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On a College Campus: One Professor’s Approach to the Day After the Vote
I do not tell my students for whom I will vote. I do not try to lead them to my political positions either, even though I teach history, which can be inherently political. One result is that my students–both conservative and progressive–often assume I share their ideology and talk to me as if their positions are my positions. I am very proud of this because it means I am pretty even-handed in my approach to the past though I often challenge all of their positions. No one on campus apart from fellow faculty ever knew I was Never Trump.
Even so, on the day after the election I made a speech to each of my classes.
I told my students some of them were happy with the results. They should be gracious in victory. I hope the new president-elect reaches their expectations. Some of them were unhappy with the results. They should understand this is part of participating in a democratic-republic. I hope the new president-elect exceeds their expectations.
Either way, we accept results. Then when politicians disappoint us, we vote in different elections.
I also asked them to think a bit deeper about what protestors in our city might want when marching against Trump. Were they telling the voters who supported him that they have no right to their opinions? That the results should be overturned despite the fact that Trump won decisively in the Electoral College?
If citizens want to accept only the results with which they agree in any given election but overthrow the results that go against their desires, they do not really want to live in a democratic-republic. They want to be in a totalitarian state with themselves set up as the totalitarians.
Some students nodded. Some continued to look shell-shocked. No one had a comment or a question.
Then I changed subjects and taught them about WWII, which is what I’m paid to do.
I would not have dreamed of canceling classes. There’s no crying in baseball or politics. At least there shouldn’t be.
Goodness gracious.
Published in General
Well done. I suspect you outed yourself as unfit for the ruling class of the inevitable future, though.
Can you teach me? One of my professors started class by describing her reaction to the result, assuming we would all agree with her.
Oh, my. I hope not. Though I did get a recent review in which a kid said the only “problem” with me is that I am “openly pro-US.” (I teach US History.)
Siiiigggggghhhhhhh.
Annoying, isn’t it?
I LOVE your name.
Very well said. The left-wing protesters in Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, etc. should be happy that the majority of elections they can vote in – for seats like city council, mayor, state legislature, U.S. House of Representatives – go to people on their side. Some of us live in areas where we haven’t voted for a winning candidate in a decade.
Don’t I know it. I live in Austin, the blueberry in the tomato soup. I never get my way. And protestors didn’t care at all when they messed up traffic.
Followed your link over. Very well said – and I hope your actions made a large number of parents happy.
Thanks for following the link. The thing is I’m not sure parents hear about these sorts of speeches at all.
I posted what I said only because I want this community to know that higher education isn’t all insane. Professors are often professional. Students aren’t all idiots either. When you treat them like adults, they tend to act that way.
Granted…. I don’t teach in an Ivy League school. ?
Very good and thanks for modelling the proper response to a lost/ won election in a democratic republic for your students: grace in victory and acceptance (at least) in defeat.
Thank you for giving our youth a little lesson in constitutional government. If only more of your colleagues across the country were willing to impart similar wisdom.
Thanks, Cato. I’m not going to lie. I don’t think there are a lot of conservatives in academia… something that endlessly puzzles me. However, I also believe that you don’t hear about rational reactions to things like this that happen in thousands of classrooms across the country. That wouldn’t be news, right?
I would hope most students had at least one teacher who acted like I did.
I wonder why professors feel a need to discuss the election at all.
Outstanding post !
Every high school teacher and college professor in the country should have been explaining or signaling this attitude about the election to students.
A lot of them really failed to make decent use of a ” teachable moment”.
You have got to be kidding. Anyway good job.
We paint with too broad of a brush when we talk about academia, making the same mistakes that the left makes when they talk about those evil Republicans.
One of my very progressive colleagues in my university history department expressed as a major concern post election how to talk about the results without alienating those students who voted for Trump.
That said, conservative profs often inadvertently “out” themselves by being evenhanded.
Where do you teach, if I may ask?
Not to mention that you are an American.
Ha ha.
Your magnanimity toward the protestors is noble but misplaced. I made this point to a student at UC Berkeley who told me straight up that my candidates should not win because I–and them–are hideous, evil people whose ideas have no place in a modern, progressive society. As a conservative in California, I fully expect to be shipped off to Manzanar some day for re-education.
Ha. Their lack of self-awareness is stunning. They actually don’t even see that they’ve become what they used to claim to be fighting against.
Grace in victory, class in defeat.
The problem with everybody getting a participation trophy is that nobody learns how to suck it up and rub some dirt on it.
to heck with that rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition.
I think you missed my point, because I wasn’t being magnanimous at all (not that I mind someone thinking my intentions are noble). I think the protestors are behaving like a bunch of babies.
In my case I discussed the election in the manner stated because I teach history. If you don’t occasionally note that major events now are shaping tomorrow, kids feel as if yesterday doesn’t matter, which is ludicrous.
That’s true.
There’s a reason I don’t use my actual name on this website–per @randyweivoda ‘s experiences, I understand having opinions is for people with tenure :) –but a small liberal arts university and a community college in TX. The first is very expensive. The second, obviously, isn’t. Therefore, I have a wide range of students with different backgrounds, different nationalities, different levels of both money and ambition.
We hear about places like UC Berkeley and Yale all the time. But most students in the United States do not graduate from these places. This is something that is often lost in the discussion.
Even so, I definitely have very earnest students who have often not thought through exactly what “social justice” means to them. I think this is part of being 18-22 years old. However, education should be about thinking.
Not joking on “pro-US” critique. I am though. Without apology. ;)
Well said. I have been teaching medical students for 15 years and have been scrupulous about avoiding politics. A few years ago, I was rewarded for this by being asked by a student group in favor of a single payer national health plan to be their faculty advisor. They had no idea that I vigorous opposed such a system. I had expressed some desire for health care reform but they had not asked what form.
More recently, as Obamacare imploded, I have seen much less interest in single payer as I believe they are learning to be worried about the implications for their own careers.
What did you do?
I’m curious. When you teach WW2 or any other major event, do you put in a spoiler alert and request that your students not to spoil the ending for the uneducated morons who might have come out of a public school?
Ha. I’d just like to see their faces when they learn Hitler was a socialist.
Lawdy, Metalhead… I don’t blame kids for not being taught things. I blame their past teachers. And I blame Texas for caring just a little too much about football… I don’t know how to fix this though, so I just try to do the best job I can. Plus… I use pictures. ;)
It’s not just Texas. A friend in Illinois was a college English teacher. He quit in frustration at the sheer numbers of kids who came out of high school unable to string two sentences together.