College Conservatives Want Left-Leaning Art Balanced or Booted
by Jim Brown
February 18, 2004
(AgapePress) - Republican students at Lehigh University are objecting to the content and location of a controversial art exhibit in the school's political science department.At issue is a five-photo exhibit by artist Larry Fink called "The Forbidden Pictures: A Political Tableau." One of the images features a person who resembles President George W. Bush groping the breast of a laughing woman in lingerie. Fink, a photography professor and avowed socialist, has likened the image to Bush stealing the 2000 presidential election.
Neil Hoffman, president of Lehigh's chapter of the College Republicans, considers the display inflammatory. "Such an exhibit is detrimental to students of conservative values because, while the exhibit does not enforce people's minds or make them become liberal or conservative, it does have a negative effect on those of conservative values by demeaning the president and his party, especially by the artist's statement," Hoffman says.
The university claims the display of Fink's art on Lehigh's campus is not intended to endorse any particular political agenda or point of view or necessarily to represent the opinions of the administration. However, the exhibit is currently housed in a high-traffic gallery located in a Maginnes Hall, which is also home to the College of Arts and Sciences and several other academic departments, including Modern Languages and Literature, Religion Studies, International Relations, and Political Science.
Official disclaimers aside, the College Republicans' leader believes the photos are out of place in an academic building and should be moved to a more neutral, non-partisan gallery on campus. Hoffman decries the university's placement of the display, which some might view as an implicit endorsement of the biased presentation, and he feels it should in all fairness be balanced by opposing viewpoints.
"We don't see an opposite view anywhere else in the building," Hoffman says, "or in the university for that matter. We don't see shining pictures of President Bush or the Republican Party; we see anti-Bush photos on the professor's doors. We see this exhibit. We see speakers that attack the president or the Iraq war -- things of that sort. And we're really not getting the opposite at all."
So far university administrators are refusing to move the display. Hoffman's group has sent letters to members of the university's Board of Trustees in hopes they will meet to discuss an alternative location for the controversial exhibit.
