📧 “posters” to Hall (ignored)

Dr. Hall, 

Dr. Hauerwas said you had some concerns about the flyers that went up around DDS last Friday. If you have any information about who took several of them down, I hope you will share it. Getting transparency in this would likely dispel the appearance of their removal being based on bias against military friendly and intellectually rigorous academic material. 

If you elaborate your concerns, perhaps we can come to some kind of reasonable compromise. It is my understanding that the PoliSci course meets at a different time than the war course that you're giving and that the focus and material is quite different (I am focusing much more on military service and individual experience, not a meta-level exploration of war as a phenomenon). 

20161104 @ 0921

Dr Hall, 

I hope we can reach an agreement and that we can continue to work together. I noticed your syllabus is on your website, and it does not cover similar ground as my course intends to. I have attached the course proposal so you can see it, but my syllabus isn't as finalized as I'd like. You'll see that not only are the courses offered at different times (so students could actually take both courses if they desired) through different departments, they ask fundamentally different questions. Mine does not cover the Christian tradition much at all, with the exception of Aquinas very briefly. I also was/am interested in TAing for you precisely because I see no real competition between our respective courses. 

To the question of the flyers, I am trying to find out who took them down and why I wasn't contacted if there was a perceived conflict. You'll see from the proposal that the Office of Institutional Equity has been involved in this course, and other departments have also been very invested in creating the kinds of conversations this course anticipates. Taking flyers down, in this context, begins to look like stifling academic freedom and intellectual rigor, and I need to act quickly in order to keep the appearance that this course has come under some kind of attack from gaining any traction. I hope you'll help me do that, but I have only a few days before I will be off the grid and I need something to say to quell the rumor mill before long. If I don't have anything to go on by Monday morning, I will have to escalate this matter to the dean, who is named as the party "responsible for consistent and effective implementation of" the university's affirmative action plan at the Div School.