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Dear Editor:

I read with disbelief a letter to the editor on April 11 that made wild, outlandish, unspecified charges against an unnamed history professor. It reeked of the worst of McCarthy tactics, making vague references to an article "downloaded from a site containing links to racially charged and anti-Semitic websites."

These writers, members of the History Department, went on to criticize the offending article as "distorted and inaccurate" and charged the professor with abridging it "in such a way that disguised its full context." In other words they are claiming that a professor, in their department, had an agenda to propagandize his students and feed them racist and anti-Semitic literature.

The unnamed professor, Jonathon Bean, wrote an apology in the DE saying that he had used an "inappropriate source." I looked up the "source" which is the webpage maintained by David Horowitz called FrontPagemagazine.Com. Horowitz has been at SIU on two separate occasions, lecturing about the lack of intellectual diversity on campus. Horowitz is, gasp, a conservative! I have no idea why this calls for an apology except that perhaps the professor felt pursued and harried.

But I firmly believe that Professor Bean's real sin is that he is a Republican in a department that is wholly controlled by leftists and Democrats. There is no diversity of academic opinion, which breeds, in turn, the intolerance contained in this effort to smear Professor Bean.

I am not a member of the "University Community" that these neo-McCarthyites called on to "open a dialogue about the issues raised by this incident." I am merely a citizen of the state of Illinois and the father of two students who have attended Southern Illinois University. Both of my sons took courses from Professor Bean, admire him and remain in touch with him to this day.

But I am a part of the Illinois community that pays taxes and remains deeply interested in the health and vitality of our University. I would urge my "community," including lawmakers, to take special notice of this attempt at character assassination. The stench from the innuendo and intimations of racism on the part of Professor Bean is nauseating.

I would urge the "University Community," which the letter writers have called upon, to utterly disavow this attempt at character assassination. A scholar's only currency is his integrity.

And I would urge Professor Bean to hire a first-rate lawyer. I would be the first to contribute to his legal fund.

D. Gorton
Carbondale, Ill.