July 25, 2003

Addressing Professors and Students With the Respect They Deserve

To the Editor:

I read with interest Ben Yagoda's comments about why students at Swarthmore College call their professors by their first names ("What Should We Call the Professor?," The Review, June 13). Yagoda cites Kenneth Gergen, a psychology professor at Swarthmore, who traces the origins of the practice at Swarthmore to anti-authority students of the 1960s and '70s. However, the practice is far older at Swarthmore and other colleges historically affiliated with the Religious

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