`Accuracy,' or threat to democracy?

Regarding Accuracy in Academia and its efforts to determine whether subversive ideology is being emphasized in colleges, I believe that AIA's concern is not without foundation. I am a mature adult recently retired from many years in business. I am attending college, working toward a bachelor's degree, in my senior year. I find it to be the exception rather than the rule for the instructor to present more than one side of a question, and often that ``side'' is the instructor's personal opinion.

I have no reason to believe that any of the instructors I have had are Marxists, but several of them, particularly in the political science and sociology areas, present material in such a way as to extol the virtues of Marxist socialism and denigrate democracy.

A solution might be to require every first-semester freshman to take a course in comparative government which would present the advantages and disadvantages of our form of government, compared with the forms of government of the other major countries. Doris Deming Hastings, Mich.

I have to commend the Monitor for concern about the objectives of Accuracy in Academia, your willingness to take a stand, and the follow-up in a representative group of letters (Dec. 24).

What is the purpose of a free press if it is not to present sensitive points of view? Too many newspapers abdicate their responsibilities. Lowell, 140 years ago, wrote: ``Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.'' And, ``Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just.''

I am convinced that there is a greater threat to our freedom from right-wing people than from left-wing people. Your printing of the Walter M. Edwards letter gives the right-wing posture: that there is an ``obvious leftward ideological bent of the country's most influential newspapers and the television networks, and the irrefutable evidence of it continually uncovered by Accuracy in Media.''

Most Americans fit into a centrist mold. We are bombarded with right-wing propaganda because the right-wing groups have the wealth to support their ideas. Left-wing propaganda is less well disseminated. I suppose that the centrist press is chastised by the far right because it points out the fallacies of the Kirkpatrick/Weinberger course. Warren Himmelberger Wellesley Hills, Mass.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published and none individually acknowledged. All are subject to condensation. Please address letters to ``readers write.''