In all the years I’ve been following presidential elections, I’ve never heard someone from an audience call the candidate from the opposing party “a terrorist.”

Dana Milbank at the Washington post reported a similar incident at a Palin rally in florida where members of the crowd allegedly yelled “kill him” regarding Obama during her speech. Regardless of your political persuasion, this has to be a bit unsettling. I fear we’re charting into an emotional storm as this election draws near. My hope is that Mccain’s attack during tonight’s debate will be about Obama’s economic and social liberalism as reflected in his voting record rather than this absurd guilt by association.

All of us in academia can probably be tarred with a similar brush. Is anyone who works with someone with controversial views forced to resign their jobs? As a graduate student I taught in the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado during the time Ward Churchill was a member of the department. Does that link me to Ward Churchill’s views? Should I have given up my teaching assistantship? Are all the members of the education department in which Bill Ayers teaches today complicit in his crimes and victims of poor judgment? How about all his students? Should they drop out of the university upon learning of their professor’s past?