, and essential to any understanding of Islamic art. Aram Wedatalla, "who in a public forum described herself as Sudanese," according to a January 8, 2023 article in the New York Times, complained. Hamline University fired Lopez Prater, and Hamline officials defamed her.
 
On January 17, 2023, news broke that Lopez Prater's representatives, Fabian, May, and Anderson, PLLP, were commencing a "religious discrimination and defamation lawsuit against Hamline University." After this announcement, Hamline walked back its allegations that the professor was a malicious Islamophobe, and university officials who had previously pooh-poohed the concept suddenly began to express respect for "academic freedom."
 
The Hamline University scandal is the tip of a much larger iceberg. There are several important trends at play here that concerned Americans should fully understand. This essay will summarize the initial incident and then address important issues involved.
 

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski Book Review "Love and Social Justice"

 

Love and Social Justice: Reflections on Society
Writings from a Heroic Anti-Communist

 

Marxist-influenced ideas affect American lives, often under the banner of "Woke." Some Americans who do not enjoy Facebook and Twitter censoring their speech and schoolboards indoctrinating their children have turned for inspiration to heroes of the anti-communist resistance from the former Soviet Empire. "What would Solzhenitsyn do?" they ask, or, "What would Vaclav Havel and the members of Charter 77 do?" In 2020, Rod Dreher published Live Not By Lies, arguing that contemporary American "Christian dissidents" could and should learn from past Eastern European dissidents.

 

It was with that approach in mind that I began to read Love and Social Justice: Reflections on Society, a collection of short essays by Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. It was translated by Filip Mazurczak and published by Arouca Press in 2021. It is 554 pages long.

 

It's difficult to communicate to Americans the overwhelming stature of Stefan Wyszynski. Some

A Past Conversation Haunts Me. Friends Pressured Me to Speak As They Do

 

A Past Conversation Haunts Me
Friends Pressured Me to Speak As They Do

 

I often relive, in my mind, a conversation I had maybe fifteen years ago. I remember how afraid I felt. No matter what I said, my words would be twisted to paint me as the member of an enemy tribe. I remember feeling as if a tide I hadn't even been aware of was approaching my toes, and suddenly realizing that this tide would soon engulf all America, sucking under valuables, sweeping in dismembered body parts of a formerly coherent culture broken to bits in a powerful storm. I berate myself for not having words at the ready that could rewrite the history that this conversation ushered in. And I feel rage. Why did they do this to me?

 

For you to understand the weight of this conversation, to understand how vulnerable I was, and how much I risked losing, you need the backstory.

Harry & Meghan: Just Because You Are Paranoid Doesn't Mean They Aren't Out to Get You

 

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Harry & Meghan
Just Because You Are Paranoid Does Not Mean That They Are Not Out to Get You

 

Diogenes was a fourth century, BC, Greek philosopher. Alexander the Great visited Diogenes, who was then sitting in the sun. Alexander asked Diogenes what he, Alexander, the world conqueror, could do for Diogenes, a famous, but impoverished, philosopher. Diogenes replied, "Move aside. You are blocking my sun."

 

In other tales about this encounter, Alexander said, "If I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes," and Diogenes replied, "If I were not Diogenes, I would like to be Diogenes." In yet another version, Diogenes gestured to a pile of bones and said to Alexander, "I am looking for the bones of your father, but I cannot distinguish them from the bones of a slave."