Go for Debate in College Classrooms

Re “ ‘Blue-Collar’ Prof at Center of Academic Freedom Case,” Dec. 11: I attended college during the Vietnam years, and my political science classes were battlegrounds. Returning vets challenged the profs on everything under the sun and were loud and unruly, but it was life. Same thing in my criminal justice classes in the ‘80s, with the ex-cop profs engaging us by talking about the bad guys in not so entertaining terms, but it was reality. Same thing about professor Ken Hearlson today. He talks about gays, Muslims, etc., in unflattering terms, but it is now.

I belong to groups that these profs have mouthed off about for the last 30 years. Go for it, guys. Go for freedom. Go for debate. Go for controversy. Make us think, make us angry and make us alive. Don’t worry about the consequences. I will defend to the death your 1st Amendment right of free speech because when you speak and I retort, we make those who have defended and died for freedom proud.

Michael P. Rives

Los Angeles

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In Costa Mesa, at Orange Coast College, Hearlson wants to reverse the secularization of the (American) classroom with “Christian values.” How can he teach in a tax-supported, public community college--and political science, yet!-- without knowing that nondenominational public education in the U.S. is secular. We call this the “separation of church and state.”

In Anchorage, University of Alaska professor Linda McCarriston says, “There is no oppression greater today than the intellectual oppression of the academy.” How far outside her office did she look before issuing this proclamation? Does she mean oppression in Anchorage? In Alaska? In the United States? In the world? Is she more oppressed than the abused children about whom she wrote a poem? English teachers used to teach the importance of using generalizations responsibly or not at all.

James Leigh

Claremont