As many academic institutions, the election of Donald Trump to the American presidency in 2016 sparked some serious critical thinking in Georgia Tech's Writing and Communication Program. After a month of critical thinking and mediating, a group of colleagues and I co-wrote an article for the department's blog, TECHstyle. The article looks specifically at certain challenges and questions of teaching within the Trump regime that, as of December 2016, many of us were concerned with.

The article in its entirety can be read here, while my own contribution has been re-produced below.

Eroding the Border Between Liberal (Arts) Pedagogy and Liberal Politics

Somewhere between Donald Trump’s rise to the GOP candidacy and his appointment of Betsy DeVos to the Department of Education, a line that many of us toe in the critical liberal arts classroom has begun to erode. This is the line that separates liberal arts pedagogy from liberal politics; the line that allows us to teach critical thinking and rhetorical analysis -- what I would consider the basic tenets of liberal arts pedagogy -- as something separable from teaching students to embrace liberal politics, become a liberal, or think like a liberal.

Before going on, I should note that, though I’ve been sensitive to this ever-eroding line throughout the course of this election cycle, for me, its erosion has not been been more evident than here, in my present attempts to describe it and articulate its presence in my classroom. In fact, thinking through assignments that walk this line, I find myself wondering if these assignments and the ethos with which they are presented, merely prove the point of Turning Point USA’s concerns. That is, instead of identifying and articulating this line, perhaps these assignment simple demonstrate the impossibility of defining the line at all, as liberal arts pedagogy is inseparable from the “advance[ment of] leftist propaganda in the classroom” (Professor Watchlist).

Let’s be clear, here: the two sides to this line have always been interconnected with one another. Indeed, “line” is an entirely oversimplified metaphor for what is perhaps more akin to a web, a network, or a labyrinth. As many of us have likely noticed, lessons in critical thought and rhetorical analysis often lead students to (hypo)theses that could be characterized as politically liberal, even if this “political conversion” is not our primary pedagogical goal. This becomes particularly evident in lessons or assignments that challenge students to critically examine the discourses of race, gender, class, ability, nationality, religion or sexuality -- what can more broadly be termed the discourses of identity -- as they operate within the cultural systems of the United States. In my classroom these requested examinations may look like any of the following:

• Guiding students to recognize the ways everyday language can perpetuate gender discrimination and structures of sexism through features like binary pronouns, the substitution of “man” or “mankind” for “human,” or the default position of “he” rather than “she” for a person of unknown gender, or a person in power;
• Prompting students to notice when women, people of color, or members of the LGBT+ community are left out of, demonized, or tokenized by popular television or film;
• Asking students to recognize the ways ideologies of exclusion determine access to various aspects of social or political life (like education in the relationship of public schools to housing districts), which renders the “American Dream” an exclusive ideal;
• Having students critically evaluate the cultural and historical contexts of phrases like “inner cities,” “thugs,” and “illegals,” so they might develop a sensitivity to the racial and racist discourse that masquerade behind these “euphemisms.”   

For the students of the post-Trump classroom the request that they critically think through their assumptions about American ideology as it is reflected in the country’s rhetoric, seems no longer to be immediately or easily separable from requesting they adopt a particular political stance. This is due, I think, to role that public rhetoric -- particularly around discourses of identity -- have played in this election cycle. Though always an important factor in voting (particularly within our bipartisan system that ultimately boils down to winning the electoral college) in this election cycle, public rhetoric and identity discourse as such have acted as delineating forces, separating red from blue states, and determining the bottom line for many voters.

Consider, on the one hand, the “silent majority voters” who found themselves in need of change, and saw that need met in Trump, in many cases, despite his rhetoric. In the pre- and post-election news cycles, these voters have found themselves in the position of defending their vote, of explaining that, for them, Trump’s exclusionary and inflammatory rhetoric along lines of race, nationality, gender, religion, sexuality, and ability, was something to be, if not always celebrated, certainly de-emphasized. On the other hand, consider those voters for whom Trump’s rhetoric articulated the very real danger he could pose for this country, in general, and, in particular, for those citizens who, due to their (racial, gendered, sexual, class, religious, national, ethnic) identity position, are the least protected and most precarious in the United States.

Following the election, it seems a person’s assignation of identity discourse and public rhetoric as of either central or peripheral importance is the most effective litmus test for determining political bias. In this environment, is it still possible to bring these issues to the center of our classroom, to hold post-Trump students accountable for their own language and rhetoric, to ask them to write and think in ways that are both critical and inclusive, without also asking them to lean, vote, or think a bit more to the left?

In other words, in the post-Trump classroom, can liberal arts pedagogy be separable from liberal politics? If it cannot, then what has to give?