Imagine slumping into your seat, preparing for a long bus ride, only to have a fellow passenger regale you with his second-rate Bill Clinton or Dubya impersonations. There you are, a captive, stuck for hours, definitely “feeling your pain” and “strategerizing” an escape.

This feeling of being a captive audience shouldn’t wash over you in your lecture hall, as a fellow student rambles on at length about his political views.

At what point do students offering differing opinions disrupt a class, rather than contribute to it? Are limitations on class discussions necessarily a free-speech issue?

Lars Fransson, director of Uppsala University’s International Office in Sweden, commented that in the last 30 years Uppsala hadn’t seen many class disruptions over political views. He added that in Sweden, classes are usually “quite open and unbiased,” and that especially in social science classes the faculty encourage an exchange of opinions.

Should a disruption occur, the instructor and other students may ask the student causing the disruption “to take a more low-key position” and respect others’ right to contribute to the class.

Fransson noted that sometimes students who attempt to monopolize class discussions are invited to continue their debates outside the classroom, with any other interested students as well as the instructor.

“This avoids the unnecessary misuse of class time … Teachers have usually been willing to spend (some) time to take part in such debates, if perceived as ‘constructive’ and not solely repeating well-known points of view,” Fransson said, adding in Uppsala, student organizations routinely host debates on a variety of topics.

Serge Ricard, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, has also taught at the University of Texas. He explained that in France, while differences of opinion are welcome, professors believe the classroom is a place with a specific structure in which the professor has the authority.

“Monopolizing class discussion or interrupting the professor would be tantamount to disrupting the class, i.e. a disorderly conduct and lack of respect, and the student would be kicked out and even expelled from university if he repeated the offense,” Ricard said.

He observed that American professors’ deep desire to remain politically correct makes them hesitant to challenge a disruptive student. Yet for the French, monopolizing a class discussion is not an issue of free speech; it’s an issue of rudeness.

“This right of free speech gets bandied about all the time,” Ricard said. “The French would have no hesitation. Let the teaching go on. The student should not be speaking unless permitted to. You just don’t do such things. It’s a breach of discipline.”

Ricard allowed that a student could complain if a professor were carrying on about extreme political views that had nothing to do with the course.

“But then you complain to the administration,” he said.

Ricard also remarked: “A university student in France is under no obligation to attend a class and put up with a professor he doesn’t like. He can always change professors or even universities.”

University professors are often cast as hopelessly left-wing. This view exists in France as well.

“In France, the faculty almost everywhere is reputed to be left-wing, especially in universities. It’s kind of a right-wing cliché. The truth is really professors are on the whole respectful of students’ beliefs,” Ricard said. “There is a tradition of tolerance in French universities. There are no rules, but university professors tend to be pretty broad-minded.”

France, which historically struggled between royal and papal authority, is determined to remain secular in the classroom.

“Religion should be banned from the discussion unless it relates to the course material,” Ricard said, noting students with strong religious inclinations could attend a private school or continue religious debates after class. “Secular thought — la laícité — is very important to the French.”

As colleges across the globe wrestle with class disruptions, professors should consider the approaches other democratic societies have taken in university classrooms. All are concerned with free speech, but they’re concerned with their teaching missions, too.

University of Wisconsin students should embrace their diverse viewpoints and speak openly with each other. But those just looking for an audience should head for Library Mall; at least there the audience isn’t captive.

Listening to people rant on a street corner can be entertaining. Having such people monopolize a classroom is not.

Cynthia Martens ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in Italian and European studies.