The Professor Who Wore a Hijab in Solidarity

When Hawkins began teaching politics at Wheaton College in 2007, she wanted to be known as a professor who challenged her students’ preconceptions. Her classes included “Race and the Politics of Welfare” and “Race and the Obama Presidency.” She talked about how Obama had to appear to “transcend” race in order to get elected, about why he spoke differently to black and white audiences, about how polling data suggested that he would have won by an even larger margin were he white. At the end of her upper-level classes, she would cook a big meal at her apartment, and students presented their final research over dessert. She found her students to be smart and engaged, and she was pleasantly surprised by their open-mindedness and the diversity of their views. “It was like any other amazing liberal-arts institution,” she said. “It just happened to be an evangelical Christian context.”