All good points, Reg, and I too have had students write about Hitler. Thankfully, they were uniformly in opposition to all that he stood for. Had I had a sympathizer, well, that would have put me in a, err, interesting place.
The thing about not feeling free to offer one's opinion, well, it's by definition impossible to know how frequent those occurrences happen. I'll wager that they are far more frequent than we realize. And it's not only the speaker who suffers, it's those who might benefit from the perspective that wasn't shared.
I wonder, especially at the university level, is this going to result in graduates who aren't able to cope when they enter the workforce, where you hear and experience things that will sometimes offend, whether intentional or not. And I realize that my status as a tall, straight, white (formerly Christian) male, with strikingly good looks, meant that I haven't been the recipient of discrimination or offensive actions/speech, or at least I didn't recognize them as such.
Here's a really bizarre case that got a lot of notoriety.
As always, Reg, your views make me think, sometimes change my mind, and benefit everyone.
Peter T.
