The NY Times has an Op-Ed piece by Stanley Fish on academic freedom and lecturing.
Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.
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There is a world of difference, for example, between surveying the pro and con arguments about the Iraq war, a perfectly appropriate academic assignment, and pressing students to come down on your side. Of course the instructor who presides over such a survey is likely to be a partisan of one position or the other — after all, who doesn’t have an opinion on the Iraq war? — but it is part of a teacher’s job to set personal conviction aside for the hour or two when a class is in session and allow the techniques and protocols of academic research full sway.
I do become somewhat political in my lectures, but I try to present reasoned debate, rather than position statements. The main reason I do is to bring the subject of psychology into our real everyday lives. I am always careful to present it as the topic of academic inquiry and to demonstrate critical thinking.
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