Education: The Heretics' Guest

The Heretics Club of Oxford University, founded in 1948, exists for the sole purpose of providing a platform for freethinkers, nonconformists, exotics and eccentrics. Even so, the guest speaker at the club last week was something out of the ordinary. Introduced as a lecturer on sociology at the University of London, Dr. Mahesh Helai, a learned-looking Turk with a slight beard and sideburns, had chosen as his topic: "The Pleasure of Opium Eating."

Before an audience of 75 eager Heretics, he talked learnedly for about an hour, peering myopically at his notes as he...

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