Post-Election, Some Professors Feel They Must Play Mediator

Jay Barth has been teaching a course on political parties and elections since 1994. Most election years, the energy level of the class died down after the November vote. Last year, it ratcheted up significantly, said Mr. Barth, who is a professor of politics at Hendrix College.

And the days after President Trump’s election, he said, “created special challenges” for him and others in the classroom.

It’s taboo as table talk and it’s eschewed at social engagements, but talking politics is increasingly viewed as an essential way to bridge the political divide and find common ground. However, it can get messy. Attempts to reconcile partisan views can dissolve into bickering.

The environment of a lecture hall can be even more fraught, as faculty members must play mediator and educator to students from a range of backgrounds. Though campus forums on politics are often held outside the classroom, some professors — like those in political science, such as Mr. Barth — can’t avoid the topic.

At the start of a new semester and a week into a new presidential administration, a few professors shared how they’re wrestling with talking politics and policy in class.

‘Feelings Are Very Raw’

As a professor of political science and philosophy at Weber State University, Leah A. Murray said she feels comfortable talking about contemporary politics. “To a certain extent, I am always discussing the election,” she said.

But Ms. Murray, who is also the democratic-engagement coordinator at the Utah institution, said her experience isn’t representative of most faculty members. In her role as coordinator, she said professors across the political spectrum have voiced concerns to her.

“Feelings are very raw,” she said. The mood is “not just ‘Hey, my team didn’t win.’”

Professors have often shown reticence to engage in politically charged conversations in class, Ms. Murray said, and this caution existed well before President Trump’s election.

Will I put off my students? How will those talks affect course evaluations? Will I stifle conversation? Questions like those are among their concerns, Ms. Murray said. Worries about tenure and promotion could deter some professors. And for many more, politics isn’t related to the curriculum in a way that makes it a common topic of conversation.

But faculty members seem even more reluctant now, she said. She’s heard liberal professors worry, “How could I talk about Trump and not make a face? How could I do this in a very measured way?”

Ms. Murray said conservative colleagues have confided in her “that they’re being treated differently, and they feel it’s because they’re perceived as Trump supporters.”

Over all, she said, many professors seem to avoid talking politics, seeing it as “poking the bear.”

Ground Rules

For some professors, the trick lies in addressing policy without politicizing it.

Thomas Arcaro, a professor of sociology at Elon University, said he’s always careful about not appearing to be “proselytizing for any particular perspective.” But, he said, race, gender and other charged topics that his “Introduction to Sociology” class deals with are best seen “in action.” His past course evaluations indicate that students appreciate that he connects classroom discussions to current events, he said.

Part of the challenge this semester, he said, lies in describing events without appearing to push one particular viewpoint. Some faculty members have to do a “bit of gymnastics,” he said, to avoid making ad hominem or partisan statements, while still pointing out rhetoric or actions that are anomalous to U.S. politics or history.

Others said they’ll discuss policy if it’s related to course content, but may not name a particular political party or individual. Some suggested tying current political events to curricula in a deliberate but natural way.

A contemporary issue like Keystone XL — a controversial extension of an oil-pipeline project from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast — could be a prelude to a lecture on geography, for example. “I wouldn’t advise just walking in and saying, ‘Today we’re supposed to be learning about geography but instead we’re going to talk about —,’” Ms. Murray said.

Mr. Barth, who is also the director of civic-engagement projects at Hendrix, said he thinks conversations are happening across disciplines about what the new administration’s policies — so far, many of them acted upon in a flurry of executive actions — mean for different fields. Others say introspection over how to address political dialogue now is largely confined to political- and social-science courses.

Ground rules can help keep conversations about politics civil. Steven Elliott-Gower, an associate professor of political science at Georgia College and State University, said some professors found it difficult not to discuss the election’s result because it was momentous.

Faculty members who did so, he said, would often preface those conversations with guidelines like not cutting others off mid-sentence.

Carly Schmitt, an assistant professor of political science at Indiana State University, taught a course on campaigns and elections in the fall and now teaches a class on leadership, ethics, and democracy.

Worried about what she saw as divisiveness in society, particularly on social media, she now enforces several policies in her classrooms: Students should avoid broad generalizations, keep conversations civil, and understand that differences of opinion are healthy for democracy. She challenges students who make statements based just on feeling or opinion, and will rein in conversations that she thinks are veering toward incivility.

“When we are interacting with other people,” she tells her students, “we are interacting to learn more, we’re not interacting just to make a point.”

Balancing ‘the Heart and the Head’

Many professors said their students aren’t coming to class seeking out politically charged conversations, but if those conversations do come up organically, they’ll deal with them.

“We need to scaffold for our students how you have these tough conversations,” Ms. Murray, the Weber professor, said. “If we don’t talk about them in a civil way, when will our students learn how to discuss them?”

Mr. Barth said he concentrates on the analytical side of politics as a counter to his students’ passion; he said it creates a balance between “the heart and the head.”

Though the new semester has just begun, he said the recent election has prompted him to think of refocusing his curriculum on broader questions: What should democracy look like? What should participation look like? Some of the more narrow topics he discussed before, he said, now seem less significant.