In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the tragedy wasn’t so much the killing of the father; it was the son’s bad decisions that resulted in the end killing of everyone involved: the son, the uncle, and the queen! Here at Hamline University, lots of bad decisions resulted in the tragedy. It started when Erika Lopez Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, showed a 14-century image of the prophet Mohammed in her art class, resulting in a professor losing, as the Times puts it, “her teaching gig”; A student lost her safety. A Muslim community leader lost his focus, and the Hamlin university lost its credential. President Fayneese Miller’s blamed the media for the assault on her institution under the rubric of academic freedom. Not exactly, as is always the case, western media framed the debate as a war between backward Islam and the Modern West binary. As a Muslim and adjunct professor who taught at Hamline.
