"Same God:" Dr. Larycia Hawkins And The Cost Of Conscience

Tom’s next guest is Dr. Larycia Hawkins. She’s a political scientist and social activist who is currently the Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and a lecturer at the University of Virginia. Before taking her current position, Dr. Hawkins was an associate professor and founder and director of the Peace & Conflict Studies Certificate Program at Wheaton College in Illinois, a Christian liberal arts college near Chicago known in some cirlces as the “Harvard of Evangelical Colleges.”In 2015, Dr. Hawkins, who is a Christian, was fired from her tenured position by the college after she posted on Facebook a picture of herself wearing a hijab, along with a statement expressing her “embodied solidarity” with Muslim women and her belief that Christians and Muslims "worship the same God." Her actions put her in the middle of a firestorm of controversy over academic freedom and religious tolerance. Filmmaker Linda Midgett's new documentary, Same God, chronicles Hawkins' experience. The film is available online for streaming. This afternoon from 4:00-5:00pm, Dr. Hawkins will take part in a virtual dialogue with Heather Miller Rubens, the executive director of the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies here in Baltimore. Follow this link to register for the free public event. Dr. Larycia Hawkins joins Tom on the phone from her home in Charlottsville, Virginia.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.