Professor Indrek Wichman obviously does not get it. In his letter "Prof explains reasons for offensive e-mail," (SN 4/28), he seeks to portray his infamous e-mail as a free speech matter. It is not, and portraying it as such is self-pitying and disingenuous.

If he was interested in airing his views on free speech, Islam and the Middle East, he should have written a public letter, such as to The State News. Instead, he wrote a private e-mail directed personally at students. And during this incident he has, in fact, appealed to the "privacy" of that e-mail as an excuse.

The crux of this matter is the faculty/student boundary. In his e-mail, he referred to himself as an MSU professor, and proceeded to write abusive, harassing comments to students, some of whom could potentially be in his classes.

For me, the core question is one of abuse of power and position and violating the responsibility professors have toward students.

To address students in the second person and as "dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems," to tell, I presume, mostly U.S.-born Muslims that they are "free to leave" and to write that it is his hope to God that they return to where they came from is a clear act of aggression, abuse and hostility toward students.

That is the crux of the matter — not free speech, not terrorism, not Danish cartoons and not the Muslim Students' Association protests.

Could a professor get away with writing a single e-mail of a sexual nature toward a student or group of students? No, and for good reason. That, for me, is the proper analogy.

Andrew March
assistant professor