Amemo to the Chancellor's Free Speech Working Group Teaching in the Time of Trump [At this year’s first meeting of the Syracuse University Senate, Chancellor Kent Syverud used his opening remarks to address the challenges of teaching public affairs in this intensifying climate Of political polarization. | agree with Chancellor Syverud that this is an extremely important professional challenge ‘that faces each of us individually, and all of us collectively, But | am deeply €oneerned by his clear implication that unless faculty embrace an agenda often referred to as “ideological diversity’ in our ‘teaching and hiring practices, that we are in danger of producing “a rigidly enforced and homogenous orthodoxy” rather than a healthy learning environment. My own approach to these challenges starts from the notion thatimy most basic commitment to my students is honesty. | must tell them what | believe to be tfl@ about our political and social lives. Wy interpretations are of course fallible, but they are not simply personal opinions insofar as they'are based on decades of study and professional experience as a professor of political science, Itry mybest to be fair to all serious intellectual viewpoints in the sense that | will represent for students what | take to be their strengths and their weaknesses. | try tobe reflective and honest about weaknessesin my own perspective, places where | have doubts or faée conundrums in my thinking, Following this general approach, | distinguish what I believe to be respectable conservative intellectual positions from political practices of self-declared conservatives or Republican partisans. | understand the modern conservative movement to be aconfluencé of libertarian tendencies emphasizing individuals’ rights to make choices regarding their lives, and social or religious consetvatives emphasizing the importance of traditional values and faith traditions in helping us to distinguish right from wrong and to Use our freedom to make morally reflective decisions, These | believe are both intellectually respectable positions and historically significant in the foundation of the tontemporary conservative movement. Therefore these ideas deserve to be critically examined and their strengths as well as their weaknesses explored with students, The validity of these ideas is up for debate in my classroom and | welcome a vigorous intellectual defense of them (which, when’ students are reluctant to provide, | will often provide myself). But this is not the same.as assuming that the Contemporary Republican party is acting in good faith in its political practices. thas been well documented by historians and scholars of politics that the GOP has systematically used coded racial appeals'to mobilize white voters since the era of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. President Trump'sipolitics and policies are the culmination of a decades-long process of embracing racial divisiveness, hatred and fear as a partisan political tool. The historical record is overwhelming and the conclusion unavoidable unless one is willing to engage in gross and deliberate distortions of history of the kind peddled by Dinesh S’Souza (whose fundamentally duplicitous talk at SU * For example, Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Cornell University Press, 1995), especially chapters 9-20; and lan Haney-Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics (Oxford University Press, 2015). A recording of GOP strategist Lee Atwater discussing a racialized electoral strategy is available online here: bttos://www.thenstion,com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981 interview-southern-strategy/. Be warned that Atwater uses ugly racist language in the recorded interview.| attended and now regret having recommended to my students} and others who pass themselves off as conservative thought leaders,’ itis therefore not possible to honestly discuss contemporary politics with students unless this decades-long politics of race baiting is named and documented with evidence. This pedagogical challenge is now compounded by a President, and the political party supporting hirn, ‘who have openly embraced racism and mendacity as the core of their politics. From thei moment he stepped off the escalator to announce his candidacy, Mr. Trump has deployed racial stereotypesiand scapegoating as political tools.? The Washington Post has documented over thirteen thousand demonstrably false claims made by this president.‘ If |am to honor my commitmentito be factually and morally honest with my students, I must name this as a regime of racism, lies and demagoguery. To pretend that this form of politics is as respectable, or no more reprehensible, than that practiced by others would not be objectivity but a distortion of the truth in ofder to avoid controversy, a cowerdly abdication of my most basic professional responsibility for whieh Idontt think could forgive myself. It is quite possible that Syracuse University administrators will hear complaints of partisanship'about my teaching, Ifso, it is not because | am a partisan Democrat (on\the whole I find thern to be distasteful, opportunistic rather than faithful to their own stated principles}, Rather it will be for the Teasons | have stated above. Many of my colleagues approach these pedagogical challenges in ways sinilarto my own. hope Chancellor Syverud and the Free Speech Working Group will respect their professfonal judgment and competence, and not mistake that for unreflective pattisanship or personal opinion. Mark Rupert Professor of Political Science Syracuse University 2 See, for example, conservative commentator David Frtim, “Dinesh D'Souza and the Decline of Conservatism” The ‘Atlantic (August 12, 2018), online: tipss/wonw.tiatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/dinesh-dsouza-is-makin a-comeback/562283/; also Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse’s serial critique of O'Souza’s distorted version of history archived here: hitps://threadtead erapp com/thread/1024360878760773776.htm| * For example, Williamson and Gelfand, “Trump and Racism: What do the Data Say” Brookings Institution (August 14, 2018), online: tis: (aww. brogKing Edu /blog/fixzov/2019/08/14/teump-and-racism-what-do-the-data-sav/; also Graham, Green, Murphy, and Richards, “An Oral History of Trump's Bigotry” The Atlantic (June, 2019), online: hitos:/ Awww. theatlantie com /ma Saine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588057/; and conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin, “Trump's Grotesque Racism Matters,” Washington Post (October 22, 2019), online: bttose//www. waghingtonsOst.com/opinions/2019/10/22/trumps-grotesque-racism-matter * Kessler, Rizo, and Kelly/“President Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days," Washington Post (October 14, 2019), online: httos://mmw.washingtonpost.com/polities/2019/10/14/president-