What I didn’t do on summer vacation…

Here are some posts that I missed this summer.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education [subscription may be required]:

• Judge upholds dismissal of counseling student at Eastern Michigan University who refused to treat gay clients, ruling that the dismissal was based on her actions, not her religious beliefs. (July 27, 2010)
• The University of Illinois retains adjunct professor of Roman Catholicism but ends the church’s role in hiring. The professor’s long-term status depends on the outcome of an investigation into whether his academic freedom was violated when he faced dismissal over comments he made about homosexuality. (July 29, 2010)
• North Carolina State Court of Appeals rules that giving Davidson College’s police officers arresting power creates government entanglement with religion and violates the First Amendment. (August 17, 2010)

From Inside Higher Ed:

• Students at Calcutta campus of Aliah University, a Muslim institution, have barred a female instruct from teaching without wearing a full burqa.
• Sweden may let universities ban burqas.
• Adjunct at Oklahoma City Community College has decided no longer to teach there after being accused of teaching creationism alongside evolution in a biology course. (August 9, 2010)
• University of North Carolina students now may opt out of abortion coverage in their health insurance plan. (August 13, 2010)
• A course on gay marriage is scheduled to be taught at Seton Hall University, despite the opposition of the archbishop of Newark. (August 26, 2010)

From the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:

• Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, opens its doors to 15 students and aims to grow to 2000 students and become America’s first Muslim four-year, liberal-arts college. (August 23, 2010)

With the fall semester about to get underway, I expect postings to pick up.

Vanderbilt Clarifies Its Relationship to Controversial Muslim Chaplain

Vanderbilt University issued a statement explaining that it has only limited ties to its Muslim chaplain, Awadh A. Binhazim, whose recent public comments about Islam’s treatment of gays have ignited criticism. Inside Higher Ed has a short account with links.

Many Muslim academics and students reject evolution

The Times passes on a conference report that suggests that many Muslims—academics and students—are questioning evolution and embracing in its place a form of creationism, often inspired by Christian creationists.

Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, told the conference, being held in Egypt by the British Council, that in too many places students and academics believed they had to make a “binary choice” between evolution and creationism, rather than understanding that one could believe both in God and in Darwin’s theory.

Dr Guessoum, who is a Sunni Muslim, said that in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia, only 15 per cent of those surveyed believed Darwin’s theory to be “true” or “probably true”. This stand was equally prevalent among students and teachers, from high school to university. Most alarmingly, he claimed, science teachers were misrepresenting the facts and theories of evolution by mixing it with religious ideologies.

[The Times via The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Religion News]

Saudi Arabia inaugurates first coed university

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life flags an Associated Press report on the inauguration of the King Abdullah Science and Technology University (KAUST), the kingdom’s first coed university. King Abdullah on his hopes for the new foundation:

"Humanity has been the target of vicious attacks from extremists, who speak the language of hatred," King Abdullah said at the inauguration. "Undoubtedly, scientific centers that embrace all peoples are the first line of defense against extremists. And today this university will become a house of wisdom … a beacon of tolerance."

I wonder whether the KAUST’s focus on science and technology (as opposed, say, to humanities or social sciences) makes the step to coeducation easier and the hopes for tolerance more readily achievable.

Plans and challenges for America’s first Muslim college

The Chronicle of Higher Education [subscription required] has an extensive article on the plans that Islamic scholars Sheik Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakir have to found the first Muslim college in the US and on the formidable fund-raising challenges they face to realize their vision. The new foundation is to be called Zaytuna College and located in the San Francisco Bay Area. As was the case with earlier immigrant groups, they hope the college will be able to pass on to the children of immigrants the religious traditions and culture of the immigrants’ various Muslim homelands.

The Chronicle also has a companion piece exploring further the reasons why the two scholars and others in the American Muslim community see a need to establish a Muslim college within the American context.

These two pieces could form the starting point for a wide-ranging faculty conversation about the history of immigration, assimilation, and college foundation in America.