According to the Mountain View High School Oracle, MVHS principal David Grissom and other school administrators made the decision to put history teacher Frank Navarro on administrative leave. The leave was prompted by Navarro's alleged comments in class that made connections between Donald Trump and Hitler. Whether or not he said this, it is dangerous and disgusting that the administration has decided to punish him for drawing parallels between two similarly dangerous moments in history.

In Mr. Navarro's words, “I feel strongly about this: to stand quiet in the face of bigotry and to turn your eyes away from it is to back up the bigotry, and that’s not what I, or any history teacher, should be doing in our work.”

Trump has openly built his platform on bigotry and blatant fascism. The KKK and other hate groups have endorsed him, and the number of hate crimes have sharply increased since the start of his campaign. To silence Trump's critics is to reward indifference, ignorance, and intolerance. We demand that the MVHS administration revoke Mr. Navarro's leave and publicly apologize for attempting to intimidate a respected educator. We will not stand for censorship and respectability politics.