Before he was the Professor of Pedophilia, Harris Mirkin had a more mundane reputation.

He was the tenured professor who taught political philosophy and shepherded many a University of Missouri-Kansas City student through the musings of Plato, Hobbes and Nietzsche.

He was the Socratic teacher who challenged students to "unpack" their assumptions and scrutinize their points of view.

The most attention-getting fact about him was more endearing than anything: Mirkin was the grandfatherly professor who rode his bicycle from his home in Brookside to his UMKC office.

He was hard to miss, looking like everyone's image of Albert Einstein. His hair had been gray and then white for decades, and he let it grow haphazardly past his ears.

"Hey, Einstein!" kids used to yell at him, and he would smile. Until now. Speeding past the bike-riding professor recently, a carload of teen-agers instead screamed, "Hey, pervert!"

Mirkin had written an academic journal article, published three years ago, on the topic of sexual intimacy between adults and underage youth. A reference to it popped up in an article from Newhouse News Service, which provides news and features to newspapers. In April, several Missouri legislators saw the story and demanded Mirkin be fired.

Suddenly an endless stream of talk-radio shows across the country wanted some time with Mirkin. So did CNN and the BBC. And the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

In an electronic blink, Mirkin, 65, a UMKC political science professor for 35 years, was provided a new persona. He was a member of an academic clique promoting the rights of children and adults to have sex together. Worse, he was in league with -- or at least was being used by -- groups that promote "intergenerational sex" and publish such views on the Internet.

Mirkin's reputation grew after state lawmakers condemned his article and voted to delete $100,000 from UMKC's budget as punishment. Sen. John Loudon, a St. Louis County Republican, said Mirkin's writings were a "perverse and dangerous attempt to make our children prey."

Cultural differences

Mirkin, who has two young grandchildren, said he had no such intent. Back in 1997, Mirkin wrote an article about pedophilia and children's sexuality that was accepted by the Journal of Homosexuality and published in 1999. It remained a relatively obscure piece until it got the attention of Missouri legislators. Their action drew anger from the university: The Faculty Senate called the $100,000 cut an attempt to stifle academic freedom. Chancellor Martha Gilliland defended Mirkin's right to explore a topic considered "distasteful."

In recent interviews, Mirkin explained his choice of subject matter.

He was seated at his desk in his cramped office, wearing a short-sleeved blue dress shirt with three pens in the front pocket. One office wall displayed a world map with Australia front and center and Europe and North America toward the bottom -- an upside-down arrangement from conventional depictions, until you consider that the planet has no up and down.

The UMKC campus was quiet, the students gone after the spring semester, and Mirkin, too, would leave soon. He was taking a long-planned trip to Paris with his wife and his daughter's family.

The genesis for the article actually goes back 40 years, Mirkin said, to his days in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia.

In one vivid memory, Mirkin and fellow Peace Corps volunteers were riding in one of the corps' blue Jeeps when it broke down. They walked to a nearby village and were confronted by a startling cultural difference.

The women in the Peace Corps group wore skirts to their knees but not long enough to completely cover their legs, as was the custom for Ethiopian women. The Ethiopian women, however, didn't cover their breasts.

"We look at them, they look at us, and both groups think, `How strange!' " Mirkin said.

Mirkin grew up in New York. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a homemaker. The family, including his older sister, lived comfortably on the west side of Manhattan in an apartment on the top floor of a nine-story building. As a youngster he played stick ball on the street and handball in the schoolyard or else ventured to one of two nearby parks.

The culture gap he encountered in Ethiopia constantly amazed. There, Mirkin taught English to seventh-graders and sometimes treated them to American movies. In one, two young lovers were innocently holding hands and giving each other quick kisses.

To Americans it was innocent. The Ethiopian students asked if the woman was a prostitute. Only a prostitute would hold hands in public, they said.

Mirkin recalled that he and other Americans observed that Ethiopian men walked with a graceful, loose, "feminine" gait. Mirkin wondered how it was he learned to walk "like a man." He came to the conclusion that neither way was natural.

"We all had the awareness of how we are conditioned by society," he said.

Questioning assumptions

After the Peace Corps, Mirkin finished a doctorate in political science at Princeton University and heard about a job in Kansas City. A branch of the University of Missouri had been established, and in 1966 Mirkin accepted a position in the newly created political science department.

He never left. Mirkin and his first wife had a son while the two were in the Peace Corps. They had a daughter shortly after settling in Kansas City.

"I liked the city and the university," Mirkin said.

As one of the political science department's original members, Mirkin became a leader. He is now taking a third tour of duty as the department chairman. Mirkin also has served as chair of the Faculty Senate.

Colleagues called Mirkin likable and always approachable. In faculty meetings, though, he has been known to challenge faculty members, asking them to defend an opinion or back up a statement.

"This may sound hokey, but he's very committed and devoted to the university," said Dale Neuman, professor emeritus, who also came to the political science department in 1966.

Mirkin's philosophy is that everyone must dissect their assumptions about what it means to be male or female, what it means to be black, what it means to be homosexual. We are conditioned to think this way by society, he said, and the academic in him wants to examine the assumptions and see if they withstand scrutiny.

"My starting point is that these things are political and social creations, so I try to unpack them a little bit," he said.

Besides his political philosophy classes, Mirkin also teaches a course in the politics of gender and sex.

Jennifer Wilding, a former student of Mirkin's, was serious about the women's movement when she encountered Mirkin as a professor 20 years ago.

"I was rather fond of throwing around a whole lot of statistics," Wilding said about her approach to class discussion. "He ticked me off a lot because he would question me. He demanded I be rigorous in what I was saying and the information I was throwing around. It just annoyed the living daylights out of me."

It also made her appreciate his approach.

"He creates finer distinctions than most of us would do, and then shakes things up a bit," said Wilding, one of many who wrote letters in support of Mirkin to the university.

Sex and youth

This is where Mirkin got himself in trouble: Just as with gender roles and gay rights, our concepts about children's sexuality and about pedophilia, he wrote in the 1999 article, should be examined and debunked, if needed.

There is a good reason to ask these questions now, Mirkin said, even in the midst of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. More research about the effects of sexual abuse would serve as a guide for how adults should respond.

"I do think there's a moral panic in this country, and I do think the temperature should be lowered so we can talk about it," Mirkin said. "I think that the frenzy is harmful."

Similar reasoning brought a cascade of criticism to Judith Levine, a New York journalist who recently published a book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex.

The book, generally about children's sexuality, also deals with pedophilia. Levine said that while no one believes children should be exploited, teens sometimes seek out sex with older people. Such encounters aren't necessarily harmful and can be beneficial, she said. Adults must realize, she said, that teens can and do make autonomous decisions about sex.

To other experts, most of these questions have been asked and answered.

It's a settled matter, said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, that young children don't have the experience, knowledge or power to freely give their consent.

As for the gray area with older teens, Finkelhor said, it makes no sense to lower the age of consent when sexual boundaries are so often violated. That increases the chance of creating more victims.

The clinical and anecdotal evidence in research literature is that youth report and show signs of mental and social difficulties for years after experiencing sexual abuse by an adult.

"I don't think the negative effects have been exaggerated," Finkelhor said.

The aftermath

Ironically, after state lawmakers took a bite out of UMKC's budget in reaction to Mirkin's article, the piece got more attention than ever. Some prominent analyses were critical.

A commentary in The New Yorker, for instance, called the article "silly."

Prohibition of pedophilia is part of the civil and sexual rights movements, said New Yorker writer Louis Menand, protecting the freedom of children from adult authority figures. But he defended Mirkin's right to publish his ideas and lauded UMKC for sticking by a professor.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal derided Mirkin's call to examine pedophilia, saying the idea made as much sense as opening up the topic of human sacrifice, which had its adherents in other eras and cultures.

As for free speech, the editorial said, state legislators also have a right to take a stand.

A big reason for the uproar: Mirkin wrote the article in a style that seemed to many to predict the acceptance of pedophilia, although he has contended he didn't mean it that way.

He posited that pedophilia is in the same place as women's rights and homosexual rights in years past. Opponents used terms such as "unnatural" and "deviant" to denigrate those movements.

"Like homosexuality, the concept of child molestation is a culture- and class-specific modern creation," Mirkin wrote.

The subtext, he said, is not that pedophilia will be legitimized in the same way homosexuality and feminism were legitimized. The idea is to examine the pattern and ask the questions, Mirkin said.

To some, though, Mirkin went too far. A few people have questioned his motives.

A man in Mirkin's neighborhood spread the idea that Mirkin must be a pedophile himself. That, Mirkin said, is wrong and hurtful. Another rumor said Mirkin's second wife was underage when they started dating. Also wrong, he said. She was 27.

"The message is that anyone who talks about this is an immoral bastard," he said.

But Mirkin also has received hundreds of supportive letters and e-mails. Many thanked him for starting the discussion and relayed their own early sexual experiences, good and bad.

"There's a lot more support for talking about the issue than I thought there would be," Mirkin said. "And that's why you have universities -- and university professors."

Mirkin isn't finished questioning assumptions about the politics of sexuality. In fact, he's completing a new book. The topic? Child pornography.

Curious, he said, that we've come to a point where nearly any image of a nude child is considered pornographic and is illegal to possess. He plans to title the book Forbidden Images, Forbidden Thoughts: Child Pornography in American Politics.