“This is particularly true, of course, of African American students,” Foley wrote. “With few exceptions, all the black students in my classes over the years have appeared very uncomfortable when I’ve discussed these matters at the beginning of the unit. And I never want to rationalize ‘Huck Finn’ to an angry African American mom again as long as I breathe.”

He also thinks “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee’s classic about racial inequity in the Deep South, and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” should be removed from the curriculum for similar reasons.