To the editor:

Being a graduate of Kansas University, and also a former member of its faculty, I find the decline in its U.S. News rating a matter of deep concern.

Some of that decline, I believe, is the result of our state’s growing reputation as a benighted place unfriendly toward science and inhabited by an assortment of anti-intellectual bands of cheap political hacks and religious bigots.

Surely such a slide in our state’s stature can’t help but rub off on its universities and colleges.

Incidentally, KU may have damaged itself further by allowing a Kansas City area preacher to conduct a church service last weekend on the university’s main campus. That flagrant assault on our country’s commitment to separation of church and state offended me and my wife greatly.

John De Mott,

Lawrence