The flap over a University of Illinois adjunct instructor dismissed after making controversial remarks about homosexuality arises from an unusual partnership between the state university and the Roman Catholic Church.Kenneth Howell taught "Introduction to Catholicism" and "Modern Catholic Thought" in university classrooms, but served on the payroll of the St. John's Catholic Newman Center funded by the diocese of Peoria.
Despite objections from scholars, the agreement with the church has remained in place at the Urbana- Champaign campus since the religious studies department was founded in 1971.
The church has maintained control over how Catholic theory was taught, selecting the instructors and paying their salaries. Although the university has amended the agreement over the years to exercise more control, the arrangement has left the Catholic component of the school's otherwise secular religious studies curriculum susceptible to church influence.
Faculty and administrators now will review that policy to determine if it violates the separation of church and state or threatens academic integrity. They hope to conclude their investigation before the fall semester begins.
"I have very strong inclinations that this is where things went wrong in the first place," said Nicholas Burbules, a member of the Faculty Senate's General University Policy Committee, which will review the relationship, along with others. "This line is going to get blurred and was blurred repeatedly over a long period of time."
A separate committee will review Howell's recent removal to determine if it violated his rights of free speech and academic freedom. Howell was removed last month by the university after a student complained that the instructor's explanation of the church's moral opposition to homosexuality qualified as hate speech.
Scholars are troubled both by the university's agreement with the church and by what they consider a lack of due process in Howell's dismissal.
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, said the circumstances of Howell's employment don't void his right to due process.
"Outside control is very dangerous," said Nelson, an English professor at the University of Illinois. "If the control is not clearly with the university, ordinarily that's something we just wouldn't tolerate."
Howell said he answered to both the church and the university. As an adjunct, he said he considered himself an agent of the school. As a director and senior fellow of the Newman Center's Institute of Catholic Thought, he said he considered himself an agent of the church.
He also sought a mandatum, a promise to stay loyal to the church hierarchy and pass along the faith, from the bishop of Peoria.
The mandatum, the bishop's seal of approval, normally applies only to theologians at Catholic universities. But many Catholic theologians have avoided acquiring the mandatum, for fear it will jeopardize their academic credibility.
According to an article in The Catholic Historical Review by University of Illinois professor emeritus Winton Solberg, the arrangement is in place because of the Monsignor Edward Duncan. Even when other religious foundations — primarily Protestant — gave up teaching courses for credit, the renowned Catholic chaplain persisted.
Duncan persuaded the school's trustees to continue letting the Newman Foundation, the Catholic campus ministry, teach Catholicism over objections from university administrators.
Since then, at least one head of the religious studies department tried to end the arrangement and failed, faculty members say. But the university has been able to veto instructors when necessary, said David Price, a professor of religious studies, history and Jewish studies.
This is not the first attempt "to teach orthodoxy as an absolute truth rather than just a position of the Catholic Church," he said. Previous instructors have been let go or not approved by the university.
"The university needs to have complete control over who teaches," Price said. "This agreement should not exist."
Indeed, Ayesha Khan, legal director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, said the arrangement is rife for pitfalls.
"You can imagine a person hired by the diocese (but) being put in a public institution having, at a minimum, a conflict of interest," Khan said. "That's an untenable situation and it's not surprising it led to this."
Burbules said the university committee recognizes the urgency of the situation and will respond quickly.
"I don't need to itemize the ways in which this can go wrong," he said. "We will be reporting fairly quickly on lessons we can learn from this situation — whether we should continue (such teaching arrangements) at all or whether they need to be managed or regulated more closely in the future."
SIC: CTUSA