Michael Reeve, Trump Awakens, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mykreeve/43381966091
Every summer, I teach a graduate comparative politics course. Now that the government is snatching graduate students off the street and putting them in cages, I’ll be adding to the course more material about dictatorships and how to fight them.
Two books immediately come to mind:
How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, by Ece Temelkuran, documents the rise of populist demagoguery and subsequent democratic disintegration in Turkey, where today hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor.
From Dictatorship to Democracy, by Gene Sharp, is a blueprint for dismantling a repressive regime through nonviolent resistance. The book has guided pro-democracy movements in countries as divergent as Serbia, Indonesia, and Egypt.
There are also the sources listed in this blog’s Teaching Trump series from 2017, many of which are, unfortunately, still relevant.
I’ll be disclosing my many potential biases on this topic at the beginning of the course. Here are a few of them:
Marriage to an immigrant who happens to be Arab and a devout Muslim.
Being friends for decades with many other people who came to the USA from different parts of the world, some of whom are resettled refugees.
Witnessing first-hand what life can be like under authoritarian governments.
Having respect for human rights and the rule of law.
In the Fall 2024 semester, students from 11 different universities across Pennsylvania (including ours: Penn State and Susquehanna University) conducted exit poll surveys for the presidential election. Each university independently organized their students and sent them to precincts to survey voters regarding their vote choice, policy preferences, and other important issues. This active learning project gave students the opportunity to gain real-world experience, insight into the electoral process, and practice analyzing survey data. Below we discuss the preparation, the exercise, and the pedagogical use during and after.
In the Fall of 2024, I introduced a field experiment project into my Campaigns and Elections course. Students set up a basic experiment that followed campaign communications across two congressional races during the 2024 elections in the United States. During the semester, they collected original data, analyzed findings, and presented them to the class.
Goals
The purpose of this experiment was to have students analyze patterns in campaign communication to better understand electoral dynamics. My teaching objective, however, was to demonstrate how social science thinking differs from punditry, journalism, or personal viewpoints.
Specifically, I wanted students to approach the 2024 election cycle as political scientists with research questions rather than as partisans armed with ready-made talking points. Conducting a field experiment demonstrates that scholars do not begin with answers. Instead, we use transparent and systematic methods to examine evidence that can support verifiable claims.
My other hope was that the hands-on process of designing and implementing a field experiment would encourage maximum buy-in and classroom participation.
I am writing this post more so as a brief reflection about how I approached speaking to my classes today (11/6) after the results of the US presidential (any many other) elections. This post may be rough and brief, but I think for those of you who are teaching Political Science (broadly) or engaging with your students in some capacity today or in the next few days about the US election, this might be interesting to consider. This post might not be relevant anymore next week – or it could help in general facilitate a conversation about any “touchy” current issues that we feel necessary to clue our students into.
The USA’s impending descent into fascist dictatorship might have some of you thinking about revising your fall semester courses. In 2017, we published a “Teaching Trump” series (scroll down to the bottom of the linked page to access all posts). Here are some additional resources that I highly recommend:
Jean-Paul Faguet, “The Lessons of Bolivia,” Journal of Democracy 29, 4 (October 2018). Social cleavage theory; the disintegration of previously stable political party systems.
George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, 2013. Profiles the disintegration of the economic engines of America’s middle class over a thirty-five-year period.
Ben Rhodes, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, 2021. The scourges unleashed by the USA upon the world — unfettered capitalism, social media, and militarism — have now been weaponized against it.
Milan W. Svolik, “Polarization versus Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 30, 3 (July 2019). Elected leaders have an incentive to persuade voters to “trade off democratic principles for partisan interests.”
Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, 2019. The step-by-step recipe for establishing an authoritarian regime.
Today’s guest post comes from Dr. Brooklyn Walker at Hutchinson Community College, Kansas!
This semester, on the first day of class, I asked my introductory American Government class to generate a list, in teams, of how they come across American government and politics. They couldn’t think of a single example. I concluded that many of my students haven’t thought about themselves in terms of politics. They lack political efficacy. They are turned off by polarization and negative affect. And they don’t notice the role government and politics play in their everyday lives.
But years after they graduate, I want my students to be aware of their political environment and equipped to engage it. I wasn’t convinced that exposing students to interesting information or ideas would address the problems I was seeing. Instead, I wanted to help my students learn about themselves as citizens, develop citizenship skills, and see government in action. I developed Project Citizen to advance these three goals, and to create a bridge for my students between the classroom and the ‘real world.
Project Citizen is the overarching title for a set of five assignments distributed throughout the semester. It comprises approximately a third of the semester’s total points, signaling that that civic engagement is a priority in the class.
Students begin the semester by writing a brief introductory essay (400-500 words). This essay reflects on a class reading making the case for civic engagement, and they describe what an ideal citizen does and knows. Then they detail their own civic engagement and the hurdles they face in becoming the ideal citizen they described. This essay forms the foundation for the remainder of the projects and marks the baseline of each student’s civic engagement.
Students then select three projects from a menu, each of which results in a 500-word essay. Each prompt is linked to a topic we cover in class, and the prompts are intended to advance the three main goals. Giving students choices is a core feature of Project Citizen. Some of the prompts may be triggering for students. For example, a Black male in my class asked if he had to talk to a law enforcement officer, and another student with social anxiety was worried about contacting a local civil rights group. Project Citizen encourages students to choose prompts that take them out of their comfort zone but gives students space to avoid prompts that they feel could be harmful. Finally, choice promotes equity. Many students, especially those with lower socioeconomic statuses, do not have easy access to someone who’s running for office or reliable transportation to civic meeting spaces.
Problem
Goal
Relevant Prompts (course topic in parentheses)
“Don’t know who they are as citizens”
Learn about self as citizen
Take a survey to identify your party identification and ideology (Public Opinion); Make your voting plan (Participation); Develop a media diet plan after comparing news articles (Media)
“No efficacy, intimidated by polarization”
Practice political skills, including political discussions
Talk to a police officer about the role of civil liberties in their work (Civil Liberties);Talk to a local civil rights group about their work (Civil Rights); Interview someone who’s run for office about the role of money in politics (Elections); Complete an action recommended by an interest group (Interest Groups); Contact a member of Congress (Congress)
“Don’t know how government actually pops up in their lives”
See politics / government in action
Attend a local meeting (Constitution and Federalism); Identify party linkage strategies via party communications (Political Parties); Analyze presidential communications via inaugural addresses (Presidency); Observe a courtroom (Judiciary);Evaluate bureaucracies after speaking with a recipient of state or federal services (Bureaucracy)
Finally, at the end of the semester, students revisit their initial essay. They annotate that essay with 8 comments, reflecting on what they learned from class readings, lecture, discussion, and their projects. Their comments can introduce new information or examples to support or refute their initial points, reflect on how they have changed through the semester, or describe their next steps for developing their citizenship skills.
While most of the students’ Project Citizen work occurs independently, projects are woven into class periods. I mention project prompts during lectures, pointing out information that may be relevant or questions the project may help them answer. Students learn from each other during a peer review session (for which they also earn Project Citizen points). I print copies of the assignment rubric and students provide feedback on two peers’ essays, using the rubric as a framework. After projects are submitted, we dedicate class time to discussing student experiences and connecting those experiences to course material.
Some semesters I’ve integrated badges, which are essentially extra credit opportunities, into Project Citizen. Badges encourage students to take more ownership of their learning experience. Some of the badges I’d used include:
Jack-of-all-Trades Badge: complete one project for each of the three goals
Design Your Own Adventure Badge: create your own project prompt (in consultation with me)
10,000 Foot View Badge: complete a meta-learning worksheet about a project
Second Chances Badge: revise and resubmit a project
Collaborator Badge: complete a Project Learning prompt with a co-author
Ultimately, students have reported positive experiences with Project Citizen. One student said that Project Citizen “let me build up my ideas about who I am and about my beliefs. I got to explore what my point of view is and I learned things about myself I never knew.” Another appreciated seeing the government in action. After attending a local meeting, they commented that, “Normally people wouldn’t go out of their way, but Project Citizen gave me exposure to see how my community is run.”
Project Citizen is constantly evolving, so I look forward to your reflections and comments.
Spoiler alert: Not really, especially as there’s only a couple of ways things could go in a film like this. But if you’re feeling sensitive, then watch it first.
I’ll admit to having been a bit confused about this film, since my timeline had some very divisive opinions about it, when the film itself is about the perils of divisive opinions. Stupid irony.
Anyway, with the time on my hands to invest yet more of it into American cultural products, the obvious question – apart from my daughter’s query about how the hell they got Timothée Chalamet in it – is whether it tells us anything useful for our classes. Since The Matrix or Independence Day are now apparently ‘too dated’.
For the record, I’m on Team “curate’s egg” on the qualities of Don’t Look Up (DLU): it’s got lots of engaging comments to make on The State of Things, but it’s much weaker on any kind of systemic critique of modern American society.
And it is a very American piece: evidently planet-destroying asteroids don’t necessarily produce complex patterns of deep international or global coordination. Or maybe the location budget wasn’t so big.
If there is something that could well be taking into a classroom discussion, then it’s the relationship between science and politics, most obviously with man-made climate change, but also with Covid. Objective facts are one thing, but their representation is another, while their appropriation for other ends is different once again. DLU simplifies this by having one big fact – the big rock thing is going to hit the Earth – that (seemingly) shouldn’t in doubt, and yet is annexed to a number of personal projects by assorted cast members. If students can follow that line, then the path to better engagement with the multiple pathways and dynamics of climate change or the much more conditional and evolving understanding of SARS-CoV-2.
Part of that discussion needs to centre around the disconnect between knowledge of some fact or facts and any question of what to do about that knowledge: DLU has only a limited engagement with this, most obviously when lovely Leo asks the camera how we’ve got to a place where we can’t even agree that a giant asteroid heading to Earth is A Bad Thing, but there’s scope here for debate about one gets from agreeing just that point to doing something.
Ultimately, the issue rests on narratives and interests that are grounding in a range of factors that spread far beyond any objective calculation. The film provides a number of examples of both rational (Bash’s big plans) and less-than-rational (in Bojo Mambo’s) responses to information.
Beyond this major theme, it’s slim pickings, I’d argue.
As a middle-aged, white Professor who does a bit of media, I took rather more note of Leo’s transmutation from hyper-anxious sad-sack to trim Voice of Reason than I should, especially as I’ve never noticed any of the other effects of this change. You might also note the marginalisation of women aspect too. However, as critique of how others see academics it might be of interest to a communication class. That said, the scene of the grad class working on the calculations did stray close to being included in any update of my previous comments on screen representations of teaching.
Similarly, any reflection on the relationship between politics and Big Tech is made difficult by the very personalised relationship between the President and Bash’s Peter. Moreover, Mark Rylance doesn’t seem to have decided if Peter is Steve Jobs or James Halliday or even the BFG, so that’s also a bit frustrating. As is the totally unexplained course of the deflection mission.
So yes, there’s some material here, but it’s not really shaping up to be a classic of the genre. Unlike The Lego Movie.
(Photo credit: Joanne H. Lee, Santa Clara University)
Today
we have a guest post about teaching the research process by Anne Baker,
assistant professor of political science at Santa Clara University. She can be
reached at aebaker [at] scu [dot] edu.
Getting students to use academic
articles for research papers can be a challenge. In my experience, many students,
even those in upper-level courses, are not familiar with search engines such as
JSTOR, Lexus Nexus, or Political Science Complete. And if students do happen to
use Google Scholar, they frequently rely on excerpts from sources instead of
entire articles that they might not have access to. So, what can be done to replace
these habits with better practices?
In my advanced writing course
on the presidency, I have developed a class activity which provides students
with skills they will need if they are going to successfully locate and utilize
academic references for their research papers. First, I want them to be able to
use the library’s website to access search engines. Second, I want them to
understand that research is an iterative process. Sometimes you don’t find what
you need for a variety of reasons and you should be able to determine what
those reasons are—whether its human error, the need for a wider search net, or that
no one has written on the topic (this last possibility always surprises the
Google generation). Third, students need to become acquainted with the
literature on the presidency, including the subfield’s primary journal, by discovering
how research practices in political science have changed overtime, even in a
subfield which remains largely qualitative.
I have students work in pairs
and I provide them with two search terms related to the institution of the presidency (e.g. signing statements, executive orders, oath of office).
I pick the search terms carefully knowing that some topics have no
scholarship and represent dead ends and others have later but not earlier
scholarship or vice versa. The first step of the activity provides instructions
about how to first locate JSTOR on the library’s website and then how to access
Presidential Studies Quarterly using JSTOR’s
advanced search options. Helpfully, for the purposes of this activity, JSTOR
only has copies of the journal until 2000. To access later copies, students
have to use the Wiley database, which students have to figure out how to find.
For each search term, I have students locate one article published in the last few years and then another for 1995-2000—a total of four articles. Next, students identify the research question and method the authors used, noting whether it is qualitative or quantitative, the sources of data regardless of method, the type of analysis (e.g. text, interviews, statistical), and the date of publication. After they have their four articles and perform this analysis, I ask them to compare the results of both searches. Finally, we have a class discussion in which we explore road blocks and challenges encountered and review how the field has changed over time.
I have found that this activity makes students more likely to cite academic articles in their final research papers and use them more effectively to support their arguments. Students also exhibit a much better understanding of the subfield and are more likely to use the other search engines that they encountered while on the library’s website. And they learn that research takes time and requires shifting your strategies to find the information you need.
Today we have a guest post from Andre Audette,
assistant professor of political science at Monmouth College. He can be reached
at aaudette [at] monmouthcollege [dot] edu.
It’s about time that I come clean publicly: last semester I
was arrested not once, but twice, at the start of class. My crime? Teaching
constitutional law.
Students in my Civil Liberties course were wrapping up a unit
on criminal procedure, which includes case law involving proper arrests and
interrogations. To give them firsthand experience, I asked for two volunteers
to arrest me and then achieve a conviction without using any unconstitutional
evidence.
Before class started, I discretely asked one student to watch
over my snack-sized bag of “drugs” (oregano). At the time of my arrest I was
handcuffed (using fake handcuffs that were easy to get out of) and brought over
to the interrogation room where I was placed under a portable clip lamp I had
concealed in a canvas bag.
Throughout the simulation I did not make the arrest easy. I
admitted to the crime before my rights were read, after which I vigorously denied
the charges. I pretended not to understand my rights while accusing the
officers of violating them, signed the rights waiver under a pseudonym, asked
for and then rescinded my request for a lawyer, and pretended to be under the
influence of mind-altering substances. Each of these represents one of the
surprisingly common complications in criminal procedure.
After the simulation concluded, I asked the class to determine
which evidence could be used against me in a court of law. The results were . .
. murky. The “easy” constitutional interpretation of Miranda v. Arizona began
to look a lot more difficult.
Students responded positively to the experience and gladly arrested me again on the last day of class. This time I played an intelligent and peaceful extraterrestrial who had been living in the United States for many years, a scenario that asked students to extend the logic of Plyler v. Doe, a case about the children of undocumented immigrants. Students acted as a jury to determine whether I, as an extraterrestrial, could be tried under a military tribunal, executed, and denied admission to law school despite being otherwise qualified. The exercise served as a review of the semester and a reminder that constitutional rights come from cases that push the boundaries of the law.
This simulation requires that the instructor cede a great deal of control to students in a way that may not be comfortable or even advisable for everyone. The professor should have a rapport with the students beforehand. The number of students in the class and its physical location is another consideration.
But my students reported that the exercise gave them a new
understanding of what can otherwise be dry and unapproachable legal reading. Anecdotally
students seemed more attuned to the complexities and nuances of constitutional
law in their exams and hypothetical case briefs after the simulation than they
were before. And in their writing they were able to wade deeper into legal
reasoning by analogy rather than a strict factual application of precedent. Students
also noted in their course evaluations that they learned that the law is not as
straightforward as they thought.
Thus, the exercise appeared to have achieved my goal of
demonstrating that the law is not as cut-and-dried as students usually assume,
and that most constitutional law is advanced through these tough cases, if it
is ever settled at all.
The 2018 midterm elections are over in the US, and it was a night of mixed results. The Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives, winning at least 27 seats previously held by the Republican Party, while the GOP increased their majority in the Senate, toppling North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and my own state of Missouri’s Claire McCaskill.
While clearly not as momentous an election as 2016, or the Brexit referendum, or many other elections, the midterms were still an important point to take stock of the impact of Trumpism on American politics, and whether Democrats who were somewhat over-confident in the fall of 2016 could manage to overcome pro-Trump sentiment, a strong economy, congressional district gerrymandering, voter suppression efforts, and the other structural reasons why succeeding at the polls can be difficult.
Teaching the results of American elections is a frustrating enterprise.
