But he adds that this personal approach to history can have its failings. "Sometimes this is a problem because people, even at this sophisticated level, want something from history, and there may still be a kind of need to gain a sense of pride from our history," he says.

One of the keys to resolving such problems is to establish the historical purpose behind the academic presentation, Blight says. But perhaps most important, he adds that there must be trust and respect between the instructor and students, so that when conflicts arise they can be resolved effectively.

Professor of Education and Social Structure Nathan Glazer, a prominent expert on education who is leading a Social Studies junior tutorial this semester on race and ethnicity in the U.S., presented a paper to an Afro-American seminar on how to teach sensitive subjects. "Basically," he says, "it was a paper on how to tell the bad news and to try to develop some guidelines."

"I don't have a formula, but I raised it as a problem that needs to be addressed," he says. In evaluating negative historical events, Glazer says the professor inevitably touches on sensitive areas. professor inevitably touches on sensitive areas.

And no single approach can guarantee the professor a safe path through the hazards of an individual student's interpretation. "There are all sorts of approaches, but first of all you have to try to do it as straight as possible. Although these are matters of subjectivity, you cannot joke about it or be casual about it or be dismissive of it," Glazer says.

"There are all kinds of intellectual and rhetorical strategies to introduce candor and intelligence and acuteness to a certain issue," says Kilson. "And then you hope it flies."

Columbia University History Professor Eric Foner agrees: "It's hard to lay very specific guidelines. The key is to make it clear to the class that you are open-minded. You don't want a student to feel intimidated or uncomfortable expressing opinions."

Foner, a social historian who teaches courses on Afro-American history and the history of American radicalism, says that students in the early 1970s raised objections to his teaching courses on Black history because he was white.

But Foner says that objections to his course today are less political and can be resolved without taking the issue beyond the classroom. "You want open and frank discussion of ideas as long as it remains within the boundaries of intellectual discourse," he says.

Kilson, who teaches a course on ethnicity in American society, says he often uses the derogatory language to which minorities have traditionally been subjected as a way of making his point in the classroom. "I will use that language--wop or dago or nigger or kike--to make the point," he says. "Language that might shock the pedagogical discourse about the issue."

Sometimes the process of communication between the professor and students breaks down when sensitive issues are raised. And instructors say that to some extent these disputes are inevitable as non-traditional fields become integrated into the classroom. "That happens when you open doors," Kilson says. "You can't have omelettes unless you break eggs."