This could have been one of those magic college moments, the kind that opens up new worlds, the kind that you tell stories about 20 years later.
In a class on art history, a Muslim student at Hamline University was introduced to a medieval Islamic text that included a painting of the Prophet Muhammad. The student was from a particular Muslim background that considers pictorial representation of the Prophet a violation of her faith.
This was not, to be clear, an insulting “Danish cartoons”-style depiction.
The painting was by a Muslim artist, it portrays a classical Muslim scene (the Angel Gabriel instructing the Prophet Muhammad in the first verses of the Quran), and it is clearly intended as reverential. It has been cherished by devout Muslims and expert art historians for hundreds of years.
So here you have it: a conviction that says Islam forbids pictures of the Prophet encountering a painting that demonstrates that there are sacred pictures of the Prophet made by pious Muslims. Any time that you realize that the world is larger than your worldview, you have been presented with the gift of a learning opportunity.
Such reckonings are what a liberal education is all about. They are why you go to college. As Tara Westover writes in her book Educated:
Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create.
The art-history instructor who both showed the image and explained its significance did her job. She taught art history. Of course her academic freedom should be protected, in part because that freedom is connected to the quality of student learning. A college is defined by professors who, through years of study, have become expert in a subject, and have therefore earned membership in the guild of people who determine what knowledge is worth passing down to the next generation. Advocates for identity groups are important voices in a campus’s public square, but they should not control the curriculum.
It is perfectly understandable that some of the material in that course might disturb some students. As the great poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote: “Art hurts. Art urges voyages — / and it is easier to stay at home.”
How wonderful, then, that there is a place on campus called the Office of Inclusive Excellence. It could be a space where students who need to have a reckoning between the magnificent wideness of the world and the (relative) narrowness of any human worldview can go to process their journey.
What if DEI officers were expected to be, and were trained as, experts in the diversity of the world, including its tensions, contradictions, and inevitable conflicts? What if that training included religious diversity?
Perhaps this particular Muslim student was especially fortunate. What if the DEI officer she spoke with had spent time traveling through the Muslim-majority world — had perhaps seen firsthand a range of Muslim practices and beliefs? What if he counted as friends Muslims who eschewed images of the Prophet, as well as those who had paintings of Muhammad among their most prized possessions? Such an official could have gently explained that while it may be easier to stay home, you voyage to college to encounter diversity — and diversity is not just the differences you like.
Advocates for identity groups are important voices in a campus’s public square, but they should not control the curriculum.
The United States is the most religiously diverse nation in human history, and the most religiously devout nation in the Western Hemisphere, so virtually every campus can expect to face conflicts around religious diversity. Will campuses be prepared to turn such controversies into opportunities for learning about the wideness of the world?
I believe DEI officers have a special role to play here. Religious-diversity issues do not fall neatly into the categories of “privilege” and “oppression” that are so often used to understand race, gender, and sexuality. Instead, they are more likely to be issues where the legitimate expression of one person’s core identity can feel like a violation of another person’s core identity.
When a Muslim tells a Christian that Jesus is not the son of God, but rather a revered prophet, he is not trying to oppress the Christian; he is simply articulating a central Muslim belief. And when a Christian tells a Muslim that Jesus saves people who believe in him properly, she is not colonizing anyone; she’s just being a Christian.
Simply put, this is the reality of a diverse world. College is a place where students learn more about such multiplicity, not less. DEI officers could play a particularly powerful role here, if they choose to take up the challenge.
