The April 19 editorial about former Rep. Tom Tancredo's speech at UNC being mindlessly interrupted is hardly news. It happens all the time on campuses when anyone from a Condoleezza Rice to a David Horowitz (i.e., anyone with a Republican or conservative background) tries to speak.

And, by the way, I don't think many of your readers think Tancredo's views are particularly "extreme."

In its coverage of this debacle, The News & Observer of Raleigh article contained a box that summarized historical disruptions in Chapel Hill. Other than a case back in the 1960s when Carolina was scolded for not allowing a communist to speak, there were something like 10 other examples where, in every instance but one, the person or event that was disrupted had a conservative bent.

Conveniently, the airheads who halted the Tancredo presentation validated their actions by labeling his views "hate speech." It would be interesting to see how many far-left or communist speakers have come to UNC since the 1960s, not only without incident but also to wild applause and widespread approval.

Although not precisely on point, there was an amusing incident at Stanford University when I was attending graduate school there in the early 1970s. The CIA was coming to recruit on campus at the business school. Earlier that year, an Army recruiter (keep in mind the Vietnam War was going on) had his car overturned and set on fire.

Anyway, on the date of the CIA visit, a large throng of longhairs (and faculty, too, of course) paraded around the business school. A classroom was firebombed. But the CIA wasn't even there that day. Sneaky guys that they are, the agency had directly contacted the students who had signed up and interviewed them off-campus a week earlier.

Jack Jakucyk

Whispering Pines