How Did This Happen?

I apologize to my faithful blog readers--both of you--for this long pause between blogs.

Like many people, since Tuesday I've been trying to come to terms with the results of the U.S. Presidential election. Though certainly there are millions of Americans, at least, who will disagree with me, I believe that we elected someone who is patently unfit for the office, a fact that a large number of conservatives, as well as liberals, have been pointing out for months.

So that raises the question of how he could be elected. There are of course all sorts of economic and strategic considerations here, a sort of perfect storm of antipathy for Secretary Clinton and economic decline among the aging white working class, especially men, who not so long ago were apt to vote Democratic. But I like to focus on variables that I think I can shape more directly, such as my work as a professor, my teaching.

It seems to me that universities contributed to the election of Mr. Trump. Sure, he did great among relatively uneducated white voters. But he also (thanks to men) won most of the white college graduates. How could so many highly educated white voters vote for a candidate who was not only patently unfit for office by experience and temperament, but who also expressed the sort of racist and misogynistic views that university professors so commonly condemn?

1) Universities do a poor job of teaching and encouraging civic engagement. About 45 percent of registered voters did not even vote.

2) We also do a poor job of teaching students to handle intellectual and moral complexity. Many commentators have remarked on the election's false equivalences, such as the notion that since each candidate bent the truth, they were equally guilty of lying.

3) The very fact that university professors in the humanities and social sciences have become so liberal leads to all sorts of problems, ironically, for liberals. When universities become silos of an ideology (no matter how praiseworthy) that bears little resemblance to what most of the country believes, it loses the capacity to communicate with the rest of society. Too many well-educated Americans don't even know someone with conservative beliefs, let alone how to communicate with one. Not only that, but students with more conservative values may "hunker down" and keep their ideas to themselves during class to avoid being labeled intolerant, backward, or bigoted, but this feeling of being censured and ridiculed fosters a sense of resentment. A large fraction of Trump voters admitted (anonymously) to being reluctant to express their support for the man publicly, just as a large number of university students with conservative views about religion or sexuality will keep quiet during class.

It seems to me that at least part of the solution to the cluster of civic problems we now face is to work to foster a sense of civic engagement and responsibility that includes respectful dialogue with those who have very different views from our own. Years ago I co-facilitated dialogues with Oregon Uniting and Uniting to Understand Racism in which people of diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds met in small groups and discussed their experiences of and beliefs around race. I think it changed and opened a lot of minds, at least when we created an environment in which people felt safe to be candid about their views and experiences.

None of us has all of the answers, and we can all learn from each other--especially at times like this, when our first inclination is to start shouting.