Teaching Politics During Hard Times
What to instruct when everything's in flux
If Donald Trump wins the presidency again, teaching political science in the United States will be easy. There will be few red lines but many vague restrictions, and there may even be some prescribed classes. The means by which such measures will be enforced will probably largely be quiet—memoranda regarding federal student-aid and grant eligibility, for instance, and greater legal recourses for students who feel their perspectives have not been heard or their professors have taught untruths. Boil these down, of course, and they are nothing more than the usual administrative measures and use of informants that any regime will employ. It will be miserable, to be clear, but I wager a great many instructors, particularly those too well established in their careers to move on, will find it tolerable enough for at least a time. (No, Florida is not yet devoid of college instructors, and that is with other states to flee to.)
The harder questions come now and if Trump somehow loses. These are questions that are harder because they involve a mixture of real uncertainty and a rather distant question of institutional or legal restraints. The real uncertainties can be stated simply. Over the past couple of years, and even in the past couple of weeks, the U.S. political system has not behaved in a way that comports with the ordinary fashion in which it “should”. That’s partly a normative “should”—how we want it to behave—and partly a positive “should”—how we would have expected it to behave on past evidence.
For some political scientists, this is a great—let’s be frank: even a profitable—time. For others of us, we have to cope with all the challenges with none of the proceeds and all of the workaday problems of writing syllabi and answering questions while all of this (gestures) is taking place. Ruat cælum, scribat syllabum.
So what’s a working political scientist to do?
Take Congress, for instance. I will be teaching a course on Congress next semester. Scenarios that were once easily dismissed hypotheticals have come to pass. A speaker was elected on multiple ballots and then dismissed in a legislative insurrection. A president was impeached and then tried following his leaving of office. The senatorial prerogative of confirming all military appointments has been weaponized. George Santos existed. And so on.
Little of this fits into the “textbook Congress”, although it should also be noted that neither Fanne Foxe nor Abscam did either. And none of it belies the fact that Congress has actually accomplished some things, as
writes in a piece I’m assigning for that course—as much to remind myself as the students.And yet! The dysfunctions of Congress probably ought to take center stage, especially given that rulings on issues like Chevron have put the legislative branch’s processes more squarely back into the bloodstream of the body politic. But we don’t really have a good process of talking about how things get stuck, not least because the types of folks who teach and the types of folks who write textbooks—and now I’m not just talking about Congress—almost always, inevitably, incline toward a form of defensive institutionalism. Yes, but beyond the headlines and the viral posts, things are really happening, everyone, very much including myself, says.
Such bromides may have always had a tinge of self-deception, although I genuinely don’t think so—cynicism is the defense mechanism of the irresponsible, and sincerity is the only way to counter such poisons. But these days such claims it uneasily with the observable health of the republic. One should always bear in mind the shifting baselines that color our perceptions of what’s normal. Scholars older than me often implicitly take the 1980s, or even the 1970s, as the baseline; my political perceptions are still shaped by the late 1990s, and the post-9/11 world still sometimes appears a temporary departure from that mix; and my students have only known the Trump era of politics (yes, it’s been nine years since he descended the gilded escalator).
Taking that into account, however, the changes and upheavals are no longer working on generational time but pretty much on a weekly schedule. (Hey, kids, want to learn about the 25th amendment? We might get to see all its major clauses kick in during my summer class!) This isn’t a “polycrisis” or an “omnishambles”—it’s now business as unusual.
The irony is that even though these developments make the textbook examples harder to relate to, they make the core concepts of political science—representation, power, interest, identity, regime types, you name it—vastly more relevant than they’ve ever been. The United States is no longer exempt from history or the fundamental forces of politics. All the potential of politics is immanent.
Or, to paraphrase the guy from the greatest paean to America ever made: the last twenty-four months have been really exciting.
Tomorrow, we celebrate our Independence Day.