Incidents like this, where a right wing nut harasses a once a week "liberal" professor at a private college are more and more common thanks to the terrorist campaign of Ayatollah Sean Hannity and Ayatollah David Horowitz.
Horowitz has engaged in a crusade against non-conservative professors while Hannity is openly encouraging his Insanitized audience to videotape and audiotape professors so that "he can expose them."
The ultimate goal of Horowitz and Hannity is to shut professors up who don't have conservative viewpoints. They don't want fairness, they don't want people exposed to as many views as possiblem, and they don't object when conservative teachers shove their BS down the throats of others.
As someone who taught (10 yrs) and still teaches (part time once a week)students at the upper elementary level, and as someone who NEVER imposed religion or politics on children, the actions of Ayatollahs Hannity and Horowitz piss me off.
At the elementary level, I can not foresee a circumstance where a teacher would share their political or religious views with a student. However, there are thousands of conservative "educators" in our public schools
"indoctrinating" children with their right wing biases on religion and politics. I've seen teachers force students to write letters to George Bush, tout their religious views in the classroom, etc... For every "liberal teacher" who crosses the line from neutral to imposing, there's a conservative one.
Next, the rules change when you move up into high school. At this level kids are more independent so there may be a few circumstances where it would be appropriate (depending on how it's done) for a teacher to share his or her political views. (Ex: it may become appropriate for a teacher in certain subjects (Social Studies, certain electives) to state what their political views are so long as the teenagers are assured that all viewpoints are welcome. Again there are teachers of all political stripes who cross the line into imposing but for every liberal teacher who does it, there's a conservative one.
Finally the rules really change when you get to the college level. We are talking about adults not kindergartners. There are conservative professors on campuses all across America as there are professors with other varying views. That's fine with me. Often students take a course because of the perspective of the professor. For example, Stanford University has the Hoover Institute and a cadre of right wing professors who would be called "indoctrinators" by the likes of Hannity and Horowitz if they were liberals.
In college a professor should be given plenty of room to discuss their politics (If the subject is geared toward it) and students should also be encouraged to rebut or refute. It's called Socratic learning. The idea is to expose students to as many different viewpoints as possible, hope students take the initiative to research these viewpoints, and then make up their own minds. If students have to write a paper, then the best reasoned, best supported papers get the highest grades regardless of the slant of the writer. Obviously grading should be based on an objective criteria irrespective of political viewpoints. (And I'm sure there are "liberal" professors who cross this line as well as "conservative" ones and it would be wrong in both instances.)
But Hannity and Horowitz are not interested in fairness. Their goal is to encourage right wing douchebags on campus to harass and intimidate professors into silence by creating a culture of fear, intimidation, and uneasiness.
Sean Hannity has "invited" these professors onto his show to of course discuss politics claiming that he is the modicum of fairness who believes in having "both sides" given a fair airing. Hannity called these professors on his radio show "gutless wonders."
Of course this is the same gutless Hannity who cut my mike when I was kicking his ass at a live broadcast, the same Hannity who on a separate live occasion got his ass kicked by me again in a debate to the point where the best he could say was "go get your own talk show" and whose screener is directed not to take calls from Dave from Queens because DFQ is deemed too good a debater.
So if the gutless wonder wants a real fair and balanced debate on this issue, all he has to do is ask me. But as he has several times in the past, Ayatalloh Sean will cut and run.