Religion and Politics

There's a reason why we learned to never bring up these two topics in polite conversation. There was even a time in the last century when we learned the importance of polite. But that seems like a century ago.

Politics are often revealed in issues, in the stands we take about taxes or war. And university classrooms are notorious for opening up such discussions. I have a student who sits right in the first row every class. He's from Dallas and his parents are wealthy enough to have flown him home twice from Boston for two day family visits in the first six weeks of school. He was speaking up against taxes in an inadvertant reference I inadvertantly must have made in class, revealing my own liberal leanings. Ooops! It was right in my face.

This seems to beg the question: are religion and politics a subject we can casually brooch in a university setting, even when the discipline is in the liberal arts, but not specific to any religion or politic viewpoint? Or should we tread lightly, so as not to end up in the mire of unwanted argument? At a few local universities here in Boston, there are conservative student groups who are taking their complaints public against liberal leaning professors. I suppose this means we should rmember what our mothers and dads taught us: these subjects don't mix. It's time to run a more polite classroom. Or it's time to forget the importance of polite.