The storm called "spousal accommodation," which hit the University of Montana last month, has been quelled by UM Provost Royce Engstrom.
Following university policy on the matter, Engstrom said no to creating an unplanned, unadvertised, tenure-track position for Scott Lucas, an Islamic scholar and the husband of a history department faculty candidate.
"Any spousal accommodation should really be a win-win situation," Engstrom explained.
"Both the original candidate and the spouse should provide new expertise and be a great fit for the programs involved," he said. "The programs that considered spousal accommodation in this case communicated back that this was not a good fit."
Helping to guide his decision was both the liberal studies program and the history department, each of which voted on whether to make room for Lucas. The outcome of both faculty votes, he said, "did not rise to the level of enthusiasm I felt I needed to see to create a new position."
Because UM would not create a position for Lucas, who teaches Islam and the Quran at the University of Arizona, his wife, Maha Nassar, turned down the tenure-track job offer from the history department.
The decisions conclude a controversy that began last fall when UM's history department conducted a nationwide search for a professor of Middle East history and offered its tenure-track opening to Nassar, an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona.
Nassar said she would take the job if UM could also provide a tenure-track position for her husband. In accordance with UM's new, untested spousal accommodation policy, UM administrators sought to find Lucas a position in the liberal studies program, and brought Lucas to campus for an official visit and interview on Jan. 3, unbeknownst to many history and liberal studies faculty.
A few faculty members learned of the visit at the end of December and became outraged at what they thought was an intentionally hurried hiring process, conducted at a time when most of campus was on a six-week winter break and could not be part of the candidate's vetting.
Several faculty members, including liberal studies professor Ruth Vanita and anthropology professor G.G. Weix, took their concerns to UM President George Dennison and to Provost Engstrom.
Some faculty members wondered where the funding would come from to pay for an unplanned tenure-track position in the cash-strapped College of Arts and Sciences. Others, like Weix, said hiring another expert in Islam would duplicate specialities on campus at a time when other departments have critical hiring needs.
Members of Outfield Alliance, a consortium of lesbian and gay faculty, worried the brief interview process wasn't ample time to make an informed decision about Lucas, who according to his resume, is a convert to Islam, the University of Arizona faculty adviser for the Muslim Students Association, and gives public outreach lectures at the Islamic Center of Tucson, which in the past has been connected to al-Qaida.
Casey Charles, English department chairman, said the surprise one-day visit didn't provide sufficient time for the campus community to question Lucas about his pedagogy and beliefs.
After reading Lucas' published scholarly work, Ruth Vanita wrote a letter to Gerald Fetz, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and said she was disturbed by Lucas' conservative views.
"There are a very large number of Muslims, both in and out of the worldwide academy, as well as Muslim states, that do not support wearing of the veil or gender segregation on occasions such as weddings, and that sternly oppose extreme punishments," Vanita wrote. "Therefore, Lucas' support for the veil and lack of unequivocal opposition of extreme punishments indicates to me that he is not a liberal Muslim but rather one who supports fairly orthodox readings of the sharia. A program like Liberal Studies, which is a humanities program, defining ‘humanities' as it has evolved in the West, is not a suitable program for him."
Diane Sands, a longtime women's rights activist and Missoula legislator, heard from Weix about the seemingly secretive and fast-tracked hiring process surrounding Lucas and sent an e-mail to dozens of her contacts stating her own concerns.
Lucas, she wrote, "apparently strongly espouses the most extreme of sharia law. Concern centers on the impact he will have on the campus and community here."
Sands then urged everyone on the listserve to attend Lucas' presentations, and stated: "This process should follow the usual university procedures for hiring faculty and not be rushed without full opportunity to have these concerns addressed. Jan. 3, when the university is not in session and few people are here or paying attention does not seem appropriate."
Although Lucas would not agree to a Missoulian interview during his UM visit in January, he expressed in one of his campus presentations that he would like to see Islamic law move in a more egalitarian direction and supports those efforts.
Earlier this week, Nassar did not respond to the Missoulian's request for an interview, and Lucas, when contacted by telephone, refused to talk with the Missoulian.
In e-mails to UM's student newspaper, the Kaimin, Lucas expressed frustration and resented the campus and community e-mails that were sent out before his arrival, which he said "branded me a Muslim extremist and insinuated that I was a terrorist due to my relationship with the Islamic Center of Tucson. ... I am proud to be a member of this law-abiding nonprofit organization that serves the basic needs of our Muslim community."
Nassar said she turned down the job offer because she didn't feel comfortable living in what she believed to be an anti-Muslim community.
In her Kaimin exchange, Nassar wrote: "The strong anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by some members of the Missoula community made the thought of living alone as a Muslim in Missoula untenable.
"I was also disappointed that the administration did not speak out publicly against these anti-Muslim sentiments."
Richard Drake, history department chairman, concurred with Nassar's sentiments, and said he was appalled by the anti-Muslim letter-writing campaign that went on shortly before Lucas' campus visit on Jan. 3.
"I thought the e-mail messages sabotaging his interview before he got here were highly unprofessional and not worthy of a great academic institution," Drake said. "Spousal accommodation hires are always compressed, and there was nothing unusual in the procedures in Scott Lucas' case.
"But this is a unique case - and it's not about spousal accommodation. That's just a smokescreen: What's at stake here is anti-Muslim sentiment."
Weix doesn't support Drake's anti-Muslim charges.
"If bigotry had been an issue in this, Maha Nassar would not have been offered a job," she said. "As for Lucas, he's a white American male - so much for bigotry."
Samir Bitar, a 34-year resident of Montana who is Muslim and a UM Arabic instructor, said he is disappointed Nassar won't be coming to UM.
Bitar hosted Nassar in one of his Arabic language classes, and he and his students were impressed with her teaching style.
"The students liked her a lot - they all recommended that she would be a very good teacher if we could have her come here," Bitar said.
However, he was disappointed in and highly critical of Lucas' presentations, which he attended not knowing at the time that Lucas was married to Nassar and that Lucas' hire was tied to Nassar's UM fate.
"This whole thing has been frustrating," Bitar said. "It should have been an open process from the beginning. We should have been informed.
"I think if this had been an open process, it would have had a different outcome."
Sands has spent some time thinking about the matter and her role in the outcome.
After stewing on it, she said: "I apologize for anything I said that contributed to anyone's perception of bigotry in Missoula. Diversity is one of our greatest assets and I've devoted my life to that.
"I am certainly examining my own understanding of the situation and I think this can be a fruitful examination - a useful dialogue for everyone in the community."