DEAR MISS MANNERS: I teach at a small college where, before COVID, I would regularly meet prospective students and their parents in my office on campus.
Occasionally these parents are prominent in politics, and given the deep rifts in our political culture these days, I wonder how I should treat a parent whose positions are abhorrent to me.
I would welcome the student just as I would welcome anyone, and I would greet the parent distantly but politely, since while on campus I try to be nonpolitical. But if that parent were to extend a hand, can I -- and should I -- refuse to take it, perhaps with a polite "I can't shake your hand"?
GENTLE READER: If it would make you feel virtuous to do so -- and provided you do not state the reason, but rather allow it to be thought that there is some physical reason making it difficult for you to shake hands.
In other words, as long as you do not intrude your politics into the situation, embarrassing, if not infuriating, your student as well as the parents.
You are free to oppose these people and their views in the political arena. But to insult them personally is to set a standard of incivility and to compromise your commitment, as a professor, to settling differences through debate and not insults.