Found her: The worst college professor in America
I'd like to introduce you to the worst college professor in America, in my opinion. Her name is Larycia Hawkins. As some of you may know, she was fired from Wheaton College, a liberal but evangelical school (they have feminist and socialist professors). Hawkins crossed a bridge too far when she decided to wear a hijab in "solidarity" with "Muslims."
But the hijab is not simply a symbol of Islam, as many Muslim women do not wear the hijab. The hijab is a symbol of fundamentalist Islam, of those who endorse sharia law and the brutal mistreatment of women. Hawkins's tacit endorsement of sharia law was too much even for Wheaton, which fired her, but it turns out it was just the tip of the iceberg.
Let's see how many boxesmy choice for the worst professor in America can check.
1) Anti-white racist.
Her classes included "Race and the Politics of Welfare" and "Race and the Obama Presidency." She talked about how Obama had to appear to "transcend" race in order to get elected, about why he spoke differently to black and white audiences, about how polling data suggested that he would have won by an even larger margin were he white.
She wrote a speech that used zombies as an extended metaphor for the way black men have been dehumanized in American political culture.
White = racist. And so yet another scholar's career is launched and nurtured. No matter that a white-majority country elected Obama twice; America was racist because it didn't elect him by even larger margins.
2) Self-appointed victim status.
As Hawkins settled in at Wheaton, she struggled. Though she loved her students, the heavy teaching load was stressful[.]
Heavy teaching load? At a college? Was she burning the midnight oil? What about all those long holidays and summers off?
Her health and social life suffered. She rarely had time for exercise or her book club anymore, dating was difficult, and she battled chronic sinus infections, migraines and high blood pressure, which she attributed to stress.
Stress? Of being a professor at a university? Compared to other professional jobs in business, law, and medicine, not so much.
3) Hating symbols of America.
A year or two after arriving on campus, she developed a distaste for performances of patriotism and decided to stop saluting the flag and singing the national anthem.
4) Tarring Christians as racist.
In particular, she was reading a lot of black liberation theology, a strain of thinking that emerged from the Black Power movement of the 1960s. [The philosophy argues that] Jesus' central mission was to liberate the oppressed ... but mainstream American Christianity is beholden to irredeemably corrupt "white theology." She felt "spiritually dry," a term Christians use to describe the feeling of being far from God.
5) Pushing to admit students simply because they are gay.
Hawkins pushed the college to expand its language around diversity to include L.G.B.T.Q. students[.]
6) Wanting to reinterpret Christianity to use it to promote a race-baiting, anti-man, pro-gay agenda.
Hawkins advocated:
A politics of difference requires, in short, a radical shift in the body politic – and in the body of Christ. It requires a body politic that sees bodies, gendered bodies, colored bodies, disabled bodies, L.G.B.T.Q. bodies[.]
How about simply seeing bodies, or better yet, people, without regard to their skin color or whom or what they seek out for sexual satisfaction?
7) Her tacit endorsement of sharia law.
There was ... her deference to the judgment of the Council on American Islamic Relations, whose advice and blessing Hawkins sought before donning the hijab. And then there were the photos themselves, showing Hawkins in a patterned purple head scarf, which may have been the most incendiary aspect of all.
CAIR is a radical Hamas front group. Hawkins was not just showing sympathy to Muslims; she was cozying up to radical Islamists. This was too much even for Wheaton – having a professor at an evangelical school advocate sharia law. She was fired.
Don't worry about Hawkins. She's already cashing in on her victimhood:
Since her controversial leave-taking from Wheaton, she had become something of a celebrity in the small world of interfaith media and nonprofits. In the spring, she began taking speaking engagements, and she traveled to accept awards from religious organizations in Michigan, New York and Washington. She recently worked out a deal with HarperOne to write a book about "embodied solidarity,"
Have you ever had a professor worse than this, who checked off all the boxes of the hard left –self victimization, anti-white "scholarship," attacking Christianity, and pushing the gay lifestyle and, incongruously, sharia law at the same time?
Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.