If by “political,” Fish only meant base partisan politics, then his claims wouldn’t be that controversial. But he must mean more than that since he criticizes curriculums that don’t “just stick to the facts” and that stray into things like discussions of social justice, feminism, the environment, etc.

So both Che Guevara and the Cameron Diaz handbag examples are interesting here: Diaz, if I recall this story, wasn’t trying to make a political point; she just thought she had a cool handbag. It was the Peruvians who perceived her as making a political point, one endorsing the communist rebels who have been living in the jungle down there and occasionally kidnapping people and such (they just let a bunch go the other day, btw).

For me, both this example and the example of Che Guevara t-shirts being worn only as a fashion statement again illustrate the problem of politics here, and it is a problem that Fish can’t get out of, I don’t think: everything, including the mere existence of publicly supported institutions of higher learning that employ professors, is potentially political.

If you hadn’t given that away, I’d actually have to wonder. There are a lot of kids out there in Che T-shirts who don’t know any more about him than that he was “revolutionary”, and we saw what happened to Cameron Diaz and her red star handbag in Peru.

Is the poster of Che Guevara in my office political? I never thought of it that way. I just think he’s cute.

Perhaps associating politics with Basquiat and Munch is a bit of a reach, but it is not impossible. Basquiat was a street kid and a graffiti artist who was brought to prominence (in part) by that “weirdo” artist Andy Warhol and the art critic Rene Ricard (and all those art critics are a bunch of liberals, right?), and who set a terrible life example with his excessive drug use and eventual early death from an overdose. Munch’s life wasn’t quite as short and drugged as Basquiat’s, but he too was associated with anarchism, a sort of bohemian/”free love” lifestyle, and his art was at different times in his life very controversial. It would be possible for someone “in the know” and with rather strident politics to see these things not as toys or as mere decoration but rather as being inherently liberal.

But suppose I had a big poster of Jesus in my office, or suppose I taught and presented myself around campus wearing a giant cross– and btw, there is a faculty member who I don’t really know at EMU who does exactly that. It would probably be easier for me to associate this with a religious message that suggests a certain kind of conservative politics; is that what Fish means?

The sort of examples of a politicized writing classroom that Fish is pointing to (I think) are classes where there is required reading on issues having to do with environmentalism, race, gender, etc. Is this what Fish means by politics? Are these things inherently political and/or partisan?

I could go on, but my point is simply that it would be nice to know what Fish means by “politics” so I could find out if I agree with him on this or not.

What about your office signals “not conservative”? I don’t see anything in your description that would strike myself, a libertarian-to-conservative person, as out of place in the office of a member of the Federalist Society, a Chicago economist, or in the offices of the National Review.

Everyone listens to rock music. I know conservatives and libertarians who listen to Bruce Cockburn, Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Ice Cube – because those acts have got good songs, and they’re the songs they grew up listening to. They also listen to funk, hip-hop, jazz, blues, R&B, house, trance, drum ‘n’ bass and electro. The only music that would make me immediately assume the listener wasn’t conservative would be … acoustic folk music that could be identified as modern rather than pre-WWII? Though big-sound modern country would probably signal someone as a conservative.

It’s not your Scream doll; I’ve got one myself; it’s a typical office toy. And in my experience, an office full of toys is no indication of the occupant’s politics, just of his or her nerdiness and lack of pompousness.

Is it the prints? I’m more a “regular museum-goer” than someone who follows art, but I know Basquiat and Munch as artists well enough to match their names to their famous works, and I’m not aware that either of them was emblematic of any particular politics. Do you expect that they’re a signal as clear as a Che icon, or an NRA poster? If so, how many of the visitors to your office do you think are aware of that?