Your recent editorial on freedom of inquiry at the University of Chicago reminded me of an unpleasant experience I had at Northwestern in 1966. It was my first college-level U.S. History class, taught by a proud Marxist, and I was in a class with some of the first inner-city students to be admitted to Northwestern under an integration plan based on equity and promise, rather than on biased test scores.
I was a white, middle-class kid from the suburbs of Kansas City. I had an accent that pegged me for a redneck, but I was always quite liberal-minded. Nevertheless, in the spirit of learning more about poverty and urban life, I said some naïve things that my white peers thought might get me mugged.
