The president of Andover's teachers union and the ACLU of Massachusetts are accusing school officials of stifling free speech by abruptly canceling a talk by critics of the US and Israeli governments.

Tom Meyers, the union president and a social studies teacher at Andover High [Meyers is a Ron Francis true-believer. -S], said he and five other social studies teachers had invited Hassan Fouda and Joe Carr of Wheels of Justice, a group of peace activists touring the nation in a converted school bus, to speak to about 200 students on Friday.

But Meyers said the principal canceled the talk Thursday, after several people complained about the group. Wheels of Justice offi- cials came to campus Friday and asked the principal to reconsider, but a police officer told them to leave, Meyers said.

He said it was the first time the school has canceled a talk in his 21 years of teaching there. Wheels of Justice planned to speak about its criticisms of the war in Iraq and Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

"I find it highly problematic that a few people, because they don't like the ideas of the speaker, feel they have the right to shut that person down," Meyers said yesterday.

He is working with the American Civil Liberties Union to have the talk proceed.

Leonard Kesten, a Boston lawyer representing the School Committee on this issue, said school of- ficials postponed the talk to make sure the discussion would be appropriate for high school students.

The principal could not be reached, and School Superintendent Claudia Bach refused to comment.

"They have not been forbidden to speak," Kesten said. "There's some legitimate questions being raised by some parents."

Refusing to allow the speakers wouldn't violate the First Amendment, he said.

"A high school is not a soapbox in the park," he said. "Not everybody can just come in and say what they want."

But Sarah Wunsch, a staff lawyer with the ACLU of Massachusetts, wrote to Kesten last week that the First Amendment does not permit the government, including public school officials, to discriminate against speakers because of their views...

...Ron Francis, an Andover High physics teacher, helped arrange the talk in his capacity as a pro- Palestinian activist off campus. He called the school's decision "political discrimination tinged with racism."

"The Zionists, by that I mean people who support a Jewish privileged state, the Zionists don't want people to be educated about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians," Francis said.