Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
News

The Tricky Task of Teaching About Trump

By Peter Schmidt October 28, 2016
The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, speaks in September at Miami Dade College. His boundary-defying campaign has political-science professors debating how much to express their views of his candidacy in the classroom.
The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, speaks in September at Miami Dade College. His boundary-defying campaign has political-science professors debating how much to express their views of his candidacy in the classroom.Jewel Samad, AFP, Getty Images

Regardless of how Donald J. Trump fares on Election Day, he will have profoundly altered not just American politics, but also the way many American professors teach political science.

The Republican presidential nominee’s willingness to flout accepted limits of campaign rhetoric — with talk, for example, of refusing to accept defeat or of jailing Hillary Clinton — has handed political-science instructors both new discussion topics and a tough question: Should they speak out against him in the classroom?

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, speaks in September at Miami Dade College. His boundary-defying campaign has political-science professors debating how much to express their views of his candidacy in the classroom.
The Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, speaks in September at Miami Dade College. His boundary-defying campaign has political-science professors debating how much to express their views of his candidacy in the classroom.Jewel Samad, AFP, Getty Images

Regardless of how Donald J. Trump fares on Election Day, he will have profoundly altered not just American politics, but also the way many American professors teach political science.

The Republican presidential nominee’s willingness to flout accepted limits of campaign rhetoric — with talk, for example, of refusing to accept defeat or of jailing Hillary Clinton — has handed political-science instructors both new discussion topics and a tough question: Should they speak out against him in the classroom?

“This is kind of a vexing problem,” says Stephen K. Medvic, a professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College, in Pennsylvania. He says his own academic department’s experts on American politics met before this semester to discuss how to approach classroom discussions of the election, but “never came to any sort of agreement as to the best way to do so.”

Although Mrs. Clinton joins Mr. Trump in having plenty of critics as well as low public-approval ratings, political-science instructors generally do not see his Democratic opponent’s campaign as giving reason to rethink how they discuss presidential races.

Donald Trump (shown at a National Rifle Association event in Kentucky in May) has not yet announced his education platform. But like other Republican politicians in recent election cycles, he has made clear that he could do without a federal Department of Education.
Donald Trump and Higher Ed
Read more about Donald Trump’s candidacy, his election, and how he relates to academe in this collection of Chronicle articles and essays, including news and commentary about the Trump administration.
  • Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
  • The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
  • Education Dept. Opens Investigations at George Mason U.

Mr. Trump’s campaign, on the other hand, has prompted some to alter both the frameworks through which they analyze such elections and their view of their proper role in the classroom. In interviews, published articles, and messages solicited through the email lists of the American Political Science Association, they varied widely in how they are discussing Mr. Trump.

“In my view, many professors have long been able to hide behind a pretense of objectivity because the candidates of the two major parties fell within the range of viewpoints these professors have found acceptable,” says Spencer Piston, an assistant professor of political science at Boston University.

“Trump falls out of that range,” he says, “so many of them have decided to abandon this pretense.”

Out of Balance

Kathleen P. Iannello, an associate professor of political science at Gettysburg College, in Pennsylvania, has been outspoken about her willingness to tell students of her objections to Mr. Trump. In a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed, she called a Trump presidency a threat to everything liberal-arts colleges such as Gettysburg stand for. She wrote: “It is a disservice to students to attempt to provide balance when I know that balance is an offense to the truth.”

Ms. Iannello’s essay provoked outrage at Fox News and other conservative media outlets, but Gettysburg’s administration stood behind her. Officials of the American Association of University Professors say it has not fielded any complaints about faculty members’ being disciplined for expressing their political views. Although campus chalkings in support of Mr. Trump have been assailed as racist and led to vigorous free-speech debates, controversies surrounding college instructors’ statements about the presidential race have been fairly rare.

ADVERTISEMENT

Among other instructors who have strongly criticized Mr. Trump in the classroom, Mr. Piston of Boston University says he rejects the belief “that striking an exact balance between the two major parties is a worthwhile ideal.”

There must be a logical extreme at which even people in my position are morally obligated to speak out.

He argues that doing so is itself a political act because professors do not similarly feel a need to be balanced in commenting on, for example, the Nazi Party.

Christopher Devine, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, says he has been much more openly critical of Mr. Trump’s policy proposals than those of past candidates because “there must be a logical extreme at which even people in my position are morally obligated to speak out — and we had reached that point.”

ADVERTISEMENT

He admits being “deeply conflicted about using my authority to take a political stance in class,” but adds that, as a lifelong Republican with no plans to vote for Mrs. Clinton, he is “in an unusual position to do something like this.”

Seeking Neutrality

On the other side of the debate, David O’Connell, an assistant professor of political science at Pennsylvania’s Dickinson College, says that “I never comment on the appropriateness of any candidate for office,” and he believes “staying neutral and objective makes me better as a teacher and makes me better as a scholar.”

He tells students he has not even registered to vote because he wants “to maintain that distance from the political process,” and his approach assures students that “whatever they believe politically, they are not going to be judged for it.”

Staying neutral and objective makes me better as a teacher and makes me better as a scholar.

Besides, Mr. O’Connell argues, considering some of the controversies surrounding Mrs. Clinton, one could reasonably make the argument that she herself “poses a threat to democracy.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Yu Ouyang, an assistant professor of political science at Purdue University Northwest, says a need to be objective and illustrate his points through research “vastly outweighs whatever personal views I harbor against Trump’s candidacy.” He says he walks students through the possible motivations for, or damaging consequences of, Mr. Trump’s behavior, but does not seek to sway them as much as to give them the tools to make an informed choice.

Commenting Cautiously

Over all, “the notion that we should abandon objectivity is definitely not pervasive,” says Deborah J. Schildkraut, a professor of political science at Tufts University, in Massachusetts.

TRUMP-cover
The Trump Issue
How did Donald Trump’s candidacy happen? What ideas has he upended? How is academe responding? What does his candidacy mean for the future of democracy? We asked scholars from a variety of disciplines to weigh in.
  • 100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
  • The Trump Administration Appears to Have Another College President in Its Crosshairs
  • The Scientists Who Got Ghosted by the NIH

Last month, at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, she moderated a panel discussion titled “To Stay Neutral or Not When Teaching the 2016 Election: Ethical and Pedagogical Challenges.” Although the participating instructors offered a range of views, most characterized their proper classroom role as being political scientists who ask empirical questions when faced with contentious issues, she says.

ADVERTISEMENT

Many political-science instructors say they inject their opinions into discussions sparingly, to make broader points and to be honest with students about their own biases.

Mr. Medvic of Franklin & Marshall says he feels obliged to point out when Mr. Trump has made comments — such as his suggestions that he might not accept the election’s results — that “are dangerous of a democracy.”

Benjamin Knoll, an associate professor of politics at Centre College, in Kentucky, says he is “not going to pretend in class” that Mr. Trump’s disparagements of women or minority members, or his displays of disregard for the rule of law, “are normal things that come up in elections, that reasonable people can have honest differences of opinion about.”

At the same time, he says, he has emphasized “that there are legitimate reasons to support Donald Trump,” such as his position on trade. He encourages politically divided students “to assume the best in each other.”

Students are more interested in politics than they were in past years, but there is more fear and tension about putting your position out there.

Douglas Pierce, a visiting assistant professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, says he sees trying to be a model of certain behaviors, such as respectful engagement in debate with those who hold different views, as more important than trying to create the impression “that I possess all the answers.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Some instructors acknowledge that their classroom criticism of Mr. Trump may be made easier by the relative scarcity of his supporters among their own students. Many describe, as one of their biggest challenges, getting students to speak up with their own views of the candidates.

“Students are more interested in politics than they were in past years, but there is more fear and tension about putting your position out there,” says Jason Blakely, an assistant professor of political theory at Pepperdine University, in California.

Best Time, Worst Time

One point of agreement among such instructors is that Mr. Trump has offered them plenty of discussion material. Ted G. Jelen, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, calls Mr. Trump’s candidacy “a priceless pedagogical opportunity” offering “a gold mine of historical, international, and theoretical comparisons.”

In an essay in The Atlantic, Mr. Blakely of Pepperdine argued that Mr. Trump’s candidacy would force many who teach about American politics “out of comfortable habits of mind” and require them to weave references to different political traditions, such as fascism, into their lectures.

ADVERTISEMENT

Robert W. Smith, a professor of political science and public affairs at Savannah State University, in Georgia, last summer taught a course called “The Trump Factor in American Politics.” Many of his students at the historically black college expressed deep opposition to the Republican candidate but nonetheless were drawn to the class “because they want to understand the political science behind something like this,” he says.

Virginia Gray, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says she tells students “that this is indeed the dirtiest campaign in all my many years of watching campaigns, that I am sorry it has to be their first election to vote in, that they shouldn’t get discouraged. It will get better than this.”

Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.

A version of this article appeared in the November 11, 2016, issue.
Read other items in What Will Trump's Presidency Mean for Higher Ed? .
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Teaching & Learning
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Peter Schmidt
Peter Schmidt was a senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He covered affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. He is a co-author of The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America (The New Press, 2020).
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists
Joan Wong for The Chronicle
Productivity Measures
A 4/4 Teaching Load Becomes Law at Most of Wisconsin’s Public Universities
Illustration showing a letter from the South Carolina Secretary of State over a photo of the Bob Jones University campus.
Missing Files
Apparent Paperwork Error Threatened Bob Jones U.'s Legal Standing in South Carolina

From The Review

Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky
Photo-based illustration depicting a close-up image of a mouth of a young woman with the letter A over the lips and grades in the background
The Review | Opinion
When Students Want You to Change Their Grades
By James K. Beggan

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin