Larycia Hawkins

On April 26, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities announced that Hawkins would be their 2019 commencement speaker, with the commencement address on the theme "you were made for such a time as this."

A documentary movie, Same God, was later produced on Hawkins and the incident. Same God was previewed in 2018, with a wider release in 2019.

In December, 2015, she became the center of a controversy when she made a post on her personal social media account (Facebook) for Advent affirming solidarity between Christians and Muslims. Wheaton College suspended her as a result of the negative publicity resulting from the social media post, which pictured her wearing hijab and explaining that it was an expression of solidarity with her Muslim sisters at a time when Muslims were facing rising ethnic tensions in the U.S. Hawkins was placed on paid administrative leave on December 15 as the school determined whether her statement was at odds with the school's core beliefs. On February 8, 2016, Wheaton College and Hawkins issued a joint statement that they had "reached a confidential agreement under which they will part ways." On March 3, 2016, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia announced that Hawkins would be appointed as the school's Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow.

On January 5, 2016, Wheaton College issued a public notice confirming that it was beginning formal proceedings to terminate Hawkins' employment, and maintaining that Hawkins had "declined to participate in further dialogue about the theological implications of her public statements and her December 17 response".

On Saturday, February 6, 2016, in an e-mail released by Wheaton College's president, Philip Ryken, it was mutually agreed that, to help bring closure to the situation, while Wheaton would not fire Professor Hawkins, they had decided to part ways, and that she would voluntarily resign. In a separate e-mail to the faculty, Wheaton College Provost Stan Jones said that he has withdrawn charges for firing Professor Hawkins and has asked her for forgiveness in not dealing with her directly.

On March 3, 2016, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia announced that Hawkins would be appointed as the school's Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow, where she would participate in two of the institute's projects, the Pluralism Project and the Race, Faith and Culture Project. Hawkins was quoted as saying that the institute was "the perfect place for me to pursue my scholarship," which will focus on relationships between race and religion.

On December 10, 2015, Hawkins wrote a Facebook post saying:

On December 15, 2015, the Wheaton College administration placed Hawkins on administrative leave and issued a "Wheaton College Statement Regarding Dr. Larycia Hawkins" "pending the full review to which she is entitled as a tenured faculty member." On December 16, 2015, the Wheaton College administration supplemented the statement to clarify that the college had placed "Dr. Larycia Hawkins on paid administrative leave in order to give more time to explore theological implications of her recent public statements concerning Christianity and Islam."

Hawkins joined the faculty at Wheaton College in 2007, where she served as assistant professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations from 2007 to 2014. In 2014, she was tenured and promoted to associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations. Hawkins in the first African American female to have been tenured at Wheaton College since its founding in 1860.

Hawkins was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and was raised in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She received her B.A. in History and Sociology from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1994. She received an M.P.A. at the University of Oklahoma in 2001. She subsequently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma in political science in 2007. Her research is about black theology and its relationship to political rhetoric and black political agendas, like those of the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP.

Larycia Alaine Hawkins (born August 22, 1972) is an American scholar, author, and speaker, who in 2013, became the first female African-American tenured professor at Wheaton College, a Christian Protestant liberal arts college. She served as an associate professor of political science at the college.