Bad Perfesser Boogie

I won't excerpt this entire post but a summary: teacher is talking (lecturing? it's unclear), is interrupted by a student's political commentary, teacher fires back. So here is the link is (excerpt follows ) if you want to see the semi original account:
Collge Professor: It's All Right To Talk About Executing "Anyone Who's Ever Voted Republican" As Long As It's Said With A Smile? - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

"...Someone like this professor, Jessica Bryan, has no business teaching college students -- and that's not just because her Stalinesque suggestion that anyone who chooses to vote for a Republican should be murdered. College courses aren't supposed to be about indoctrinating students and if a professor is determined to "criticize and disparage Republicans" during every class -- or for that matter, "criticize and disparage" Democrats, then that shows she/he is not fit to teach.

College students all across the country are being put in a situation day in and day out, where they're forced to endure insults throughout class and either hide the face that they're conservative, or risk their grades by confronting the political ideologue teaching the class. It's ridiculous and it shouldn't continue.

That's why tenure and the idea that a college professor can say absolutely anything and get away with it because of "academic freedom," should be abolished because it puts the welfare of the teacher above the welfare of the students. Being given a room of students to teach is an enormous responsibility and professors who don't handle it properly, like Bryan, don't deserve to have jobs..."

Leaving aside those big old croc tears for the poor beleaugured GOP operative in the classroom, I've worked in an nontenured, tenuously employed environment for over 30 years, and I have a long, long list of students who have shot their ignorant mouths off in my (and yes it is mine, if only for 50 minutes at time) classroom about things of which they are often completely clueless. I have lost my temper exactly twice.

Who knows what really happened here. Maybe (and I know positively of the truth of this little fable) something like this: students smarts-off, teacher tells student to "shut his damn mouth," student runs to the Big Boss and demands firing of the veteran teacher (not me) for Gross Offense To Tender Ears. Big Boss explains to student that the teacher has not slept more than three hours a night for two years since she has the sole evening custody of her mother who is dying of cervical cancer. Student slinks away, feeling like an idiot (also, not me).

The public, and our blogger, need to recall that old First Amendment. Free speech not only extends to the student to express his or her (non-disruptive) opinions, but it also extends to the teacher, who can freely rejoin the student with outrageous opinions if he or she wishes. (One quarter I was hauled in front of the Lower Boss because I was accused, by separate students, of being a Nazi, a Communist, a Socialist, and a Republican. Lesson learned: if you plan a career in college administration, get your sense of humor surgically removed.)

So keep in mind when you hear the above sort of tales that Freedom of Speech is a broad avenue and it runs both ways.