PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE GUNS AND VAGINAS: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ON FREE SPEECH AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN OKLAHOMA David Deming School of Geology and Geophysics University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019 (ddeming @ ou. edu) In February of 2000, the author was charged with twenty-five counts of sexual harassment at the University of Oklahoma for writing a letter to the editor that compared the misuse of a gun to the misuse of a vagina. In his opinion, the University of Oklahoma administration and faculty exhibited virtually no support for principles of free speech and academic freedom. After he had been subjected to a hearsay smear campaign and secret trial, the charges filed against the author were dismissed when attorneys from a public interest law group threatened a First Amendment lawsuit. Introduction I am associate professor of geology and geophysics at the Uni- versity of Oklahoma in Norman. In February of 2000, ! was charged with sexual harassment after publishing a "letter to the editor" in the campus newspaper that some people found offensive. My letter was written as a rebuttal to a column on gun control by Joni Kletter, a columnist at the YaleDaily News. Kletter wrote that "easy access to a handgun allows everyone in this country .... to quickly and eas- ily kill as many random people as they want." My critique was terse. I pointed out that Kletter's "easy access" to a vagina enabled her to "quickly and easily" have sex with "as many random people" as she wanted. I furthermore said that her possession of an unregis- tered vagina equipped her to work as a prostitute and spread vene- real disease. I closed by expressing the hope that Ms. Kletter was 43