Professor William Matthew McCarter, Southwestern Illinois College, writing in Academe Blog: “The word (professor) comes from profitēri—to declare openly, to vow, to stake your life on a claim. Socrates professed that the unexamined life isn’t worth living; Athens sentenced him to death by poison for impiety and corruption of the young. Copernicus professed heliocentrism; the Catholic Church might have burned him alive if he had not died of natural causes. Professing was once hazardous.” (Now it is … again.). Read the full commentary here.