A red university in a white city. Discourses in the debate about the politicization of the University of Joensuu between 1969 and 1975

Authors

• Alina Kuusisto Itä-Suomen yliopisto

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the perception of the politicization of the University of Joensuu in newspapers from the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. That particular period was a time of radicalism and intense debate concerning higher education policy. Party politicization was spread out to all sectors of the society and politics was seen as something necessary and natural, but also having a somewhat contradictory character. The debate in newspapers about the politicization offers a nice opportunity to examine the relationship between the university and the local community, and the changes both in science policy and within the universities during this period of criticism. The source material of the study consists of 292 newspaper articles, which have been published between 1969 and 1975 in Karjalainen, Karjalan Maa and Pohjois-Karjala. The method that we have used is discourse analysis, which in this case offers a broad practical tool for the examination of the meanings of the newspaper articles. In this study, ‘discourse’ refers to a specific perspective of the world, a way to understand and describe the University of Joensuu and the discussion about its political features.