Of course, I am a smug prick. Not a twit. Any intellectual torture here was self-imposed. Comments 16 and 33 come from students in the same class.

If there weren’t jokes and ribbing then, to me, the class would have felt cold and you’d have seemed disinterested towards the students. That you took the time to mock without being mean meant that you cared enough about the student to learn what jokes to tell.

Its also how I can get away with saying things like: of course you’re an affront, all godless communists are.

Chris is an excellent professor, teacher and person.

Proof? His class was at 8am and I never missed.

See… i only alienate in a friendly manner.

I’m not a liberal, and only Libertarians would mistake me for such. I was one of the most vocal members of the College Republicans (whether they wanted me to be or not), I interned for the most conservative member of Congress, and since graduation I’ve worked with or been offered jobs with numerous conservative candidates and elected officials in Arizona. Ideologically, I’m a conservative communitarian.

I’ve taken numerous classes with Prof. H, as a result of my being a PoliSci major, and while my experiences would lead me to suggest that the student in the OP is batshit insane, I believe such would be a slander to the batshit of the world (which, due to its usefulness in explosives, has a reputation that should be preserved).

Never in his classes did I ever see him alienate, humiliate, or castigate a student in anyway that could be viewed as unfriendly. As a frequent instigator of distracting conversation, whether advocating the establishment of minimum wage or encouraging gun ownership by all, I often found myself on the receiving end of his jokes about the other side of the aisle, but never was it anything but in good fun.

Of course his opinion entered the classroom, that’s the point of college. If I want to get a text book definition of an oligarchy I’d read a dictionary, if I wanted to know Rawls’ theories I’d read his books. Attending a University political class isn’t about getting a sterile understanding of the political process anymore than listening to Rush is about getting unbiased objective reporting. To paraphrase Good Will Hunting, you can get that much easier and cheaper at a library.

University is a place of debate, discussion, reason, rhetoric, questioning, and seeking answers. It is a place where you seek out those who have gone before, listen to what they have to say as you personally study what they themselves did, then extract what wisdom you can while building your own opinion.

The student claims their ideas were never allowed discussion, that contrary views never given voice. This claim is so absurdly foreign from my experience in Henrichsen’s classes, where the majority of classes were often spent discussing and debating the writings and issues raised by Chris, that it is difficult to not dismiss them outright.

Rather, it seems likely to me that the student never attempted to speak up about their own views, never gathered the courage and fortitude to stand up to an authority figure and raise an objection, or simply found their own views so challenged that they felt the need to attack the speaker rather than having the intellectual honesty to confront the claims of the message. This student seems upset that their echo chamber was broken, that perhaps they might have to actually think about something other than the opinions they previously held, and is trying desperately to insulate themselves from outside thought.

As a conservative, Republican Mormon I can’t help but think that the student and I would agree on many political and religious points. But, like an embarrassed protester standing next to an unabashed racist, I can’t help but feel a desire to distance myself from reasoning that makes me look bad by comparison.

To the student: grow up, learn to act like an adult and you’ll learn that others were expecting you to be one all along. To Bro. Henrichsen: rock on, we might not agree on much, but you’re the kind of professor that the BYU’s desperately need.

Shut up, Mark.

The extreme excess of sarcasm shows that I taught her all that I know and something stuck. I prefer that the Rawls sticks, but I will take what I can get (set with a wink, chill everyone).

If oudenos is correct, I must have succeeded. Heck, I am not even ready for BCC and T&S.

Sounds like this kid is ready for the big league: BCC, T&S, WATCH OUT!