The religious taboos always attract unwanted attention from the individual and the society. Nobody will though question, if a sixty year old woman still breathes in oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide; she still eats food; she still performs other body functions..Why are we so curious about what one does? And similarly, why should any dress provoke another person? Every individual has a right to wear what is comfortable for that person. The professor could have allowed that girl to retain her freedom of wearing a burqa, and he could have discussed his discomfort at an appropriate time. Though nobody here in India cares what one wears in public!

I wasn't interested in hearing about a 60-year old woman picking up younger men for sex. I was moved to seriously consider ceasing to donate to support public radio -- it no longer relates to my interests.

I think it's a sad state of affairs that a philosophy professor would dare ask a prospective student wearing a burqa if she'd remove it in his class -- how absurd!? I could see him asking if she could give him clues as to how she is receiving the information in his class. He hit it on the head when he realized her wearing the burqa ALLOWED her to even attend University. Perhaps his (I'm guessing) icy reception of her entering his class was the reason she didn't return. Shame!

I hope he'd treat a future student with the utmost care & respect should another wearing a burqa enter his classroom. Personally, I think he should turn in his university ID, and find another line of work. In my opinion, he cannot be that great of a teacher if he didn't instinctively handle this situation with more care, and certainly shouldn't be educating people, at least at this stage.

Jonathan Groubert here. @RGC - While I can't actually speak for professor Robshaw, he said he took issue with anything that disturbed the class or interfered with communication. I can only guess that nudity would count as a disturbance.

@anonymous in the US - Wendy can only speak from her own experience, so if she says that she got a lot of criticism for her "toy boys" then we can only assume it's true. And let's not forget that she calls attention to herself by writing and blogging about it. This no doubt attracts a wide variety of responses, some positive and others, inevitably, quite critical.

I was first prompted to write in response to the story of the poor woman in her 60's who thought she had discovered something new and wonderful and slightly scandelous -- sex. Wendy, there are a lot of women over 60 who still enjoy sex, feel no need to explain or defend nor to troll for boy-toys. The last time I heard "your life ends at 60 (or 50, or any other age) was from my grandmother, who told me that is what she had been told, and it was not true. Since I am in my 60s, that conversation was a long time ago.

But if Wendy was amusing in her naivete, the professor was distressing in his intolerance and ignorance. First, the "burqa" is not "Islamic dress" anymore than suits are "Christian" or saris are Hindu. Second, they are not Arab dress, they are Afghan, nor "costumes." I suspect the young woman dropped his class after sensing, correctly, his discomfort, judgmentalism and hostility. He knows nothing of who she was, why she wore the veil, or why she was in the class yet was prepared to go to his university administration and seek a ban on her dress. He assumed it was oppressive and involuntary. What is the difference between his efforts to force her to take it off and his assumption(but not necessarily accurate assumption) that she was forced to wear it? He should have applauded - to himself - that a young person was interested in philosophy and in learning and accepted her as one would like to think he accepted all his other students, regaardless of their dress.

An interesting dilemma, that of the philosophy professor opposed to the burqa. Most cultures have some form of "When in Rome..." Would that be an approach?

I was hoping that your interviewer would ask how the prof would feel if a woman walked into his classroom wearing something less than a burqa... like a thong bikini. What if a man OR a woman walked in naked? What then?

Is it the burqa he's opposed to, or just a violation of the status quo - in either direction?

While a person does not give up on sex, sex does not give up on the person. If we resist our passions, it is due more to their weakness than our own strength.