I teach business law at a private university. One undergraduate course I teach is employment law, which covers discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I believe it is important to explain the groundbreaking significance of this legislation to my students, so I delve into the de facto apartheid in the South, with its Jim Crow laws, the widespread discrimination against all types of minority groups and the resistance by many legislators, especially in the South, to the passage of this law.

Senator Strom Thurmond was a vocal opponent of the bill, and I quote from an earlier speech of his in which he used the N-word. And herein lies my dilemma. Do I use the actual word in class? I believe that using the actual word dramatizes how shocking and offensive his speech was and that using the watered-down version robs it of its power. I strongly believe that I am entitled to use the word for pedagogical purposes. On the other hand, I know that the use of that word is effectively forbidden, and some students may be offended by it, especially coming from a white professor. Also, I know that faculty members have been dismissed because they quoted literary passages that use the slur.

I am at a loss. I keep changing my mind, at times determined to use the word and at times thinking it wiser to obfuscate. I wonder if you can provide some guidance. Name Withheld

Word-magic, in a variety of forms, is an ubiquitous phenomenon: Simply uttering a word, we often think,...

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