Liberal teacher forces views on High School students.

Harvey and many of his students say the investigator misportrayed his teaching style and interviewed only 15 of his 172 students.

"I think the school system totally played into the hands of a right wing, fanatical group who challenged them, caught them off guard," countered John Dwyer, a fellow teacher of Harvey's at Lely High who has joined him at antiwar protests. "They are highly offended by anybody that's not in total support of putting stickers and flags on their car."

When NATO flew bombing raids over Kosovo in 1999, he asked them to consider whether the bombs had caused more deaths than Serb forces. He read them materials that questioned media reports about mass graves and ethnic cleansings.

"Nobody even noticed," Harvey said of administrators and parents. "Not a peep."

"He always said, 'Don't believe me. Find out for yourself,' " said Woodward, [a student], who collected 278 student signatures on a pro-Harvey petition. "He didn't give his side on it. He'd just throw out questions."

DeBaun said the criticisms had nothing to do with Harvey's monthly antiwar protests off campus. But Harvey notes that his troubles began with the first protest on Dec. 9.

"Lo and behold a week later I was under formal investigation."

The Harvey episode also has brought pangs of regret on the left. Dwyer, Harvey's fellow teacher at Lely, said he once ran into trouble 22 years ago as a young Collier County teacher.

He hung an antiapartheid calendar in his classroom, along with posters opposing capital punishment and supporting abortion rights, plus an ad that poked fun at the U.S. Navy.

When members of a visiting business group saw the display one day, the principal ordered him to take it down. Dwyer resisted. But as a father of four, he backed down when the school threatened to fire him.

"I've kicked myself since," he said. "I should have fought it." It is why he stands up two decades later for Ian Harvey, a man he counts as a colleague but not a friend -- a man with whom he disagrees on some issues.

On this issue, he says, his colleague is right.

When a teacher like Ian Harvey tries to facilitate discussion, he said, "It's sometimes necessary for him to say things which, taken out of context, might be easily skewed."

Amanda Woodward, a 16-year-old junior at Lely High, remembers a discussion about censorship when Harvey posited a conservative view: "He was like, 'Well, would you want your 3-year-old listening to F this and F that?"'