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Broader discussion of being a part of the JMU community- discussion between human beings with equal status and personhood

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Broader discussion of being a part of the JMU community- discussion between human beings with equal status and personhood

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Some interesting legal connections- or at least leads.

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Some interesting legal connections- or at least leads.

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Abstract

Disrupting barriers to access in the religious community may depend upon mutual engagement between the disability and religious communities. A respectful ambivalence between institutional religion and the disability community keeps this conversation at bay. Whether one is religious or not, engagement with the religious community is highly relevant to the disability community. The disability community's influence upon this large network of adherents could make a tremendous impact toward inclusion in society. This article provides an overview for disability scholars and advocates. The context for discussion is inclusion practices in the United States, with which the author is most familiar.

Why engage the religious community?

1. The religious community is one of the largest networks for inclusion in the United States.

2. The religious community controls the largest single pool of charitable giving in the private sector.

3. Seminaries graduate thousands of religious leaders each year with little or no exposure to disability issues. These leaders have tremendous influence over what happens in their congregations and to some extent, public attitudes.

4. Religious practices have not been historically gracious toward people with disabilities. Perceptions within that history are a deterrent to inclusion, but need not exclude meaningful engagement between religion and disability.

5. Sustained engagement between the communities of religion and disability can increase the momentum for social change for people with disabilities.

In this article, "engagement" means both constructive and critical conversations. "Bridging" is a connective word that promotes interaction. The author suggests that disability advocates find ways, within their own spheres of interest and influence, to reinforce these connections between religion and disability.

I interweave aspects of law into this essay: it is helpful to understand the interconnections among religion, disability, and public mandates. The principle of separation of church and state explains (in part) why the religious community falls behind the public sector in applying inclusion. The U.S. Constitution's respectful ambivalence toward religion sets the tone for approaching conversations about religion and disability. Its ambivalence is a starting point, not a boundary.

Background

Communities of faith represent one of the largest (and relatively untapped) sources of inclusion for people with disabilities and their families. Yet people with disabilities reflect only 5-7% of membership in religious communities. By comparison, U.S. population figures revealed that in 2000 about 20% of the population had a disability (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2003). Considering that people with disabilities have family members and others who care about them, the number we are talking about here is even larger. To extend this point: one person with a disability plus one family member or significant other would equal almost two-fifths (38%) of the population.

To provide some context of the religious community's size and power, consider a few reference points. There are over 350,000 religious congregations in the United States. In 2005, these congregations received over $100 billion dollars from adherents (Independent Sector, 2000; Lindner, 2006). Religion is the single largest area of philanthropy, and one in four nonprofits is religious.

Congregations are a vital part of many people's lives, often the most important one, if only for social reasons. They serve all geographic and ethnic communities: Latino, African American, Jewish, Muslim, Ba'hai, Buddhist and others. While ethnic and racial conceptions about disability certainly differ, minority and oppressed groups tend to share concern about social justice issues and exclusion. Yet the experiences and views of people with disabilities have received limited attention within multicultural movements. This lack of concern is noteworthy because people with disabilities are in all these groups. Indeed, people with disabilities represent the world's largest multicultural minority.

Early U.S. immigrants founded congregations before founding their own schools. Not surprisingly, 53% of U.S. congregations organized before World War II (Dudley & Roozen, 2001). Many of these facilities face access challenges for many different types of disabilities. From the large pool of charitable funds each year, there is room for access funding. Indeed, there is record construction spending for renovations and facility upgrades (Engineering News-Record database, 2005) - but not necessarily for access. Congregations are exempt from compliance with most aspects of the ADA. Most new construction must meet local building codes, intermittently requiring access as a pre-requisite for building permits.

Attitudes are a central factor. A Hartford Seminary study found that the average age of a congregation's members shapes its response capacity or 'comfort zone' (Dudley & Roozen, 2001). Congregations with established patterns of interaction are less welcoming to change. These patterns also have an impact on the congregation's openness to diversity.

The majority of congregations are located in residential metropolitan neighborhoods (Independent Sector, 2000). The vast network of congregations and resources is available (in theory if not practice) to promote opportunities in community life and social participation. Some congregations, for example, might provide limited transportation for people in their own communities. Federal Faith-Based Initiatives in the U.S. may prove integral in stimulating the release of these resources to the community at large.
Religion and Disability Una/bridged
Several observations are in order.

First, congregations generally demonstrate openness to improving the condition of their fellow human beings. They also tend to have their own interests and ideas about how to serve society.

Second, the majority of religious adherents are nondisabled. Congregations often need leadership on how they might proceed in becoming proactive about disability issues.

Third, when it comes to disability, congregations are like the general public because they are the general public. The history of organized religion reflects the biases of broader culture. Congregations both influence and are influenced by that culture. This symbiotic relationship is perhaps why congregations are slower, but often more pervasive, change agents in the long term.

Further, institutional religion's history is marred with layers of cultural sediment. For example, Brenda Brueggemann (2001) described the Deaf community's debate over the Augustinian interpretation of the Apostle Paul's statement that faith comes by hearing. In his Answer to Julian, St. Augustine of Hippo commented:

Tell me, then, because of what wrong are such innocents sometimes born blind and others sometimes deaf? This defect is even a hindrance to faith itself, as the apostle bears witness, when he says, Faith comes from hearing [Romans 10:17].... for they cannot hear the Word, and they Cannot [sic] read the Word.... Or are any of you so feebleminded that you do not regard feeblemindedness as an evil.... Is there anyone who does not know that those whom the common people call morons are born so mentally feeble that one can hardly credit certain of them with the mental capacity of animals? (ca. 421-430 A.D., Works of Saint Augustine, I/24, p. 344, ed. Hill & Rotelle)

Brueggemann's spotlight on this debate illustrates the distance between religion and people with disabilities across the ages. Woodward (1982) noted that Augustine's comments have at times been a source of heated debate in the Deaf community. Certainly, one is hard pressed today to find mainstream religions that regard Deaf people (and others with disabilities) as fundamentally evil. However, the history of religious stigmas across the ages casts a long shadow in cultural memory. Consider the images that still reside in portrayals of mental illness as demon possession (e.g., The Exorcist). There are also reverse associations that cast disability as the martyr-like shouldering of burdens: for example, parents are sometimes told that "God must think highly of you, to entrust a child with a disability to your family."

Showing the people in faith communities what needs to be done, and helping them take action, may prove a means for changing religious practices or theologies that exclude people with disabilities. Relationships sometimes do what theology can't.
I. Without Recourse of Law
The religious community lags behind the public sector largely because 'respectful ambivalence' has restricted engagement among religion, law, and people with disabilities. This membrane exists by U.S. Constitutional mandate: the separation of church and state. The boundary has proven more semi-permeable than solid. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently interpreted this principle as freedom of religion, not just freedom from religion. This dictum also relies upon a central value of the disability community: accommodation.

The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any. Anything less would require a "callous indifference" (Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 1952 at 314) that was never intended by the Establishment Clause. Chief Justice Warren Burger, Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984).

Many people with disabilities wish to participate in faith communities but face greater barriers than in the public sector. Over the past three decades, our society has grappled with legislation aimed to improve civil rights for people with disabilities. On balance, these laws are enforceable within the public domain. A number of private institutions are not directly mandated through these laws. An even wider number of religious entities are exempt de facto. These exclusions arise from the U.S. Constitution's interest to maintain neutrality in the religious domain: Article One neither favors nor disfavors religion. The Establishment Clause sets the critical boundary preventing governmental intrusion into matters of religious concern.

People with disabilities thus face exclusion from celebrating the rights and obligations of their faith without recourse of law.

While neutral toward religion, the Courts have often noted the important role that religion fills in society. The separation of church and state poses a unique challenge for achieving in the religious sector what the government has sought for decades in the public sector: the social advancement of rights for people with disabilities.

In 1992, Supreme Court Justice Blackmun noted religion's kinship to American law and public society ( Lee v. Weisman, 1992).

A relentless and all-pervasive attempt to exclude religion from every aspect of public life could become inconsistent with the Constitution" [Justices Stevens and O'Conner concurring].

Likewise, people with disabilities may say the converse to communities of faith. Excluding people with disabilities from congregational life is inconsistent with higher powers of law and faith. This is the basis for conversations about religion and disability.
Hold on - the religious community isn't entirely exempt from disability law.
Certain provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may indeed apply to the religious community. Religious organizations should determine their responsibility to comply. For example, any religious entity with 15 or more employees is required to comply with Title I requirements. Non-clergy staff members are covered by Title I. However, ordained clergy are generally not covered by this statute.

Nor are religious institutions specifically exempted from Title III (accommodations and services). If the religious organization receives state or federal funding for any purpose, it is subject to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Examples include funds received for Faith-Based Initiatives; daycare centers; soup kitchens; student education; homeless shelters and other types of social service; counseling centers; or project grants. For example, Ireland v. Kansas District of the Wesleyan Church (1984) applied Section 504 to a church-operated day care center receiving federal funds for food. Burriola v. Greater Toledo YMCA (2001) applied Section 504 to a local YMCA operating a daycare facility at Calvary United Methodist Church. The daycare excluded a child with autism whose behavior they deemed "inappropriate" and "a threat" to the other children.

Further, Section 504 applies even if the federal funding is received indirectly. For example, some congregations set up separate nonprofits to run community services such as hospitals or soup kitchens. If a religious organization re-allocates federal funding toward its related nonprofit, the religious organization is still "a recipient of federal funds" under § 504 ( Dupre v. The Roman Catholic School of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodeaux, 1999). Upon receipt of federal funding, the recipient must comply with Section 504 across all of its programs and services - not just the single program receiving the funds.

II. Religious Higher Education

Some cases have tested religious higher education. In White v. Denver Seminary (2001), the court determined that a seminary's public claim that it observed the ADA did not preclude the seminary from claiming its statutory exemption from Title III of the ADA. White, a seminary student with multiple disabilities, sued the school for failure to provide ADA accommodations as promised in its published handbook. However, religious schools may be liable for breach of contract in these situations. Academic catalogs are a contract between students or faculty and the school.

The importance of the contractual relationship between students, faculty and schools has firm precedent. Since 1819, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the contract relationship in both public and private institutions. Academic requirements that are written in a school's catalogs may be enforced as contractual if the student pays the fees listed and meets the stated academic requirements. The courts can enforce this element of contract law, since students are de facto entering an adhesion contract, whether they realize it or not, in the matriculation process. Academic catalogs must specifically state that requirements are subject to change at any time, and show written regulations elsewhere. Otherwise, the academic catalogs are considered an enforceable contract ( Easley v. University of Michigan Board of Regents, 1986).

Contracts involve the fulfillment of specified requirements and the exchange of consideration (such as money). Since White, some religious universities are aware of these precedents and have begun including explicit statements that their catalogs are not legal contracts. Situations related to faculty with disabilities have also been recently tested in the courts.
Benchmark ruling on campus-wide access requirements.
The religious affiliation often complicates cases since governance issues are connected to their denominational relationships (Justesen, 2001). This distinction is different than applies to secular private colleges and universities. Another case shows how disability issues interact with the interests of religiously affiliated colleges and universities.

In 2000, Duke University reached agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to make campus-wide accessibility improvements to its campus (Justesen, 2001). Duke is a well endowed, religiously-affiliated school with extensive financial and other resources at its disposal. The complaint, filed by a student who had graduated from Duke in 1997, listed numerous buildings and activities that were not accessible. This was the first time that an agreement for campus-wide access had been reached. Duke University's 2000 settlement agreement introduced the concept of 'visitability,' a practice that (if implemented) "allows people in wheelchairs to visit the rooms of their friends without disabilities" (Hebel, 2000, p. A34). Visitability expanded the concept of accessibility: people with disabilities should be able to visit the rooms of their friends who do not have disabilities.

With the large number of religious entities now receiving federal funding through President Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives, there are now legal grounds for ADA and Section 504 cases to be further tested.
III. Graduate Theological Education: A Critical Area for Disability Advocacy
A survey of 244 member seminaries of the Association of Theological Schools in the U.S. and Canada captured a bleak state of affairs at mainline seminaries. The 2001 Survey of Theological Education and People with Disabilities revealed very little activity toward access, whether through curriculum, programs, or physical plant (Anderson & Blair, 2003). Most deans, however, (92%) cited their belief that access was an important issue that needs to be addressed.

Theological education equips thousands of clergy each year to lead congregations. Increased advocacy directed toward graduate theological education could make a systemic impact. By including educational content about disability inside their curricula, these schools could impact future generations of religious leaders and millions of people in their congregations. These religious adherents filter throughout society. Imagine the possibilities if congregations educated their members about disability. There are certainly pockets of stellar activity, yet there seems to be a lack of critical mass.

Helping seminaries understand access. The phrase 'practical access' clarifies how subtle realities shape a school's responsiveness or capacity to include people with disabilities (Anderson, 2003). For example, a ramp provides physical access to a building. It also creates the context where people enter and form relationships with other students. Doe (2003) described how context influences the school's curriculum over time - whether through content or practical access. The baseline proposed for seminaries is curriculum infusion: interweaving knowledge about the experience of disability throughout the existing curriculum. Lott (2001) credits her disability as generating a channel for dialogue and positive change in classroom norms. Lott draws out the critical element for transforming change within educational spaces: the relationships that occur among people. When people with disabilities interact with others in educational settings, a transformation of environment, culture, and curriculum is more likely to occur (Gabel, 2005).

Disability advocates may advance this transformation by engaging in conversations with religious scholars, administrators, and others within your network about these issues.
IV. Critical Mass?
The momentum for change will likely need to come from the public sector (so-called secular society) for change to reach that critical mass inside the religious community. This observation recognizes that congregations are not a disconnected subset of culture. They are comprised of people, who are the general public. Society still treats ableism as though it were a property interest. This is a concern for all of us in the disability community.

Critical mass may come in the form of the baby boomers, a force of 79 million people who enter retirement en masse by 2010. They will carry a very big club. They will demand access. They will get it or the religious community will receive a possibly fatal blow. Imagine the largest demographic of society who, unable to access places of worship, begin gradually withholding their donations and volunteerism.

When religious adherents embrace a social or political cause, they tend to bring those issues to every sphere of their lives: work, education, politics, community life (Dudley & Roozen, 2001; Independent Sector, 2000). However, engagement with disability issues in the religious community has not yet reached critical mass. We need to help foster this dialogue.
Bridging Disability and Religion
Conversations between the religious and disability communities often derail on matters about theology. Religious portrayals of people with disabilities have sometimes been stigmatizing. That is, disability has at times been connected to sin, unworthiness, or exclusion from community living (e.g., "lepers"). Nor has disability been a coherent and studied concept within the history of theological inquiry.

However, there is a need for conversations to take place - between people of faith and all who have faith in the power of access. There is more common ground than might be imagined.

The religious community has no legal mandate to respond to certain disability legislation. Yet the religious sector should explore its own moral mandates that compel action based on faith, justice, and respect.

The disability community may likewise further its own interests for social justice by engaging the religious community. Suggestions for further action are described below.

1. Designate "Religion and Disability" as an overall conference theme for an annual conference meeting.

2. Include topical sessions about religion and disability at other annual meetings.

3. Form strategic partnerships with organizations such as the American Association on Mental Retardation's (AAMR) Religion & Spirituality Division.

4. Encourage members throughout the disability community to include the religious community in their advocacy and research efforts.

5. Publish a position paper on engaging the religious community about disability issues. Provide a copy to organizational members and other disability organizations.

Conclusion

The disability community will discover many colleagues who are already engaging in this kind of "bridging." Most 'religion and disability' advocates consider themselves a part of the disability community. Some may recall the career of Dr. Harold Wilke, regarded by many as the pioneer for religion and disability since 1945. Groups such as the National Organization on Disability have made major contributions toward this goal. There are now a number of scholars, advocates, and organizations engaged in this work as well.

To learn more, several resources are noted here for you to examine. Clicking on each URL will direct you to the resource. The new 2005 Dimensions of Faith resource directory is a 179-page comprehensive bibliography of information about religion and disability. (Published by the Elizabeth Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities).

You may also wish to look over the Journal of Religion, Disability, & Health (Haworth Press). At this URL, you may view a free online sample or request one by mail.

Of particular interest is the National Organization on Disability's Seminary Project. This project helps educate seminaries how to welcome faculty, staff, students and visitors with disabilities. Its central goal is to help these schools better equip future religious leaders to serve, and serve with, children and adults with disabilities. A number of organizations have interests in these areas, among them, The Center for Religion and Disability and the Boggs Center (noted above).
References
Anderson, R. C. (Ed.). (2003). Graduate theological education and the human experience of disability. New York: The Haworth Press.

Anderson, R. C. & Blair, W. D. (2003). Survey of Theological Education and People with Disabilities. Birmingham, Alabama: The Center for Religion and Disability, Inc.

Brueggemann, B. J. (2001). Deafness, literacy, rhetoric: Legacies of language and communication. In J.C. Wilson & C. Lewiecki-Wilson (Eds.), Embodied rhetorics: Disability in language and culture (pp. 115-134). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Doe, T. (2003). Studying disability: Connecting people, programs and policies. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: Island Blue Press.

Dudley, C. S. & Roozen, D. A. (2001). Faith communities today: A report on religion in the United States. Hartford, Connecticut: Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Hartford Seminary.

Duin, J. (2001). Giving in different denominations. The Philanthropy Roundtable, May/June. Retrieved February 7, 2006, from:
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/2006/janfeb/Hartmann.htm

Gabel, S. (Ed.). (2005). Disability studies in education: Readings in theory and method. New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

Hebel, S. (2000, March 3). Duke reaches settlement with Justice Department on access for people with disabilities. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46(26), p. A34.

Hill, E. & Rotelle, J. E. (Eds.) (1998). Answer to the Pelagians II: Answer to Julian, III, 4/10, Part I: 'Books'. In The works of Saint Augustine: A translation for the 21st century (Volume 24, p. 344; Roland J. Teske, Trans.). (American Heritage Institute Series). Hyde Park, New York: New City Press.

Independent Sector. (2000, November). America's religious congregations: Measuring their contributions to society. Washington, DC: Author.

Justesen, T. (2001). Disability, higher education, and public policy: The challenge of implementing federal policy in private colleges and universities. Dissertation Abstracts International, 63(01), 109. (UMI No. 3038969)

Lindner, E. W. (Ed.). (2006). Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. New York: National Council of Churches.

Lott, D. E. (2001). Going to class with (going to clash with?) the disabled person: Educators, students, and their spoken and unspoken negotiations. In J. C. Wilson & C. Lewiecki-Jones (Eds.), Embodied rhetorics: Disability in language and culture (pp. 135-153). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Miles, A. S. (2001). College Law (3 rd ed.). Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Sevgo Press.

U.S. Bureau of the Census (2003) Disability Status: 2000, accessed June 30, 2006, at www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-17.pdfPress.

Woodward, J. (ed.) (1982) How you gonna get to heaven if you can't talk to Jesus? On depathologizing deafness. Silver Spring, MD: Terrance J. Publishers, Inc.
Endnotes
AAMR's Religion & Spirituality Division may be contacted through: http://www.aamr.org/Groups/div/RG/.
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Faith in Access: Bridging Conversations between Religion and Disability | Disability Studies Quarterly

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Abstract Disrupting barriers to access in the religious community may depend upon mutual engagement between the disability and religious communities. A respectful ambivalence between institutional religion and the disability community keeps this conversation at bay. Whether one is religious or not, engagement with the religious community is highly relevant to the disability community.

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Reach out to faculty senate to discuss faculty ideas,views, concerns regarding ROAs

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Reach out to faculty senate to discuss faculty ideas,views, concerns regarding ROAs

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"Religious/Cultural Absence: The diversity of our institutions is our strength. Anticipating all the traditions our students may participate in is more difficult than creating a flexible policy that can allow students to fully participate in their protected religious freedom without compromising the success of their academic experience. From varied cultural traditions to dozens of religious practices, students may need time off for holidays, observances, prayers, and events that are less prioritized by the academic calendar than the western, Christian tradition. Students across our campuses have identified barriers in securing excused absences for observing religious and cultural traditions, including situations in which a particular holiday or observance is unknown to the faculty and, thus, not excused or situations in which little effort is made to assist the student in planning ahead. "

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Dept of Labor: definition of religious accommodation

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Dept of Labor: definition of religious accommodation

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits federal agencies from discriminating against employees or applicants for employment because of their religious beliefs in hiring, firing and other terms and conditions of employment. Additionally, Title VII requires federal agencies to reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs or practices of employees or applicants unless doing so would impose an undue hardship upon the agency.

Religious Discrimination

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines "religious beliefs" to include theistic beliefs (i.e. those that include a belief in God) as well as non-theistic moral or ethical beliefs about right and wrong that are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views. In most cases, whether or not a practice or belief is religious is not an issue. However, generally, religion typically concerns "ultimate ideas" about "life, purpose and death," while social, political and/or economic philosophies and mere personal preferences are not "religious" beliefs. It is important to consider that an individual's religious beliefs may change over time. Additionally, individuals may choose to adhere to some tenets of their religion but not others, and/or individuals may have a sincere belief in a religious practice that is not observed by other followers of their religion. Title VII also protects employees or applicants from discrimination if they do not subscribe to a particular religious view and/or are atheist. Religious discrimination can also involve treating someone differently because that person is married to (or associated with) an individual of a particular religion or because of his or her connection with a religious organization or group. An employee cannot be forced to participate (or not participate) in a religious activity as a condition of employment.

Religious Accommodation

Title VII requires federal agencies, upon notice of a request, to reasonably accommodate employees whose sincerely held religious beliefs, practices or observances conflict with work requirements, unless the accommodation would create an undue hardship.
What is a religious accommodation?
A religious accommodation is any adjustment to the work environment that will allow an employee or applicant to practice his or her religion. The need for religious accommodation may arise where an individual's religious beliefs, observances or practices conflict with a specific task or requirement of the position or an application process. Accommodation requests often relate to work schedules, dress and grooming, or religious expression in the workplace. If it would not pose an undue hardship, the employer must grant the accommodation.
What is an undue hardship?
An agency may justify a refusal to accommodate an individual's religious beliefs or practices if the agency can demonstrate that the accommodation would cause an undue hardship. An accommodation may cause undue hardship if it is costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to do more than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work. Undue hardship also may be shown if the request for an accommodation violates the terms of a collective bargaining agreement or job rights established through a seniority system. Undue hardship based on cost requires that the agency show more than a de minimis (minimal impact upon the agency's business) cost to the agency. The hardship upon the agency must be genuine and cannot be merely speculative.
How does a religious accommodation process work?
In requesting an accommodation, an employee or applicant is not required to use "magic words" (such as indicating that he or she is seeking "an accommodation"). However, an employee or applicant must make the agency aware of the need for an accommodation based on a conflict between the individual's religious belief or practice and their work duties or the agency's application process. The employee should make the request orally and/or in writing (via letter, email or fax), to his or her immediate supervisor. The request for an accommodation may trigger an interactive process, particularly if the employer reasonably needs more information, between the responsible management official and the individual making the request to discuss the request and assess available options. Examples of religious accommodations may include: scheduling changes (arrivals, departures, floating/optional holidays, flexible work breaks and any other scheduling changes); voluntary shift substitutions and/or swaps; job reassignments, such as changes of position tasks and lateral transfers; and modifications to workplace practices, policies and procedures. An accommodation may also involve designating an unused or private location in the workplace where a religious observance or practice can occur if it is disrupting other workers. The need for accommodations may also apply to such things as dress or grooming practices that an employee has for religious reasons. These might include, for example, wearing particular head coverings or other religious dress (such as a Jewish yarmulke or a Muslim headscarf), or wearing certain hairstyles or facial hair (such as Rastafarian dreadlocks or Sikh uncut hair and beard). It also includes an employee's observance of a religious prohibition against wearing certain garments (such as pants or miniskirts).

Religious Discrimination & Harassment

It is illegal to harass a person because of his or her religion.

Harassment can include, for example, offensive remarks about a person's religious beliefs or practices. Although the law does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).

The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the Department, such as a contractor.
Employee Best Practices

Employees who are the recipients of unwelcome religious conduct should inform the individual engaging in the conduct that they wish it to stop. If the conduct does not stop, employees should report it to their supervisor or other appropriate agency official in accordance with the procedures established in the Department's anti-harassment policy.

Employees who seek to proselytize in the workplace should cease doing so with respect to any individual who indicates that the communications are unwelcome.

Employees who are not comfortable confronting the individual in question should report the conduct to their supervisor or a member of management in their supervisory chain of command or, if necessary, the agency's EEO Manager or the Civil Rights Center.

Employees requiring an accommodation should advise their supervisors of the nature of the conflict between their religious needs and their work environment or duties. Employees should provide enough information to enable the employer to understand what accommodation is needed, and why it is necessitated by a religious practice or belief. Likewise, supervisors should follow-up with employees to request any relevant information before making a determination regarding an accommodation request.

Contact Information
If at any time you think that you have been subjected to discrimination and/or denied an accommodation based on religion, contact an EEO Counselor (or the Civil Rights Center) within forty-five (45) days of the alleged discriminatory event in order to preserve your right to file an EEO complaint.

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Religious Discrimination and Accommodation in the Federal Workplace

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits federal agencies from discriminating against employees or applicants for employment because of their religious beliefs in hiring, firing and other terms and conditions of employment.

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Interesting reflection on range of faiths that are/aren't accommodated

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Interesting reflection on range of faiths that are/aren't accommodated

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"But, when students observe faith-based traditions which don’t fall within these weeks when classes are off, they are faced with many more challenges.

"

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Harvard University is a microcosm of America and the world at large, and because of that, there is no doubt that the institution is one that is incredibly diverse. According to the College's admissions website, "students represent all fifty states and more than 100 countries," each of them bringing their own lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, and spiritual (or nonspiritual) beliefs with them to Cambridge. When engaging with the faith-related portion of the student body, the school takes a neutral, secularist stance, granting students the space to practice their own traditions without promoting any specific ones - at least not explicitly.

However, because Harvard still operates within the Christian framework it was founded upon, one faith implicitly does become prioritized over the rest. In order for it to truly be an equitable institution, it must let its false appeal to secularism go, and instead, actively work to give the full spectrum of spiritual identities that together form the undergraduate student body the same support.
Harvard and the Church
Harvard did not always aspire to maintain a neutral position when it came to religion. Today, the University is closely associated with its motto "Veritas," Latin for "truth." This is a tribute to the value of integrity and the pursuit of knowledge -- and a common sight on t-shirts, the gates into Harvard Yard, and even waffles in the dining halls, affectionately dubbed "veritaffles."

However, the school originally had a different mission and, in accordance with it, a different motto: "In Christi Gloriam," which translates to "For the glory of Christ" in Latin. When Harvard was first established, its goal was not to secularly train the next generation of leaders across the breadth of the arts and sciences, but rather to grant literacy to the next generation of Puritan ministers. A pamphlet published in 1642 titled "An Account of the Foundation of the Colleges at Cambridge in New England," details this pursuit: "... one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of Mr. John Harvard ..." All of this illustrates how the very core of Harvard University cannot be separated from the Church.

Much has changed over the years in terms of the institution's religious affiliations -- it currently officially has none -- yet there are still aspects of Harvard that are inextricably linked with its Christocentric history. One of the most stark examples of this is the structure of the school year itself. Thanksgiving Break exists for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving, a holiday established by Puritans and originally observed by praying to the Christian God. While Winter Break does not have a namesake with such explicit cultural or religious ties, its timing allows students who observe Christmas to visit their loved ones, attend Church, or participate in any other activities that might allow them to fully engage with the holiday. This is a wonderful thing because it gives many Christian students the leverage to express their religious identity. But, when students observe faith-based traditions which don't fall within these weeks when classes are off, they are faced with many more challenges.
Days of Observance
"It was very chaotic for me," said Maya Robinson, a first-year at the College, about her experience observing a multitude of holidays at the start of the fall term in an interview with the HPR. Robinson, who identifies as Jewish, cannot do school work on Saturdays, due to Shabbat, or on religious days of observance. This left her immersed in a scheduling conundrum, in a position where she had significantly less time to complete her assignments in addition to the responsibility of rearranging her assessments, sometimes yielding unideal outcomes. For example, Robinson's math midterm was originally supposed to be on Yom Kippur, a time which she describes as typically being "one of the most emotional days of the year." Even with accommodations taking this into account, she ultimately had to take the exam at 7:30 a.m. the next morning. These combined pressures posed a significant challenge to her during her very first semester of college.

The problem of assignments piling up is echoed by other students as well. "At this school, there's just, like, a lot of stuff being thrown at you," said Navin Durbhakula, a sophomore at the College and co-president of Dharma, the undergraduate Hindu Students' Association. "It's very easy to fall behind. So, because of that, I don't think a lot of students are able to fully experience the holidays, like as much as they would want to. Myself, personally, I know that's the case."

Harvard, in accordance with Massachusetts state law, does have an explicit absence policy for religious holidays, which states that "students shall be excused from class, review, or an exam due to their religious beliefs ..." and that they "... will be offered an opportunity to make up the work without penalty ..." Students have reported that many course faculty members they have engaged with have been cognizant and supportive of this.

Still, the policy requires students to take a significant amount of initiative themselves. For instance, they have to request accommodations as early as the very first week of classes or immediately following the release of an assignment date. An argument can be made that this pushes students to be responsible for their own education, preparing them for the independence that adulthood requires. On the other hand, if a student is uncomfortable confronting an instructor directly, if it's unfeasible for them to plan months in advance, or if they're unaware of the policy altogether, they could risk missing a tradition that matters deeply to them. And, extensions do not solve the problem of backlogged work; they only exacerbate it.

Is forcing already-busy students to self-navigate these murky logistical waters really the best Harvard can do? Because of the school's extraordinary diversity, it is impossible for the responsibility of alleviating this burden to be placed on course faculty instead; they can't know exactly how to prospectively design their courses to best support the spiritual identity of every student on campus. Still, if groups of students are facing a choice between their traditions and their academic pursuits when those who celebrate Christmas are not, an issue of inequity emerges. And that means there is work that can and should be done.
The Way Forward
To help lift some of these academic burdens that many students face, Harvard can begin with its absence policy, making it clearer and more accessible. In an interview with the HPR, Tova Kaplan, a first-year at the College, recalled feeling confused about how it applied to her classes and its relationships to the individual policies of her professors: "I would read my syllabuses, and it was kind of unclear ... certain classes would have stipulations, like you could have up to two excused absences. And I'm like, but yeah, is religion an excused absence? But if I'm taking off three excused absences, does that cross the line?"

She also described how many of her friends were unaware that the policy even existed. They would go to class instead of engaging with their religious traditions because they thought that they didn't have a choice. If the University directly communicated with students, telling them that the policy existed and was a tool they could use, in addition to providing a roadmap detailing how to use it, students would have more leverage to focus on their meaningful traditions rather than on scheduling.

While accommodations such as these are useful, they are still burdensome. They can be difficult to bring to a professor's attention or can result in a stress-inducing backlog of work. To avoid these problems all-together, Harvard could cancel classes on religious holidays celebrated by a large scale of the student body. This is not a perfect solution; the hard truth is that the volume of traditions will inevitably leave some excluded. Still, it's progress, with the potential to yield immensely positive outcomes when creating a more inclusive school culture.

When students have to actively ask to reschedule a test or push back a deadline, it sends a message that they do not fit into the norm of the class because of an aspect of their identity. But, if religious and spiritual traditions were automatically incorporated into the school schedule, it would be a signal to students that their community sees them, already recognizes and values their faith, and is making an active effort to support them. "Every effort should be made to accommodate people, and, you know, not just tolerate or accommodate, but celebrate traditions," said Kaplan. Policies such as these would help turn this vision of intentional inclusion and celebration rather than mere tolerance into a reality.

Inserting religious holidays into the school calendar is a feasible goal; other educational organizations are already doing so. Cambridge Public Schools canceled classes on Yom Kippur in October, and New York City Public Schools will be closing in acknowledgment of Eid al-Fitr this spring. Both are institutions that are similar to Harvard in that they are officially religiously unaffiliated. Still, these schools recognize they have to provide some systemic support if they want their students to have the freedom to practice their faiths. While many institutions similar to Harvard do not yet follow the example of elementary and secondary schools such as these, if Harvard itself chose to, as a leader in higher education, it could set a precedent for colleges and universities across America.

Implementing such a measure would not necessarily be easy. Alongside it comes trade-offs and questions with no simple answers: about which traditions to include, how they should be acknowledged, and where to possibly squeeze them into the school's already-packed semesters. But if it means that more students have the ability to engage with their traditions to the fullest, it should be given some thought and then a shot. And if it means more students feel seen, acknowledged, and embraced in their identities by the Harvard community of which they are a part, then it's worth it.

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A Note on Equity: Why Harvard Should Be Less Secular - Harvard Political Review

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In order for it to truly be an equitable institution, Harvard must let its false appeal to secularism go, and instead, actively work to give the full spectrum of spiritual identities that together form the undergraduate student body the same support.

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Examples of types of accommodations, excused absence policies

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Examples of types of accommodations, excused absence policies

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Language for timeline suggestion: "students should notify faculty with as much notice as possible"

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Language for timeline suggestion: "students should notify faculty with as much notice as possible"

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leaving it vague but clearly communicating students have the responsibility to notify faculty (or whatever process we choose)

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Establishing goals for religious accommodations for the honors classroom?

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Establishing goals for religious accommodations for the honors classroom?

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Maybe we could explicitly begin with that the goals of honors classrooms are to do something like: "the goal of this policy is to ensure students are accommodated in a way that most respects their dignity, including their privacy, confidentiality, comfort and autonomy."

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background of issue of religion and accommodation

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background of issue of religion and accommodation

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"It is a bedrock principle of the Constitution's First Amendment:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Tension between those government and individual principles has been especially acute in the past six decades, as judges have been asked to ensure, when protecting one side, that they do not go too far in violating the other. The Supreme Court has interpreted such laws be enforced in a manner that is neutral toward religion"

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Making it clear how the student can go about getting accommodations (i.e. emails and steps) is more disarming than statements about the professor determining if religious accommodation is allowed

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Found this language in the NIH Manager Religious Accommodations Toolkit

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Found this language in the NIH Manager Religious Accommodations Toolkit

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"Religious accommodations are not limited to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism."

thought it was good and hadn't seen it before -Leia

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Student & Campus Life | Cornell University

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Cornell is committed to supporting students who wish to practice their religious beliefs in keeping with its institutional values and compliance with New York State law. The nature and scope of accommodations will vary based on a variety of factors. Please browse the categories below to find answers to some common questions. If you need additional support or guidance, please feel free to contact the Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making via email.

Practical Considerations for Students

It is your responsibility as a student to communicate your religious/spiritual needs to faculty and staff. Here are some important factors to guide you in that process:

1. Communicate early with your professors. Academic and housing accommodations take time to make. For example, it is not reasonable to ask your professor to reschedule an exam the night before a major religious observance, especially those that are scheduled well in advance. It behooves students to anticipate their religious/spiritual needs early in the semester, leaving plenty of time for the professor and student to reach a reasonable accommodation.

2. Keep in mind that a reasonable accommodation may not be your preferred accommodation. Faculty must balance numerous factors in making accommodations, including their academic responsibilities outside the classroom, the availability of proctors, other important dates, etc.

3. If you have questions regarding how to work with a faculty or staff member, please contact the Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making (OSMM), home of Cornell United Religious Work (CURW). You may call the OSMM office at 607.255.6003. You may also contact the Office of the Dean of the Faculty by email or by phone at 607.255.4843.

COVID-related Religious Accommodations

For information about religious exemptions from Cornell's COVID-19 vaccine requirement, please visit the Cornell Health website. If you need spiritual support related to a vaccine exemption request, please feel free to reach out to any of the staff in the Office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making or our religious life affiliates in CURW.

Dietary Accommodations

Cornell Dining is proud to offer multiple options on campus for students who need religious dietary accommodations. If you will be fasting as part of your religious observance, please visit this excellent resource from Cornell Health with some tips for how you can integrate your spiritual and nutritional wellness.

104 West! is the Residential Dining Location on West Campus that offers both STAR-K meat and STAR-D dairy certified options. 104 West! also accommodates halal and Seventh-day Adventist diets. All kosher foods are prepared and packaged under the supervision of a Mashgiach. We also collaborate with an Imam for our halal program.

Morrison Dining Hall is the Residential Dining Location on North Campus that maintains kosher and halal dining stations. If you have specific questions about managing religious dietary requirements at Cornell Dining, please contact the Dining Staff.

Additional pre-packaged kosher options (prepared at 104West!) are available at:

Building and Housing Access

If you need religious accommodations for your on-campus housing, please contact the OSMM office at 607.255.6003. You may also contact the Office of Housing and Residential life to explore possibilities at 607.255.5368 or by email.

If you would like to request religious accommodations in order to access another building on campus, please contact the OSMM office at 607.255.6003 or email Collins Peters, Program Assistant for the office of Spirituality and Meaning-Making. Collins will work with you to get you in contact with the appropriate person on campus.

Sample Religious Observance Accommodations Email

Not sure how to approach your professor about requesting religious accommodations? Here is a sample email you might send:

Subject: Religious Accommodation for [Course Number]

Dear Professor [last name],

I am enrolled in your course [course number]. I identify as an observing [religious affiliation], and I am writing to request that you make accommodation for my religious observance this semester in accordance with the religious observances academic policy. On [enter date or dates] we will be observing [name of holiday]. This observance coincides with [name of assignment] that is listed on the syllabus.

I would like to work with you to explore how I can meet the requirements of your course while still honoring my religious practice. One option that I would propose is [enter request]. I would also be open to any other suggestions that you might have.

If it would be easier, I would be happy to talk with you about this further in person or by phone. Thank you in advance for accommodating my request.

Sincerely,

[Name, phone number optional]

Religious Observance Academic Policy

The university is committed to supporting students who wish to practice their religious beliefs.  Students are urged to discuss religious absences with their instructors well in advance of the religious holiday so that arrangements for making up work can be resolved before the absence.  Cornell's faculty are governed by the Faculty Handbook, which advises them as follows regarding how to accommodate student religious observance:

Religious Observance Accommodations
Instructional staff are required by New York State law to accommodate students when religious observance conflicts with exam-taking, class attendance, and other course-related requirements:

"3. It shall be the responsibility of the faculty and of the administrative officials of each institution of higher education to make available to each student who is absent from school, because of his or her religious beliefs, an equivalent opportunity to... make up any examination, study or work requirements which he or she may have missed because of such absence on any particular day or days. ...

"4. If... classes, examinations, study or work requirements are held on Friday after four o'clock post meridian or on Saturday, similar or makeup classes, examinations, study or work requirements... shall be made available on other days, where it is possible and practicable to do so...."

Cornell United Religious Work maintains a list of religious holidays. It is important to take these dates into consideration when designing a course syllabus. Many students are unaware that steps can be taken so that they can be committed to both their faith and their studies.  Some are aware but hesitant to seek an accommodation because they fear retribution once their faith is revealed. These realities make it all the more important to communicate accommodation mechanisms early in the term, preferably via a published syllabus. The sensitive handling of a religious-observance accommodation sends a positive message to the student because it reaffirms Cornell's commitment to diversity of thought.

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Cornell is committed to supporting students who wish to practice their religious beliefs in keeping with its institutional values and compliance with New York State law. The nature and scope of accommodations will vary based on a variety of factors. Please browse the categories below to find answers to some common questions.

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Disclaimer- ROA attendance policy flexible- let's have a conversation

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Disclaimer- ROA attendance policy flexible- let's have a conversation

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Having syllabi by professors due/sent out to students by a certain date prior to the first day of class so students have access to it either through email or Canvas and can focus on having the time for students to work on accommodation schedules--focusing on accessibility (also relevant to ODS and that it takes time for a plan to process)

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need to defend sincerity of religious practice/observance

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need to defend sincerity of religious practice/observance

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what is a religious accommodation?

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Professors clearly state how they approach handling ROA

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Professors clearly state how they approach handling ROA

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Combination of necessary legal language with personalized/human communication between faculty and student?

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Combination of necessary legal language with personalized/human communication between faculty and student?

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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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Prospective students and their parents can find a wide range of useful information online about colleges and universities to help them decide which institutions might be the best fit. But there's no go-to resource to assess how welcoming a college is to students from various religious backgrounds.

That's about to change. A group of researchers at Ohio State University and North Carolina State University has crafted a tool called the Interfaith, Spiritual, Religious, and Secular Campus Climate Index, or INSPIRES, which scores higher ed institutions on their levels of religious diversity and inclusion.

Officials at 185 public, private and religiously affiliated institutions filled out extensive surveys about faith-related resources on campus, religious accommodation policies and more. Researchers analyzed the answers and scored institutions based on seven criteria, including religious accommodations, efforts to reduce bias and extracurricular and academic engagement. Campus leaders are set to receive reports of the results and personalized recommendations from researchers early next month. The institutions can then choose whether to make the information public as a resource for students and parents, in which case it'll appear on the index website, or to keep the scores private and use them as an opportunity for introspection.

"Our goal is to help campuses become more welcoming, but ultimately this endeavor is meant to serve students and support their thriving in college," Alyssa Rockenbach, Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor and a professor of higher education at North Carolina State, said in an email.

Matthew Mayhew, the William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Professor of Educational Administration at Ohio State, said to "embrace the whole student," instructors and administrators need a firm understanding of how well their campuses serve students of different belief systems, but, until now, they didn't have a practical tool to gauge this.

"It feels so good to pour our energy into something that's going to actually be used," he said. "We're not going to publish things in these empirical, obscure journals that nobody reads. This is something that we really feel is going to improve the lives of the people we intend to use it."

Cody Nielsen, director of the Center for Spirituality and Social Justice at Dickinson College, called the index "revolutionary." He also is the founder and executive director of Convergence Strategies, which seeks to improve campus climate on religion.

He noted that campuses might have programming related to interfaith dialogue, but many college leaders don't interrogate how their policies and practices affect students from various faith backgrounds. He believes the "core issues of civil rights" related to students' religious identities too often go unaddressed, and the index enables institutions to hold themselves accountable.

"We are not taking the religious, secular and spiritual identities of our students seriously on college campuses nationwide," he said. "This index, if it's done well and if its outcomes are shown well, it has the ability to make that a conversation that is no longer deniable."

The index criteria are based on findings from the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, or the IDEALS survey, launched by Rockenbach, Mayhew and Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit focused on fostering interfaith cooperation. The five-year project examined how students interacted with those of other belief systems and what made students of different faith backgrounds, or no faith, feel more or less at home on campuses.

A $220,469 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations-which funds projects that "advance religious, charitable, scientific, literary and educational purposes"-made the assessment process free for colleges that chose to participate, and the project has secured funding for two more years. Researchers are recruiting a new cohort of about 100 institutions to take the survey this fall.

Musbah Shaheen, a graduate research associate at Ohio State who worked on the project, said the researchers hope to have an ongoing dialogue with institutions that plan to publicize their scores on the index criteria, and those that choose to keep their scores private, and coach them on best practices.

"This is not intended to be a one-and-done assessment," he said. "It is intended to be the beginning of a conversation within the institution as well as between us as experts in this area and the institutions as stakeholders who have demonstrated that they are interested in becoming more welcoming and interested in understanding what they're doing on their campuses."

Shaheen noted that many institutions lack the basic infrastructure students need to observe their faiths, such as kosher and halal meal options, dining hall hours that work for students who are fasting from sunrise to sunset for Ramadan, and convenient prayer spaces open during ritual prayer times.

The researchers listed all kinds of details campus administrators sometimes overlook, such as whether a campus's accommodation policies for religious holidays appear on course syllabi, what kinds of religious iconography are in designated prayer rooms, whether faculty members undergo religious diversity training or whether campus events take place in religious spaces like chapels, a potential source of discomfort for atheist students.

Gordon Maples, a graduate research associate at North Carolina State who also worked on the project, said he hopes the index can not only be a resource for campus leaders, who often don't want to touch religious topics "with a ten-foot pole," but also for state policy makers. He noted that only about 11 states have laws that require campuses to have religious accommodation policies, and he'd like to see the index encourage state lawmakers and college administrators to develop more and better policies of this kind.

Katie Baxter, vice president of program strategy at Interfaith Youth Core, said when campuses prioritize religious diversity and inclusion, it can have a nationwide ripple effect.

"Campuses model priorities for the rest of society," she said. "We often think about campuses as mini civil societies ... that influence the communities in which they sit. Often what higher education says is important, the rest of society will follow suit."

She also described campuses as the "perfect practice arena" for students to learn how to live in pluralistic environments and bridge differences, which "strengthens our religiously diverse democracy."

"College campuses are places where people practice living their values and commitments and practice doing that in public and in diverse communities where not everyone shares those values and commitments," she said.

Mayhew said college leaders are reluctant to include religion in discussions about diversity and inclusion on campuses, in part because of a fear of "dancing on that delicate line of separation of church and state." They also don't want to seem to be encouraging or discouraging any particular beliefs or practices.

Mayhew said religious accommodations-or a lack thereof-can affect student outcomes.

"We've got to stop pretending that religious identification is not a part of the student experience," he said. "It is a major part of the student experience."

When students feel a sense of belonging on campuses, "it's a major driver for them to persist through college," Mayhew said. "We can try to pretend like it's not there ... or we can start inviting the conversations in to enrich dialogue."

Nielsen, of the Center for Spirituality and Social Justice at Dickinson, hopes the index will lead to further research on how things like kosher or halal food options affect the enrollment, retention and overall satisfaction of students who benefit from these offerings.

Even if they haven't in the past, Rockenbach believes college leaders are starting to pay more attention to religious inclusion on campuses and are becoming more open to the kinds of issues the index addresses.

"I think higher education leaders have become increasingly attentive to the ways in which identities are multifaceted and intersectional," she said. "If we say we care about holistic student development, then we have to think about all the ways in which race, culture, class, gender identity, sexuality, ability, religion, secularity and spirituality come together in a person's life and also shape experiences with power, privilege and marginalization in education and society."

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New tool scores campuses on religious diversity

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Prospective students and their parents can find a wide range of useful information online about colleges and universities to help them decide which institutions might be the best fit. But there's no go-to resource to assess how welcoming a college is to students from various religious backgrounds. That's about to change.

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I think the third options is really interesting and could be a good policy
-Leia

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Inspires Index: Diversity and Accommodations

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Inspires Index: Diversity and Accommodations

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https://inspiresindex.org/

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Inspires Index - Interfaith, Spiritual, Religious, and Secular Campus Climate Index: INSPIRES

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The Interfaith, Spiritual, Religious, and Secular Campus Climate Index, or INSPIRES Index, is an assessment tool that measures, evaluates, and represents an institution's efforts towards, and commitment to, establishing a welcoming climate for students of different worldview identities.

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How to present recommendations in a winsome way?

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How to present recommendations in a winsome way?

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I want to make sure that however we decide to best facilitate these recommendations, we do so in a way that puts both faculty and student on the same side. It would be great to make sure students and faculty don't see one another as opposing one another.

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Google around long enough, and the teaching of college students can seem like an exercise in avoiding a tripwire.

Last year, Hamline University did not renew an art-history lecturer's contract after a student complained that the instructor had shown depictions of the Prophet Muhammad during an online class. Knowing such images are offensive to many Muslims, the lecturer tried to offer content warnings, but university leaders still criticized her handling of the incident. Respect for the religious students in the classroom "should have superseded academic freedom," they said soon after the class. (Hamline leaders later walked back some of their comments.)

The year before, a professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's School of Music, Theater, and Dance showed a 1965 film version of Othello, which stars Laurence Olivier in blackface makeup. Students objected to the film and to the professor's subsequent apology for showing it. After discussion with the dean, the professor stepped down from teaching the class.

And in 2020, a professor of clinical business communication at the University of Southern California was removed from the classroom for teaching a word in Mandarin that can sound like a racist slur. A group of students accused the professor of "negligence and disregard."

Similar episodes dominate higher-ed headlines, especially in right-wing outlets quick to indict "woke" students. Yet conservative students can also be quick to report on their professors, encouraged in part by websites such as Campus Reform and Turning Point USA's Professor Watchlist, which generate content by surveilling professors' classrooms and social-media posts.

It would appear that professors must cower in fear of offending students - on the left and the right - who are itching to shut them down. But that version of higher ed is a caricature. What's really happening is more complicated, and so are professors' feelings about it.

Over the past several decades, and accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the student-professor power dynamic has undergone a sea change.

Traditionally, faculty members have been viewed as the rulers of the classroom. They decide what gets taught and how. That could mean expecting students to tackle tough assignments on tight deadlines and to wrestle with ideas and information that upsets them. The underlying assumption is that students defer to the professor's judgment (or, as some view it, the professor's dominance).

But for a confluence of reasons, student attitudes have shifted. For one, what's considered appropriate for a college professor to say and do in the classroom has changed dramatically, especially around topics of race, gender, and other forms of identity. For another, student deference to their teachers is not nearly as strong as it once was.

Students can be quick to judge a pedagogical choice as harmful, offensive, or superfluous to their education, say some professors, who question if their colleges, which they describe as having adopted a "customer is always right" philosophy, will have their backs if and when the customer is wrong.

In some circumstances, the choices or behavior criticized by students would have been "regarded as benign not very long ago," said Angus Johnston, a historian of American student-activism who teaches at Hostos Community College of the City University of New York.

While this power shift can be "discombobulating" and "scary" for faculty members, especially older ones, he said, "that does not mean it's a bad development."

Who has the right to claim offense? It's a question Cass Sever often thinks about.

The visiting instructor in sociology at Mount Holyoke College studies what she calls "harm claims," specifically unfalsifiable ones, like personal experiences of psychic harm or emotional violence. In that field, "we get into all these questions about authority - of who has the right to make the claim and then who has the right to judge whether or not something was truly traumatic," Sever said.

It's a complicated knot that she's had to untangle in her own classroom. Her students, by and large, are "very much harm-claimers," she said. One student got upset with Sever when she taught The Philadelphia Negro, a foundational sociological study by W.E.B. Du Bois. The student told Sever that she had been "tuned out" during class until she heard the word "Negro." It distressed her that Sever, who is white, would say that word. The student reported her concern to an administrator before broaching it with Sever.

Sever remembers feeling both bewildered and anxious. "A claim could be made against you at any time without the student even looking to understand the context, and you might not even know that there's any issue at all before they report it," she told The Chronicle in an email. "Terrible for anyone to imagine, let alone visiting faculty whose contracts often involve a clause stating that the institution can dissolve them at any time."

The complaint did not result in any action against Sever. She brought it up in the next class meeting and posed a larger question: If we want to engage with this scholarship, especially because it's the work of a historical Black scholar, what should we do? What would it mean to avoid certain works altogether? "The student really had to think and realize that they themselves didn't quite know," Sever said. "That was a pretty big learning moment."

Professors concerned about the power shift fear that, by not wanting to engage with certain texts and ideas, students close themselves off to swaths of knowledge, thwarting the basic function of education.

An assistant professor of Islamic studies at a liberal-arts college - who asked to go unnamed because she's not tenured and fears speaking on the record about these issues - teaches a unit on same-sex desire in Islam. When she discusses the work of Michel Foucault, because many of the writers on the syllabus engage with him, her students' first reaction is often to ask, why bother with "yet another white European man?"

The professor explains the French philosopher's important role in shaping the discourse around the concept of homosexuality. The other authors engage with him because of his centrality, and sometimes disagree with him. "This is how academia works," the assistant professor said. "But it seems that there is this lack of understanding" from students "of what we are doing in academia and how we engage with the world. And they don't want to engage with it like we used to."

Conflicts often arise when a professor plays devil's advocate in the classroom, or tries to poke holes in the students' reasoning, said Samantha Harris, a free-speech and due-process lawyer at Allen Harris PLLC, who frequently represents professors accused of wrongdoing. From Harris's perspective, it doesn't take more than a student complaint to initiate an inquiry at most colleges, even if what the student is complaining about is, in Harris's view, protected by academic freedom. Professors who do undergo such investigations often feel like their careers are on the line and that there's little structure to the investigation process.

She speaks with instructors, both through her work and in social settings, who are "just terrified to teach."

In some ways, the disconnect between professors and students is not a new story. Professors "are old," said the Islamic-studies professor. Students are "young, so they think that we don't understand anything." But she worries about a "hostility against expertise" from students.

"I do not understand them," she said, laughing. "And I was a student until very, very recently."

Non-tenure-track faculty members, in particular, describe tiptoeing around hot-button topics because their employment is more dependent on student opinion than is that of professors on the tenure track, and they're wary of generating outrage. And of course, the share of those contingent faculty members is growing.

"We get cases all the time from adjunct faculty," said Alex Morey, director of campus-rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, "who say, 'I said something in class. Someone reported me for it. And then lo and behold, even though I've been told verbally that I was going to teach next semester ... that new contract just didn't materialize.'"

A lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley told The Chronicle he has complicated feelings about the climate for teaching difficult issues on campus. (He asked to remain anonymous because he feared the consequences of discussing a contentious topic.) On the one hand, he wants his students to feel included in the classroom, and he's open to discussing when they think he's fallen short. But right now, he says, "there's not a healthy space to figure that stuff out" because political tensions are so high.

Ultimately, at the "neoliberal, service-oriented" university, "we gotta keep the customer happy to keep those checks coming, and that undermines the ability to have a real conversation about education."

The climate for teaching in red states can feel particularly treacherous, as Republican lawmakers pass bills restricting how certain topics related to race and gender can be discussed on campus. In Florida, a 2021 law allows students to record their professors' lectures for the purpose of lodging a complaint with the college or to collect evidence for a lawsuit.

Any student could quickly tweet an out-of-context quote or picture of a slide deck. Johnston, the CUNY-Hostos student-activism historian, said that when he was an undergraduate, students also occasionally found something a professor said in the classroom "scandalous." But no one beyond campus ever heard about it. "There is this fear right now that if you do something and it gets into the student paper, it is going to be in The New York Times three days after that," Johnston said. (In Johnston's view, most campus controversies fizzle out well before then.)

Other professors say it's also their standards and policies, not just the content of their courses, to which students object.

Around 2018 and 2019, as a clinical assistant professor of public relations at New York University, Kerry O'Grady noticed a shift in how graduate students in the School of Professional Studies viewed their education. They began to see their schooling as "more of a transaction than a transfer" of learning, she said. She noticed more resistance than ever before on grades and on what was being taught and its relevance. Also, student evaluations were becoming "supernegative" and not constructive.

"I had to justify why more. Students were dropping my class more frequently. They wanted the easier instructor. ... It was just so disheartening because my mentality - and I think it's even more exasperated now - is, I was hired as an expert in this field of study to teach other people, and I should know how to do it best." Yet students are "challenging my authority in the classroom and making me feel like I'm the impostor."

O'Grady became the faculty director for the master's in public relations and corporate communications program at Georgetown's School of Continuing Studies in January 2020, two months before Covid-19 turned higher ed on its head, creating an environment, she says, where "the customer was more right than ever, just to maintain enrollment."

Today, she said, for many students in the program, if they do not see the immediate value of what their professors are telling them they need to learn, "it's automatically a dissent." (She recently announced she's leaving her role at the end of the semester.)

Students today enter college with a stronger sense of their own identities and the authority those convey to speak on matters that concern them, said several people interviewed for this article. When their views are challenged by someone without that standing, they're more likely to push back.

They are also more aware that institutions rely on students' dollars to stay afloat. As the cost of college has steadily risen, requiring many students to take on burdensome loans, it makes sense for them to scrutinize the return on their investment.

An associate professor of sociology at a public university in Virginia, who asked to speak anonymously because of the political environment around higher ed in her state, said that she teaches many first-generation and Pell-eligible students, for whom a college degree is the key to upward mobility.

"They're very aware of what they're here for. They're here to get a credential. They're here to check a box," she said. They view her "as a link in that chain."

Put more bluntly by Jo Wolf, an adjunct instructor who teaches in the departments of religion and culture, and of history, at Virginia Tech: "Students already see the university as a scam. They pay too much money and they get too little." The pandemic only accelerated that disenchantment. "The university was basically incompetent, which was revealed in the switch to online. Post that, they're just done," Wolf said. Students are getting a degree "because they have to." But to them, their education "just feels hollow and empty and fake."

Students also feel more comfortable seeking support and accommodation from their institutions. Colleges are seeing record numbers of students who screen positive for some form of anxiety or depression. They're more open to discussing those needs with their professors and advocating - or occasionally demanding - that they be met.

But how much to accommodate students is not an easy question to answer. Professors who want to be flexible and compassionate still want to ensure students are actually learning. Andrew Smyth, who chairs the English department at Southern Connecticut State University, said the department's attendance policy has become a sticking point.

"We do have a difficulty with students who miss a significant chunk of class and then say, 'I should be allowed to make up the work,' as they probably did during high school in the last few years," Smyth said. Explaining to first-year students who've missed, say, eight or nine classes in a semester that the issue is not only their not submitting work, but their missing a lot of learning time in the classroom, can be "difficult."

Some critics of the new student-professor power dynamic think university administrators have enabled it by acquiescing to student demands. When controversies arise, they say institutions make decisions from a defensive crouch, lest they risk bad publicity or a drop in enrollment. "They're businesses," said Sever, the Mount Holyoke College instructor. Of course they don't want to be accused of permitting harmful behavior.

In the Hamline controversy, concerns about potential harm to students trumped other considerations. When the art-history lecturer's contract was not renewed after she showed depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, Hamline's associate vice president for inclusive excellence made plain why: Because of "this incident, it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community," he told the student news outlet.

The outcry was intense. A staff member at PEN America "one of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory." If professors cannot even show works of devotional art, a whole slew of things becomes totally off limits, said Audrey Truschke, an associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University. Hindu art, for example, often contains swastikas - an image that isn't offensive to Hindus but is potentially deeply offensive to Jewish people and to anyone who associates the swastika with a deadly campaign of racial hatred, Truschke said.

But is what happened at Hamline broadly indicative of what's happening at other campuses?

Johnston, the scholar of student-activism, does not think so. While many professors are intensely afraid that any student objection to what they say in class could get them fired, that's exceedingly rare, he said, especially for tenured professors. FIRE collects a database of what it calls "targeting incidents," which it defines as "a campus controversy involving efforts to investigate, penalize, or otherwise professionally sanction a scholar for engaging in constitutionally protected forms of speech." In the 2021 calendar year, 111 such incidents, resulting in 14 terminations.

Johnston understands and sympathizes with older tenured faculty members who feel like the classroom dynamic they've enjoyed over decades of teaching has been flipped on its head. "You felt like all of your students loved you ... and then suddenly students are like, 'Why are you teaching this racist novel?' That's going to make you feel weird. That's going to be unpleasant. I don't want to say that the kinds of sadness and anger that faculty are feeling under those kinds of circumstances should be entirely dismissed."

But, he said, there is "a very powerful impulse" among tenured faculty "to take a bunch of different kinds of anxieties and boil them down to, 'If I say the wrong thing in the classroom, I will be fired.'"

Some professors who spoke to The Chronicle do not see their students as particularly fragile or unwilling to engage in difficult conversations, including Truschke, who said she disagrees with the stereotype that Gen Z takes offense at everything.

Jennifer Ruth said her students just have new expectations of the curriculum and of the instructors who teach it. Ruth is a professor in the School of Film at Portland State University, who co-wrote It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (2022) and has written several times for The Chronicle. She recently taught the film Germany Year Zero, a neorealist movie from 1948. She hadn't watched it in a while and forgot how troubling it is to view. People hack a dead horse for flesh to eat, and a young boy dies by suicide after - it's strongly implied - being sexually abused. She wished she'd given a content warning. Her students brought up that absence of warning, and Ruth apologized. "Then they were like, 'OK.'" It was no big deal.

And, Ruth said, there are at least a few professors "who should be held to account, who aren't."

Many believe that Amy Wax, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has reportedly claimed that Black people on average have "lower cognitive ability than whites" - and been accused by her dean of making, both in the classroom and outside of it, a litany of other racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic statements - should no longer be teaching. A Haitian American graduate is suing Utah State University, saying it refused to take meaningful action against a professor he says disparaged his background and drew a racist caricature of him, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

To Wolf, the Virginia Tech instructor, students now are rightly more demanding of respect, and value themselves in a way that she and her cohort didn't when they were undergraduates. Some of her colleagues, she said, control their classrooms from a position of distrust of students, and of discipline, which does not get them very far. "You don't treat students as if they are things that need to be controlled and molded and punished," she said. "You treat students as humans."

Forty years ago, said Franklin A. Tuitt, vice president and chief diversity officer at the University of Connecticut, students accepted certain classroom behaviors from professors because "we didn't think we had a choice."

Several professors also told The Chronicle that many of their students, contrary to being quick to challenge their authority, are anxious about speaking up in the classroom at all. Smyth, of Southern Connecticut State University, said in his experience first-year students, especially, have higher anxiety about being wrong. Other professors tell him they have to spend a lot of their class time providing reassurance, telling students they can speak freely.

A recent national survey released by Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit that promotes a diversity of views at colleges, found that just under 60 percent of students who responded said they were reluctant to discuss at least one of five controversial topics: gender, politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation. Those students also reported being wary of their peers' reaction much more than their professor's.

Scholars also say that professors are still ultimately the ones in charge. Timothy J. Shaffer, a professor of civil discourse at the University of Delaware, acknowledges that reality on the first day of class. "For as much as I, personally, want to be democratic, and that's ... how I want to teach, at the end of the day, I still have all the power, right?" He's the person assigning grades or giving out deadline extensions.

It's worth noting how one student who objected to the University of Michigan professor's showing of Olivier's Othello explained his and his peers' decision not to discuss the matter directly with the instructor: In a post on Medium, he said they couldn't have discussed their feelings with him because "he's had tenure since before my classmates and I learned to read."

A student at George Washington University echoed that view of faculty power. A lot of professors probably feel like their students are "woker than woke, whatever 'woke' may mean to them," said Jordan Harzynski, a senior. But he finds it "baffling" that some professors can say, "We're going to teach you the same things we've been teaching for 40 years because we've got tenure and we're not going to get fired." He thinks the tenure system has "disempowered students," because those professors aren't being held accountable for providing an innovative education. For example, many GWU professors, in Harzynski's experience, will not allow students to take notes on laptops or tablets during class.

"How can we go into a 21st-century economy when we can't even use 21st-century tools in a classroom that's supposed to teach us those 21st-century means of getting to these 21st-century jobs?"

Some faculty members and higher-education experts emphasized that reconsidering your teaching, your course policies, and your content in light of who is in the room is essential to the job. That's what it means to be a good professor, said the associate professor of sociology at the public college in Virginia. "You're teaching to the students you have, not the students you wish you had, or the students you had 10 years ago."

She used to refer to the book Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, by C.J. Pascoe, and occasionally assign short excerpts from it. But in recent years she's moved away from it. "I'm not putting the title of that book on a slide. ... Is it because I'm quote-unquote afraid? Not really. I just think that for better or for worse, there's a certain segment of students who would see that word and not be able to get past it."

Her students, she said, are young and "figuring it all out. And my job is to be as supportive as possible. If that means that I'm going to avoid using five words - OK. That costs me very little."

Maziar Behrooz, an associate professor of history at San Francisco State University, does not yet know what a teaching decision he made might cost him.

In the fall of 2022, Behrooz was teaching the history of the Islamic world between 500 and 1700 and showed a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad. He's taught the course, and the image, for years. One student, a devout Muslim, strongly objected, outside of class. His main point, Behrooz told The Chronicle, was that it's not permissible for an image of the Prophet Muhammad to be shown in any shape or form.

"This is the first time that this has happened," Behrooz said. "I was not prepared for somebody to be offended, in a secular university, talking about history rather than religion."

Behrooz said he told the student that, as the professor, he is the one who decides what's shown in class. The student then complained to Behrooz's department chair, who broached the issue with the professor, according to Behrooz. He said he explained to his chair that the student's view is not uniform among all Muslims. The type of drawing he shows in class can be bought at markets in Tehran near holy shrines. Many Shiite Muslims have such drawings on walls in their homes, said Behrooz, who was born in Tehran and has written books on Iran's political history.

The student also apparently complained to "authorities higher up" at the university, according to Behrooz. The professor said the institution's office of Equity Programs & Compliance informed him in March that it would investigate the incident and asked him to attend a Zoom meeting.

A staff member in the vice president's office at San Francisco State told The Chronicle in an email that she could not comment on specific reports or investigations. She instead described the process for assessing reports of potential misconduct. An investigator meets with the complainant to gather information and discuss options, she said. If it's decided the conduct could violate the California State University nondiscrimination policy, an investigation begins, and both parties are notified.

The Zoom meeting is slated for early April. Behrooz said he's not overly worried, though he thinks an investigation by this office - which fields reports of harassment and discrimination - is unnecessary. He's not sure what the inquiry portends. "How it goes from here is anybody's guess," he said.

In the meantime, Behrooz is thinking through what, if anything, he should change about his teaching. As a principle, he said he doesn't think religious groups, or students, should decide how an instructor teaches a course at a secular institution. "But one has to also take into consideration, I think, the sensitivities of some religious people, be it Muslim or otherwise."

Should he talk about the drawing without showing it? Should he still show it, as he's done for years? Or, should he offer a compromise - warn students that the image is offensive to some and perhaps allow them to leave the class and come back?

He hasn't decided, but he's considering the compromise.

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The Student-Professor Power Dynamic Has Shifted

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Google around long enough, and the teaching of college students can seem like an exercise in avoiding a tripwire. Last year, Hamline University did not renew an art-history lecturer's contract after a student complained that the instructor had shown depictions of the Prophet Muhammad during an online class.

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The University of Chicago's Policy on Religious Accommodation for Missed Classes, Assignments, and Exams requires accommodations for students who must miss class, assignments, or exams in observance of religious holidays. Here are ideas for you to consider for accommodating students:

When creating your syllabus, try to avoid assigning presentations and scheduling exams on major religious or cultural holidays. A list of holidays to assist in planning can be found here.

You can make students aware of the University of Chicago's religious accommodation policy either on your syllabus or verbally. Please suggest that they meet with you in office hours to let you know if there are any conflicts. There are certain holidays, like Eid, which are dependent on sightings of the moon; however, in this instance, students should be able to provide a potential range of days. Do not announce to the class why accommodation is being sought.

Examples of religious accommodations include: rescheduling an exam or giving a make-up exam; altering the time of a student's presentation; allowing make-up assignments to substitute for missed class work or arranging for an increased flexibility in assignment due dates. Make-up work should be appropriate and not more difficult than the original assignment.

Make sure students understand that they are responsible for getting any notes or information that was missed as a result of observing a religious holiday.

Accommodations should never fundamentally alter an essential requirement of the course or academic program.

Retaliation against students requesting a religious accommodation or participating in a religious accommodation is prohibited.

Fasting is generally not considered a religious moment that requires accommodation, however, it can be helpful to accommodate the fasting schedule (e.g. avoid scheduling a study session at the time when the Ramadan fast is broken: at sunset).

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Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning

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The University of Chicago's Policy on Religious Accommodation for Missed Classes, Assignments, and Exams requires accommodations for students who must miss class, assignments, or exams in observance of religious holidays. Here are ideas for you to consider for accommodating students: When creating your syllabus, try to avoid assigning presentations and scheduling exams on major religious or cultural holidays.

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Article-Creating a Faith-Friendly School Culture in Religiously Plural Communities: A neglected facet of diversity

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Article-Creating a Faith-Friendly School Culture in Religiously Plural Communities: A neglected facet of diversity

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Article- Privilege as Policy? An analysis of student religious accommodation policies in higher education

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Article- Privilege as Policy? An analysis of student religious accommodation policies in higher education