Years ago, The Jewish Press ran a regular feature called Halachic Corner with Rav Hershel Schachter. Elliott Resnick asked the questions to R’ Schachter.
One of those exchanges stuck in my head, but I have not been able to find the original. The old interview was deleted from the Jewish Press website, and the issue PDFs that were once on Issuu are gone too.
Therefore, this is my reconstruction from memory. The question, as I remember it, was whether there was anything wrong with learning a neutral subject, such as mathematics, from a professor who was an atheist.
Rav Schachter’s answer was that the problem was not the mathematics. The problem was the professor. Even if he was teaching math, the professor could still influence the students, either during class or outside of it. He could drei a kop on impressionable young people and turn them into atheists too.
That was the part I remembered because the example was mathematics. You would think math is math and therefore is inherently neutral. Two plus two does not become kefirah because of who is standing at the blackboard.
But Rav Schachter’s point, as I understood it, was that students do not only learn the material. They also learn from the person teaching it. A professor can shape how students think, what they respect and what they dismiss, even when the official subject has nothing to do with religion.
I do not remember Rav Schachter’s exact words, and I may be missing part of the discussion. Until the original article turns up, this should be treated only as my recollection of a deleted Jewish Press interview.