The Real Scandal at Illinois?
July 19, 2010
If you want to study Buddhist or Methodist or Jewish thought at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there are relevant courses in religious studies -- courses where the instructors have been selected by a department of scholars, through standard academic procedures.
But if you want to study Roman Catholicism, your instructors have been through different vetting -- they will have been nominated by (and their salaries paid by) the St. John's Catholic Newman Center, a church organization independent of the university, set up to serve Catholic students at the university.
This arrangement has existed for decades, and been opposed by faculty members -- also for decades. Not only is it highly unusual for a college to give an outside group the right to screen and nominate candidates to teach, but the situation raises church-state issues at a public institution, presents issues of fairness when it is permitted for only one religious group at a secular college, and may undercut the values of the field of religious studies, faculty critics say.
The way the University of Illinois teaches Catholic thought has attracted widespread attention in the last week with the news that a long-term instructor, Kenneth Howell, was told that he would not be rehired,following complaints about an e-mail message he sent to students, which many viewed as misinformed about homosexuality, and as