I have history with a pretty awesome professor. He's actually kind of nuts. Used to run a national surfing magazine and in general doesn't give two shits about who he offends or whether what he says is phrased delicately.

Unfortunately, today's lecture was on the formation of Puritan theocracy in the colonies. Things got a bit out of hand though because we have a 60-year-old woman in our class.

Professor likes to make modern-day comparisons to events in the past to highlight the similarities between modern and historical events. He's really big about the concept of "knowing your history", and likes to actively make people uncomfortable with their biases.

So he starts comparing the Puritans to the Taliban, pointing out that they basically have the same system of government, very similar punishments for minor religious transgressions, and basically were both driven by religious fundamentalism that horrifies modern westernized people. He was pointing this out to demonstrate that we as Americans like to whitewash history and detach it from context in an attempt to glorify people who if we met today, we'd abhor.

But apparently this was too controversial for a grown woman to endure. Cue the bible-thumping and the anti-islamic statements coming from the 60-year-old woman. She spent 20-30 minutes arguing and quoting bible verses and trying to shunt the blame from "faith" to "man", which was entirely the prof's point. She started to raise her voice to argue that the Taliban had no right to rule and had no legitimacy, claiming they stole their way into power, and the prof finally shut her down by asking her what she thought the usurpation of the colonies from local tribes was by comparison.

Shit got really heated and the entire atmosphere got horribly uncomfortable. After 20-30 minutes, the older student wound up sitting there just completely seething. She's gonna be speaking with the department chair, I just know it.

Given that this professor has had zero qualms using the word "Nigger" in class, and has regularly made some pretty off-key racial/sexual jokes in the classroom, I'm going to be seeing a departmental change next semester.

It's pretty bullshit the way colleges don't stand behind the environment of academic freedom like they used to, and about how they spend so much time these days yielding to the easily offended.

I've actually got the opposite experience from my Composition professor, who basically insists that debating/arguing about religion can't be done because religious claims cannot be examined through reason, which more or less undermines the entire focus of one of my majors (philosophy) and the majority of the works of some of the brightest minds in history.

...I need to get out of the South.