U of I says fired instructor offered job
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — The University of Illinois on Thursday said it had offered a job to an instructor who was fired over a complaint that he engaged in hate speech in his explanation of Catholic church doctrine on homosexuality.
The university also said it will stop allowing the on-campus St. John's Catholic Newman Center to pay instructors who teach Catholic-related courses and will instead pay those teachers itself — ending a decades-old arrangement that troubled some faculty.
It wasn't immediately clear Thursday whether adjunct instructor Kenneth Howell had accepted the university's offer, which does not include any guarantee of a job after the fall semester.
Under the offer, Howell would receive $10,000 to teach an Introduction to Catholicism class for the semester. Like all offers made to adjunct instructors, the offer is for only one semester, university spokeswoman Robin Kaler said.
It wasn't clear Thursday how much Howell previously had been paid.
The decision to offer Howell the job back, Kaler said, was made by the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, which the university's Religious Studies program is part of. The class, she said, has been full since registration started in the spring. Classes start Aug. 23.
"The fall semester is fast approaching, so the school made the decision to contract with him to teach that course," she said.
Abbas Benmamoun, who is the incoming head of the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, declined comment.
Howell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. One of his attorneys with the Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund said he appreciated the university's decision but had not yet heard from Howell.
"We're extremely pleased that Dr. Howell is back in the classroom," David Hacker said. "But we'll be watching carefully to make sure his academic freedom is protected through this ongoing process."
A faculty committee asked by leaders at the university's Urbana-Champaign campus to consider whether the decision to remove Howell violated his academic freedom is expected to report its findings next month.
Howell was removed at the end of the spring semester after a friend of a student in Howell's Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought class complained the instructor engaged in hate speech in an e-mail to students explaining Catholic doctrine on homosexual sex.
Howell has said he made clear to his students early in the semester that he is a Catholic and agrees with the church teachings he covers in class.
In the e-mail for students preparing for an exam, he wrote: "Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same."
The anonymous student, in an e-mail to university leadership, then wrote: "Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing. Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another."
Howell has taught at the university for nine years, and was recognized by his department in 2008 and 2009 for being rated an excellent teacher by students. A Facebook page was set up to support him — it had 3,200 supporters as of Thursday — and some students demonstrated on campus on his behalf.
After he lost his teaching job, he also was fired as director of the Newman Center's Institute of Catholic Thought, which is run by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria. Diocese chancellor Patricia Gibson said Howell will have some sort of job at the center if he continues teaching.
Gibson also said the diocese is comfortable with the university's decision to no longer have the center pay the instructors who teach Catholic-related classes.
"We have every indication that they're willing to still continue to develop and examine — in a good way — how we can best serve the university and the Catholic students there," she said.
Another faculty committee on Thursday had recommended that the arrangement end, said Joyce Tolliver, an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois and chair of its Faculty Senate executive committee.
"There were inherent potentials for conflict when we turned that teaching over to a religious foundation which does not have an academic mission but rather a spiritual mission," she said.
