Exactly what I was talking about

Here is what is scrawled on M’s office door, the TA with whom I had an email spat regarding my editorial about politicizing faculty office doors.

Freedom: What a country has when it forces its military to commit mass genocide while convincing its citizens that the victims are less than humans. The rhetoric behind the war on terror should scare you.

The class she teaches is JMC 101. In that class all sorts of current events are discussed. When I TA'ed for that class one of my students had a friend who was killed on duty in Iraq. Imagine if that girl had to go to M about a paper dealing with the Iraq war coverage, which was what one of the papers in the course dealt with. How can any student, most likely a freshman, not feel coerced or intimidated by such a one-sided, strident statement? The office is shared by a number of students. I assume M wrote it, but nevertheless all of the occupants are responsible for what is posted on their office door.

Reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements about the war in Iraq and the war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. I have that argument with my father and mother all the time. But this is beyond the pale. I'm tempted to talk to the department head, or at least the instructor for the class, about this travesty.

Correction:

M doesn’t teach JMC 101. Incidentally the lecturer for the class she does TA has been informed and is not very happy about M’s strident agitprop. A talking-to may be in the forecast.