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Just walk around the hallways of American campuses and you can find a number of interesting cartoons on professors. Just glace behind office doors and bulletin boards and you will cannot miss them. What if someone posted cartoons on religious leaders like Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad?

That is a different story altogether. At the Century College, White Bear Lake, Minn, recently a professor posted Muhammad cartoons from a Danish news paper. She faced fierce criticism and had to push the cartoons behind a curtain to ensure that only those who wished to see the cartoons could do so. A policy was created by the administration that stated that prior approval has to be taken before posting items on the bulletin board.

There are many such religious issues in campuses that point out to the extent of religious passion that exists in students. There are many cases where incidents inadvertently fuel a rebellion based on religious sentiments.

William Creeley is an attorney who is associated with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He says that passions are running high in campuses today and fights erupt on all issues between administrators, professors and students.

Though the surface issues are many, the underlying issue is religion, he says. He feels that mostly the reason behind the fights is morality, religion and sex though clashes may be camouflaged with issues such as campus fees and student rights.

According to Mr. Creeley, a recent survey shows that codes that clash with First Amendment are being enforced by at least 71% of American campuses. As they enter these voluntary associations, students are required to sign documents and they are not sufficiently warned by staff and faculty about signing documents that may limit their freedom and create covenants.

Mr. Creeley says that the issue here is whether parents and students are sufficient warned about what they are getting into before they enroll. In other campus conflicts, it is not difficult finding religion as a motive if you scratch the surface. A standing example is the complaint by conservatives that as they seek jobs in high end schools in political science or science department or seek faculty promotions, they face severe discrimination.

Heat continues to be generated in programs that that deal with Middle East and Israel and that talk about Islam. The question remains that can similar textual criticism be made possible by faculty members for both the Bible and the Quran?

The situation is dicey if we consider the implications. For example, can a Jewish group insist that the right of Israel to exist be supported by its leaders? Similarly can leaders of evangelical group be forced to believe in resurrection of Jesus?

There are many ongoing disputes of this kind in campuses. Creeley says that what we see at campuses is hardly “liberal”. In spite of claiming to provide “liberal education” educators today are promoting strong orthodoxy.  The fact remains that today it is pretty dangerous trying to drive religious viewpoints both on and off campus.