After arriving at Bates and settling into their dorm rooms, first-year students in Professor William Corlett's introductory political science course get a second chance to unpack. This time, it's political arguments, not clothes, that get an airing.

"I sometimes reference the Monty Python line: 'Is this the right room for an argument?'" says Corlett, the 2006 winner of the College's Kroepsch Award for teaching excellence. "The idea is to get them to explore the complexity of various political arguments, the twists and turns — to be critical, but never cynical."

Corlett's own politics veer to the left, as do his courses, including "Contemporary Liberalism and Democratic Action," "Environmental Justice," and "Sexuality and the Politics of Difference."

But rather than a divisive classroom environment pitting the political right against left, Corlett's learning community reflects what he calls "mutual support and defense." "Building community isn't just a public idea," he says. "It needs to happen in the classroom, too, where it can teach students and teachers the importance of a generous spirit."

Reflecting that spirit, Corlett unpacks his arguments, too. "I let students know where I stand and what my arguments are," he says. "I tell them why I hold the views I have, why I have changed my mind and why I haven't."

Indeed, respect and kudos for Corlett often come from former students whose political views oppose their mentor's. Libertarian Whitman Holt '02 recalls a paper he wrote for Corlett that described a libertarian society in which a citizen's "supererogatory duty" would yield private charitable support for the less-fortunate in the absence of government entitlement programs.

"Bill and I hold very different beliefs," says Holt, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate who earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and is now an attorney with the Los Angeles firm Stutman, Treister & Glatt. "Yet he encouraged me to fully develop and articulate my position — the focus was on developing my analytic abilities, regardless of his substantive disagreement with my premises."