Feminists have critiqued assumptions and structures of inter-religious dialogue. Studies Ecofeminist Theology, Feminism and Religion, and Theology of Disability. Stories circulating in various social media and internet sites about a course I am teaching have presented a one-sided narrative.Alison Downie, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Religious Studies Department, Faculty Member.
But after the Ted Talk video, he was eager to voice his objections to the transgender minister’s opinions that “mansplaining” is widespread and women “work twice as hard for half as much.”The only problem: Alison Downie, the professor, asked female students to share their reaction to the video first. The minister also spoke about the delicate process of gaining some acceptance from her conservative Christian family.The video served as a contrast to a more-conservative view of Christianity, evangelicalism, which had been highlighted in the previous class.Lake Ingle, a religious-studies major, missed that class. “I felt I had no choice but to look for help from other people,” he says of his decision to campaign against the professor and the university in the conservative media.Students in the religious-studies class, “Self, Sin, and Salvation,” had just watched a Ted Talk video of a transgender minister who spoke about how she had become more aware of the obstacles faced by women once she outwardly expressed herself as a woman. Of Pennsylvania student, appears on Fox News.
She was right next to Ingle.“Animated, rude, and I guess passionate” is how Bradshaw, who calls herself “center-left” politically, described Ingle’s behavior. Not quite shouting, she said, but the elevated voice of someone seeking attention from 25 feet away.Except the professor was not 25 feet away, Bradshaw said. To back down in that moment, he said, would have been “kneeling to the stupidity of that sort of structured conversation.”Ingle described his tone of voice as impassioned, not shouting.One of Ingle’s classmates, Kate Bradshaw, said Ingle’s voice was definitely raised. He didn’t think it was right that male students should wait, no matter what the professor had said.“She asked me to stop talking because I was a man, and I told her that she was in no position to do so,” Ingle said in an interview.
At one point he veered into his stance on transgender issues.It was during that phase of Ingle’s remarks that one student quietly walked out. He argued that the male-female wage gap was not fueled by discrimination. He disputed the professor’s right to allow female students to speak first.
University policy considers it to be “classroom misconduct” if a student “significantly disrupts the learning process or is a threat to others.”One of Ingle’s classmates, Jon Mabon, spoke in support of Ingle, saying he should be allowed to stay.Mabon, who said he leans conservative in his political beliefs, told The Chronicle that he didn’t agree with all of Ingle’s viewpoints during his heated back-and-forth with Downie. “I’ve never darted out of a classroom.”Nonetheless, he added a minute later, “I would feel terrible if that was what caused them to leave, or to feel that they couldn’t return to class.”In March, the university’s Academic Integrity Board held a hearing on whether Ingle should be permanently removed from the course. “You have to be willing to hear things that might attack your identity,” he said in an interview, including when you are a white male, as he is.“I’ve been forced to, I have no choice,” he said. The student never came back.Ingle said he wasn’t aware he had a transgender classmate.
Driscoll, the university’s president, opted to allow Ingle to return to the class.In an email to the campus, Driscoll wrote that he knew he could be criticized for departing from standard procedure by bypassing Ingle’s disciplinary hearing. The publicity Ingle generated for his cause led to a public outcry over a student who was allegedly being punished for saying there were only “two genders.”Michael A. Both Downie and Ingle, he said, could have handled their classroom clash better.The professor, he said, could have let Ingle speak his piece and then taken him aside after class to talk out their differences.Instead, the next day, Downie wrote Ingle up for a behavior violation and told him he would need to apologize in front of the class and then “listen in silence as the professor and/or any student who wishes to speak shares how he or she felt during Lake’s disrespectful and disruptive outbursts.”Ingle refused, took his story to right-wing media outlets, and created a firestorm.But what about Ingle’s behavior on that day? Does his supportive classmate think he should have done anything differently?“He probably could have taken a couple deep breaths,” Mabon said.The disciplinary hearing ended up being irrelevant. To Mabon, such a penalty seemed excessive.
‘If There’s an Organized Outrage Machine, We Need an Organized Response’The student’s supporters combed through the professor’s writings and identified examples of what they saw as her “leftist” bias. This Professor Wants to Teach Administrators Not to Cave In to Right-Wing Outrage She received about 1,000 emails, including some with anti-Semitic language.Read a collection of Chronicle articles documenting the impact of web-driven political outrage on the lives of faculty members. There were harassing phone calls and text messages, some quoting Bible verses. “I thought you should be aware that the ‘2 genders’ issue has spread beyond Religious Studies.”It was Downie, however, who bore the brunt of the outrage.
Downie, who only recently had earned tenure as an associate professor, changed her cellphone number and deleted her personal Facebook account.The editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 50 miles west of Indiana, Pa., weighed in. A reader of that site called the cops on Downie, alleging she was a dangerous threat (the police quickly determined she was not).An online petition, demanding that Downie be fired, drew more than 1,500 signatures.
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