In another thread, Starving Artist makes this claim:
> The University of Oklahoma, no less – the largest and most highly regarded
> university in the very conservative state of Oklahoma – and virtually every
> classroom door and professor’s door we passed was absolutely covered with
> anti-right, anti-Republican and what many would consider anti-American
> cartoons and propaganda.
I replied as follows:
> I don’t believe this for a second. Let’s do a survey. Would some posters who
> spend a lot of time on a college campus walk around several departments (not
> just one, but several of them) and report on what proportion of the doors of
> the offices of professors are covered with “anti-right, anti-Republican and what
> many would consider anti-American cartoons and propaganda”? I suspect the
> proportion is actually fairly small.
Would those of you who spend a lot of time on a college campus please do this survey and settle this argument for us? Walk around several departments at your college or university and report to us what proportion of the doors of the offices of professors are covered with “anti-right, anti-Republican and what many would consider anti-American cartoons and propaganda.” Please post to this thread your results. And, please, let’s keep the discussion down to a minimum. I just want to know the result of your survey.
You’re asking people to disprove a claim about a specific university by looking at other universities/colleges? You provided no link to the original thread or to Starving Artist’s original post … what’s missing here that makes your request make sense?
The building where I work houses two departments. One is the Communications and Journalism department, and the other is the foreign language department. The communications faculty don’t have much political stuff on their doors at all. The few who have something generally have art photographs and such. The foreign language faculty has information about their home countries, since most of them are not from the US. They also have flyers about the various club activities and about study-abroad opportunities.
In all fairness, however, some faculty whose offices I pass have some political content, but it varies by department. The doors of faculties in social sciences and humanities are more likely to have political content than the doors of faculties in hard sciences (and that is often limited to the sentiment that the Bush administration is anti-science). And few, if any, education professors have political content at all. I have no data on the business faculty because I don’t spend any time there at all.
My question for Starving Artist is which department were you walking past?
I can’t think of anything I’ve seen in any university, posted in an official capacity (i.e. not anonymously on some student noticeboard) which wasn’t relevant to the subject.
I ask people to check at various colleges and universities because it may be difficult to ask for someone to check at the particular university that Starving Artist is referring to. What I want to know is if this is true in general. I don’t think it is, but the only way to find out is to do a survey of a number of universities.
I just have my office hours taped to mine, but other colleagues have “BEOWULF” posters (everytime I walk past it I say to myself, after Seinfeld’s famous whine “But I don’t WANT to be a wolf!”), “Question Authority” bumper stickers, a photo of Mookie Wilson beating out the last ball of Game Six in 1986, and other such.
I’ve known of one door that was plastered in left of left materials-- this person’s a bit of an activist. Most of it, though, tends to be on-topic for the department and academic jokes. Sometimes there will be criticism of the NEH or censorship or something but that’s not clearly partisan (I’m in the arts).
My door is covered with National Enquirer headlines, dog pictures, and New Yorker cartoons. My colleague’s door across the hall is covered with anti-Marxist, pro-Bush material.
I, too, have noticed a preponderance of Far Side cartoons at my U.
:smack: Starving Artist and I had to pick up a paper after hours last year. It just so happened to be on the same floor as the most bizarre professor ever - this guy refuses to even have a computer in his office. And yes, his door is covered in political cartoons. Almost all of the other doors had little cartoons pertaining to the professor’s specific subject. One Russian history professor has a picture of Putin in an apron with a mixing bowl, cooking something.
At my school, I’m mostly in the Foreign Language Building, although that houses the offices of professors in several departments. For the most part I only see cartoons posters for events. Last fall I occasionally saw printouts of news coverage of the riots in Paris, but that’s because most of my interaction is with French professors. The one or two times I’ve seen anything political, it’s been somewhat lighthearted (i.e. “Why dogs are republicans and cats are democrats”), and it’s inside the office rather than on the door.
Tomorrow, if I remember, I’ll take a walk around the buildings that house the political science and journalism departments and see if they have anything.
I’m not saying there aren’t any, but I have yet to see an anti-Bush signs.
Like people have said, it’s mostly cartoons, schedules, an occasional cat picture etc.
I go to other buildings, but I’m mainly in the science building and probably the most controversial posters I’ve seen are some environmental posters.
Where I work, you never see any notices on a classroom door (other than “class has been moved to room 107” and the like). There’s also nothing inside the classrooms, other than general notices for all classes. Nothing personal or political is in any classroom.
Less than half the instructors have anything at all on their door. About half of those only have course-related notices (and these are often temporary).
Of those who do have personal items on their door, it’s the science department that seems to predominate, with cartoons and joke relating to science. I don’t recall ever seeing anything political.
As for the rest, there are some politically-oriented clippings on doors of professors in the Social Sciences. I’ve never seen anything “anti-american” unless your definition of “anti-american” means “anything that criticizes US policy.” The sentiments are certainly more liberal than conservative, but the conservative professors generally are among those that don’t bother to put anything on their doors. There are no rules or guidelines about what professors can post, and I seriously doubt anyone could enforce them anyway.
In the English department at my school, which I spend most of my time in since I, y’know, study literature and all the jazz, the selections are limited to jokes about literature, jokes about linguistics, comic strips, office hours, posters about upcoming events and orgs, and other miscellaneous things. For example, the guy who teaches American Postmodern lit and specializes in post-World War II America, has a coronation photo of Queen Elizabeth II on his door. I’m not sure why, but he does.
I honestly cannot think of a single anti-Bush poster or similar object. Sometimes there are newspaper articles (articles, not opinions) posted on bulletin boards, but they are offered without comment. My college education has not been highly politicized, by any meaning of the word, though this might be because I’ve spent most of it discussing events prior to 1900. Goddamn Abe Lincoln, that dirty Republican!
The classrooms where I went never had anything on the doors except announcements about that specific room. The bulletin boards were mostly campus activities, which was a mix of left and right groups.
As for the offices, it was usually either Sid Harris cartoons (Physics dept.) or medieval art (History).
I go to a pretty leftist and politicized university (UC Santa Cruz), and the physics department faculty offices have lots of political cartoons posted outside. Some talk about the war in Iraq, some show stats on the national debt, and some are anti-Bush cartoons. Most are just depictions of how the current political atmosphere is anti-science, but some are definitely purely political. None are favorable to Bush or the GOP.
I doubt, however, that UC Santa Cruz is representitave of most American universities. I don’t remember seeing any political cartoons or commentary at all in the physics department at UC San Diego, for example. (That was years ago; I don’t know of the case now).
No. I cannot endorse a political position or candidate. I can post materials that I think are useful for making one’s decision about these topics.
On my door right now:
My office hours and contact information.
A postcard in Spanish of a PET scan of the brain on and off ecstasy.
A couple of photos of myself and my partner (who teaches occasionally in the department) in other countries or presdenting at professional conferences.
A cartoon about the Atkins diet.
A carton about motivation.
A letter supporting all students signed by about 70 members of my college.
A bumpersticker from the city human rights council supporting diversity.
Other doors in my department:
Office hours
Conference fliers
In two cases, the above-mentioned letter.
One sticker supporting a diversity plan vote at the university level.
One photo of several faculty members and students at graduation.
Lists of students and their sections.
That’s it. I’m the only one with extraneous crap.
I say again, any endorsement of a candidate or position would be illegal at this state school.
I’m a writing tutor at a community college. The doors have very few personal touches. You’re likelier to see office hours posted than anti-Bush screeds. Of course, the offices ate department offices and the individual professors have cubicles.
You provided no link to the original thread or to Starving Artist’s original post … what’s missing here that makes your request make sense?