Today we have a third installment in a spontaneous series on teaching political science in the time of Trump, written by William R. Wilkerson, Professor of American Government and Politics at SUNY-Oneonta. Previous posts in this series are here and here.
I too have struggled. My focus so far has been to spend more class time on two things: 1) the founding and how it informs what is happening in American politics today, and 2) on what political science, and social science generally, can tell my students about the rise of President Trump. I agree that neutrality is important. I need to be able to potentially reach all my students, regardless of their position on issues or their party affiliation. Three syllabi that helped guide my teaching this semester:
- The original Trump 101 syllabus from the June 19, 2016 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Social science in the Age of Trump, by Dan Hirschman.
- Trump syllabus 3.0, by Nyron Crawford and Matt Wray.
I also found the following blog posts, mostly by political scientists, particularly useful in putting together readings for students on various topics:
- Trump is the first modern Republican to win the nomination based on racial prejudice, Michael Tesler, The Monkey Cage, August 1, 2016.
- The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support, Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, May 43, 2016.
- 19 Things We Learned from the 2016 Election and 5 more things I learned from the 2016 election by Andrew Gelman from his blog Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference and Social Science posted on December 8 and December 9, 2016.
- Women Also Know Stuff about the 2016 election, a follow up by Julie Azari to Gelman, Vox, December 9, 2016.
- Could Bernie Sanders Have Won the White House? What About Joe Biden? by Seth Masket on Pacific Standard, November 14, 2017.
- Slides that include a lot of data on the 2016 election from Brendan Nyhan, The 2016 election: What political science and the data can tell us so far.
- Everything mattered: lessons from 2016’s bizarre presidential election, by David Roberts, Vox, November 30, 2016.
I found all of these resources during the winter break. I am sure that more good, accessible social science has emerged since the semester started. Do you have links to share?
Links to the full Teaching Trump series:
- https://activelearningps.com/2017/02/01/teaching-trump/
- https://activelearningps.com/2017/02/02/teaching-trump-2/
- https://activelearningps.com/2017/02/04/teaching-trump-3/
- https://activelearningps.com/2017/02/07/teaching-trump-4-the-view-from-outside/
- https://activelearningps.com/2017/02/16/teaching-trump-through-a-human-rights-lens/
Quick correction: It’s “Dan Hirschman” and I was the sole author of the scatterplot syllabus. Thanks for the link, and especially for pointing to the 3.0 Syllabus from Public Books which I hadn’t seen.
Fixed! Apologies for the error and thank you for the correction.