Before she joined the U.S. Foreign Service, Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, professor of politics, was certain that she would never make a career out of studying Latin America.

Her family is from Mexico — she was born in Monterrey before moving to the U.S. at age 2 — and she felt that studying the region would give in to people’s stereotypes about what was expected of her.

But, when she was assigned to Mexico for her first post as a Foreign Service officer, everything changed.

“I was really upset,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “But then, it turned out it’s the most incredible thing that happened in my life.”

Her experience in Mexico inspired much of her thesis work for her PhD in politics and continues to impact her research and teaching. In recognition of the latter, Pérez-Armendáriz is this year’s recipient of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, �ֲ���ý’ highest honor for teaching.

“I really like teaching, and it felt really exciting for people to recognize something that I care about a lot,” Pérez-Armendáriz says.

“Hearing from them and taking seriously their observations, I like that a lot. That’s what makes me come up with a new idea for a course.”

Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz

She helped establish the college’s Program in Latin American and Latinx Studies, and her courses frequently cover comparative politics, Latin American and Latinx politics, and international migration. This semester, she’s teaching a first-year seminar, “How Democracy Dies,” and a 300-level course, “Political Challenges in Latin America.”

For politics major and “Political Challenges in Latin America” student Elizabeth Holcombe ’26 of Takoma Park. Md., what makes Pérez-Armendáriz stand out as a teacher is her ability to develop close, honest relationships with her students.

“Clarisa makes everyone feel capable and smart in their own way,” Holcombe says. “Everyone has something to share and contribute.” 

Both Holcombe and Leslie Jimenez ’26 of Chicago, Ill., a politics and Latin American and Latinx studies double major also in “Political Challenges in Latin America,” took their first courses with Pérez-Armendáriz their sophomore year. They jump at any opportunity to enroll in a course with her, they say, and are constantly recommending her courses to their peers.

“Clarisa is this light that guides a lot of people in this world,” Jimenez says.

Another strength of Pérez-Armendáriz’s teaching is the way that she uses her experience as a Foreign Service officer to make her lessons come alive, Holcombe says.

“It’s pretty clear in her teaching that a lot of her life before �ֲ���ý is informing what we’re learning about in a powerful way,” Holcombe says. 

As a Foreign Service officer, Pérez-Armendáriz was responsible for issuing visas for entry into the U.S. and helping people with dual citizenship in Mexico and America resolve various administrative problems. She began to notice interesting patterns among her clients with dual citizenship or who had emigrated out of Mexico and were returning or visiting. 

Her experience inspired her to begin thinking about how Mexican emigrants influence the political state of their home country from abroad or through their families, a topic that would go on to influence her doctoral thesis and later research. Pérez-Armendáriz is currently working on several research projects, including investigating election participation of Mexican citizens who vote from abroad.

Pérez-Armendáriz’s courses touch on complicated, contested political concepts, such as, for her first-year seminar students, the often-debated definition of populism. As a teacher, one of her priorities is ensuring that her students both understand and can explain these intricate topics. She wants them to be able to share what they’ve learned, whether while educating family members or discussing their work in a job interview.

“We complicate things a lot,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “You don’t want to lose your audience.”

Pérez-Armendáriz helps students grasp ideas by teaching them how to create and analyze visual tools such as graphs. She’s laid back and approachable when she’s at the front of the classroom, using humor to help students relax and feel comfortable approaching difficult topics, and quick to remind them that there is often more than one way to view an idea.

In her classroom, “you’re allowed to have a very nuanced opinion,” Jimenez says.

Pérez-Armendáriz seeks feedback from students on what they want to learn and provides opportunities for students with unique global perspectives, such as international students or those returning from study abroad, to share their insights with their classmates. 

“Hearing from them and taking seriously their observations, I like that a lot,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “That’s what makes me come up with a new idea for a course.”

Her changing, topical ideas for her courses are part of what makes students return to her repeatedly.

“Clarisa has her finger on the pulse,” Holcombe says. “She knows what people want to learn.”

Though her courses are all taught in English, Pérez-Armendáriz encourages her students to engage with source materials in other languages, whether they access them because they speak another language or through using AI translation services. She discussed the importance of accessing sources in different languages during the Kroepsch Pedagogy Panel in September, which Pérez-Armendáriz organized and moderated around the theme of “preparing our students to be global citizens.”

In the same vein of having students who have spent time abroad share their experiences, engaging with scholarly work in different languages offers a glimpse into ideas beyond what is available in the English scholastic catalog.

“It’s not just ‘same stuff, different language,’” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “It’s ‘different stuff.’”

Lexie Jamieson ’20, a double major in politics and Spanish, embraced Pérez-Armendáriz’s enthusiasm for using multiple languages while writing her thesis analyzing perceptions of foreigners in Argentina. With Pérez-Armendáriz encouraging her as her advisor, Jamieson conducted surveys and interviews in Spanish. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Jamieson worried that it wasn’t possible to complete her thesis virtually. But Pérez-Armendáriz assured her that she could do it. They met online nearly every day until she was finished.

“She’s the definition of what an amazing professor is like, and she really truly cares about her students and their lives,” Jamieson says.

Pérez-Armendáriz enjoys supporting students who are interested in research and encourages them to pursue their interests, even when their ideas are unusual. When she herself was a PhD student, her advisors cautioned her against studying her primary interest of immigration, claiming that it was not a topical part of politics.

Years later, immigration is one of the most relevant and examined topics in political science.

“I have a really strong reaction to when people are like, ‘You don’t want to do that.’ It’s really negative,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “It keeps us from knowing and learning stuff we don’t know. Maybe a student is from a place that hasn’t been represented in academia.”

Jimenez spent a summer as Pérez-Armendáriz’s research assistant through an internship funded by the Center for Purposeful Work. Even though Jimenez began the summer without the research skills needed for the work, such as coding data, Pérez-Armendáriz was confident that she could learn — and she did.

“Clarisa is just meeting you where you’re at and really wanting to make sure you like what you’re doing,” Jimenez says.

But Pérez-Armendáriz has high expectations for her students. Her courses taught Jamieson that her brain and work ethic were capable of more than she previously thought possible. Today, as a bilingual English-Spanish kindergarten teacher in Washington D.C., Jamieson views her students’ potential the same way that Pérez-Armendáriz viewed hers.

“It really influences the way I also hold those high standards and expectations of my students,” Jamieson says. “Even as five-year-olds, I’ve been very amazed at their abilities to have critical conversations about the world around them and understand.” 

Pérez-Armendáriz knows personally that the path to purposeful work is often winding and full of surprises. With her unfailing belief in her students’ ability to succeed, she is equipping them for the journey.

“One thing will lead to another, and you can’t predict it,” Pérez-Armendáriz said. “Just be ready and be open and listen to your instincts.”

Before their duel in The Princess Bride, the Man in Black says to Inigo Montoya, “Get used to disappointment.”

It would’ve been an apt forewarning to Democrats on election night.

Though many pundits predicted a blue-wave election for Democrats — gaining the presidency, more seats in the House, and perhaps a Senate majority — that turned out to be wishcasting. “It was a status quo election,” says Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman. “In a strange way, this actually looks a lot like 2016: Very little has really changed.”

In fact, he adds, “I think 2020 has revealed who we are as a country. It was not a dramatic, widespread repudiation of Trumpism. And if voters did shift away from Trump, it was not against the Republican Party but against Trump personally as president.”

If Biden wins the presidency — and, of course, depending on the outcome of the Georgia run-off elections — “he will likely have to govern with a Republican-controlled Senate,” Baughman added. “We’re going to have at least two years, and possibly four years or even more, of divided government. And it means that the optimistic goals of Democrats on the public policy front will have to be scaled way back.”

On Wednesday, Baughman offered insights into the election along with politics department colleagues Stephen Engel, Alyssa Maraj Grahame, Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz as well as Stephanie Kelley-Romano of rhetoric, film, and screen studies. Their Zoom presentation was attended by well over 100 viewers.

It’s time to accept that voter behavior is not monolythic

Once again, the two major parties, especially Democrats, need to be reminded not to take for granted the voting habits of any group, said Grahame, a visiting professor of politics who made her point by sharing a conversation she had with a childhood friend on Election Day.

Her friend’s parents, Chinese immigrants, had voted for Obama and Clinton in prior presidential elections. This time, they and other Chinese American friends voted for Trump. “As immigrants, they would be targets of Trump’s particular brand of xenophobia,” said Grahame.

It’s the job of social scientists, she says, to ask questions like, “Under what conditions would it make sense for my friend’s parents to vote for Trump? From their perspective, how does Trump fit into their worldview?”

Turns out, her friend’s parents liked what they perceived as Trump’s tough-on-China attitude, feeling that Obama had allowed China to walk all over the U.S. “There are a lot of parallels between my friend’s struggles to understand her parents’ choice, and our collective struggle to make sense of the election.”

The message: “We shouldn’t be surprised to find out that voter demographics aren’t monoliths,” said Grahame. “There’s no voter demographic for whom either candidate enjoys exclusive support — and that would actually be troubling for democracy if that were the case.”

Pay attention to what the news is saying

As rhetoric from both campaigns ramps up in the post-election days, “it’s really important to pay attention to what the news outlets are saying, as opposed to what the spokespeople for the campaign’s are saying,” says Kelley-Romano, an associate professor of rhetoric, film, screen studies.

“Stick with the information that we have, because there’s going to be a lot of noise out there. I think the media is doing a good job at keeping that noise to a minimum.”

Pay attention to the difference between fanciful narratives and the rule of law

As we follow , it’s important to distinguish between partisan narratives (not to mention baseless conspiracy theories) and the rule of law.

Thus far, Trump’s attempt to say that some mail-in ballots are illegal or invalid “is a narrative framing,” says Engel. “There is literally no constitutional evidence for that claim, so I am skeptical of the lawsuits that are being brought thus far.”

At this point, Baughman believes Trump’s lawsuits declaring voter fraud are “unlikely to find success.” One reason is that the courts don’t want to toss the baby out with the bath water.

“In trying to possibly throw out bad ballots, they don’t want to throw out a lot of good ballots with the bad,” he says.

“There has to be some way for them to distinguish between the ballots that followed a correct process and those few that didn’t. In most cases that’s going to be impossible to do. They’ll be reluctant to throw everything out because that essentially throws out the integrity of the election.”

Election conspiracy theory may not gain traction (but will that matter?)

Though conspiracy theories abound, often pushed out by Trump himself, Kelley-Romano says the fact that Democrats didn’t do all that well in congressional elections might prevent conspiracy theory from gaining traction.

Indeed, says Baughman, in order for other Republican leaders to take on Trump’s call about election fraud means that those leaders would be undermining results in their own states, in some cases undermining elections they themselves ran.

So, says Kelley-Romano, “there are contradictions that will do a disservice to conspiracy theorists — but I never underestimate them. Trump will make a lot of noise — but already on Twitter, and even Fox News, there is a distancing from his rhetoric.”

Still, adds Engel, Trump’s baseless conspiracy attempts could affect a Biden presidency through “the political and rhetorical process of de-legitimizing. It is analogous but importantly distinct from Trump’s birtherism during the Obama presidency: Cast a cloud over Biden from the start in order to keep the Republican base aggrieved and motivated for 2022 and 2024.”

Our elected leaders should heed our own State Department

Hours after Trump falsely declared victory, the U.S. State Department issued a statement about the recent election in Côte d’Ivoire. It said, in part, “the U.S. calls on Côte d’Ivoire leaders to show commitment to the democratic process and the rule of law.”

“So there you go,” said Baughman. “Our own state department.”

We want clarity. Be prepared to be disappointed

Among Democrats, “there was great desire for this election to be an unambiguous repudiation of Trump’s America,” said Grahame. “But it’s almost definitely not going to be that. Our desire for clarity is its own critical failure. We all have to grapple with the fact that over 40 percent of American voters have said ‘yes’ to Trump’s America.”

“The dominant discourse about Trump — his racism and his authoritarianism — leaves us flummoxed about his apparent increased support, including among some non-white voters in certain areas. And we bemoan the extent of division in the United States.”

Rather than trying to dismiss or explain away the contradictions — by blaming low-information voters, wondering about swing voters, or saying that some voters can’t see what’s truly in their best interest — we should “instead confront the underlying systemic causes of such immense polarization.”

There are interesting outcomes everywhere.

Engel, a professor of politics, said much can be learned by looking at results outside the spotlight races. “There are some interesting outcomes, even if it’s a status quo election, even if there’s a lot of ambiguities.”

In Oregon, possessing small amounts of heroin or cocaine is now legal. Oregon also joined the District of Columbia in decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms. And in New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana recreational marijuana use is now legal. Nearly a .

Engel said that “those are interesting outcomes from the perspective of legal nullification” — the legal theory that a state has the right to invalidate federal laws — “whereby the states are just ignoring federal criminal law with regard to drug possession and drug use.”

Also, in Colorado, a proposed measure that would eliminate abortion access after 22 weeks failed.

In terms of descriptive representation among newly elected officials, the election saw:

• In New York, Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones in the two houses of Congress. (Torres identifies as both Black and Latino, and will also be the first openly gay Latino member of Congress.)
  
• Cori Bush become the first Black woman elected to the House from the state of Missouri.

• The entire House delegation for the state of New Mexico be women of color.

• The number of Republican women voted to the House in this election be the most ever.

• Sarah McBride become the first trans woman elected to a state senate, in Delaware, making her the highest ranking openly transgender official in the country.

• At age 25, Madison Cawthorne, from North Caroline, become the youngest Republican ever to be elected to the House he is 25. (He’s the first person born in the 1990s elected to Congress.)

Some likely voters may not be playing ball with pollsters

While polls were criticized after 2016 due to failures to predict key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, they still do a very good job, says Baugham. Again this year, the national polls seemed to be pretty much on target, “though we can’t really yet say whether the polling was off at the state level.”

But there might be an emerging systemic problem with polling, in how some likely voters might be refusing to play ball with pollsters.

“It’s a genuine concern, about voters who distrust the media and distrust pollsters. And if those distrustful voters are more likely to be Trump voters than not, then it would mean that we’re undercounting them.”

“But I’m not convinced that we need to dump on the pollsters just yet because I think by the time we get to the end of the count, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being pretty close to what they were projecting.”

Voting in Maine still reflects that ‘politics is local’

Maine voters criss-crossed party lines during the 2020 election, defying the trend in other states, where races are guided by the highly partisan national political landscape. “State and even local races are increasingly reactions to the national parties,” Baughman said.

Maine has been mostly immune to that trend, where, to paraphrase the, politics is still local, and less along strict party lines. “There seems to have been a much higher rate of old traditional split-ticket voting in Maine than then we’ve seen in other states,” said Baughman

For example, Democratic Rep. Jared Golden ’11 probably got support from Trump voters to win his second term representing the state’s rural 2nd District in Congress. Viewed as very vulnerable, incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins probably to support from Biden voters to retain her seat.

The Republican Party is expanding its base

“Trump seems to have increased support among a number of demographics, including non-white men, in certain places,” says Grahame. “It’s interesting because it’s not particularly consistent with the Republican Party’s approach to elections. He seems to have expanded his support from some demographics almost despite himself.”

In Florida and Texas, there’s strong evidence that .

Which is no surprise to Baughman, who says there were warning signs that the Biden campaign “had not done enough, with the right kind of outreach, to Latinx voters in various states, while Trump was investing in such efforts,” in south Florida, the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and other places.

Democrats didn’t quite believe that Trump could be successful with Latinx voters. “There was a degree of complacency,” said Baughman. “Because of the politics — around the border, immigration, and other factors —  Democrats sort of took for granted that Latinx voters are going to oppose Trump. That was clearly a mistake.”

Some voters’ ‘political socialization’ is still ongoing

The process of how we develop our political habits and perspectives is called “political socialization.” Some Americans, such as immigrants, develop their political socialization differently than other citizens, explains Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, an associate professor of politics.

For example, research shows that for Latinx voters, political socialization is not handed down by older family members, so they don’t have the “my grandfather was a Republican so I’m a Republican” experience.

Instead, their socialization can be active and ongoing, occurring “through their American experience,” says Pérez-Armendáriz. And since their American experience is ongoing, their voting habits can also be more fluid.

“While some issues that Latinx voters care about will align with the Democratic party, they can be persuaded to be on one side or the other more than other voters might be.”

In some states, there may have been a COVID backlash

Though some states’ aggressive pandemic policies, such Maine’s, have saved lives, some citizens in those states may have nevertheless voted for Trump as a protest against shutdown measures. “Shutdowns have been effective,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been extremely harmful to people in ways that affect how they vote.”

For example, some voters were disproportionately affected by shutdowns — not because they had to keep working in essential jobs that might be dangerous but because they could not work. “I never heard any Latinx laborers, for example, say, ‘What I would prefer is to not have work.’”

Pérez-Armendáriz says such protested voting may have occurred elsewhere, mentioning rural Maine, where during the spring and summer one saw many signs on vehicles and front yards with vulgarities directed at Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, clear if blunt responses to the state shutdown.

COVID may have helped Republican campaigning

“There’s a strong belief in campaigns that on the ground, face-to-face interaction is incredibly important,” says Grahame.

Yet, for reasons related to the pandemic, the Democrats scaled back their on-the-ground canvassing, while Republicans still pursued in-person campaigning and in-person rallies, including in South Florida, leaving “Democrats to work overtime to try to figure out ways to substitute for that.” Digital and social-media efforts can help, but they’re not a substitute.

Going forward, “which campaign did a better job getting out the vote during a pandemic will be one of the really important areas of study,” says Baughman.

It may not be ‘the economy, stupid’ anymore

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign hammered away at President Bush by pointing out the national recession. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was strategist James Carville’s comment, meant to highlight the the need to stay on message.

“The idea was that the average voter would look at their own experience in the economy, give credit or blame to the parties, and vote accordingly,” said Baughman. “But as our party affiliations have become more calcified, we become more impervious to changes in the economy.

“As a discipline, political science needs to reassess how we think of economic factors, at least in the context of American elections in the face of this kind of high party polarization.”

Lesson: Conceptualizing and measuring democracy 

Course: “Government and Politics in Global Perspective”

Professor: Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, Associate Professor of Politics

What is democracy? And how do we measure how democratic a country is? 

Democracy is a “foundational, fundamental concept” in political science as well as day-to-day life, says Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, yet researchers can spend their entire careers trying to measure it — assigning to individual countries labels or numbers that can influence real-life foreign policy decisions.��

“There’s no agreement on what democracy even means, and yet we’re claiming we can measure it from one to seven or even ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” she says. 

To show how tricky defining and measuring an abstract concept like democracy can be, Pérez-Armendáriz has her students do exactly that. 

Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz meets with David Quintero ’20 of Oxnard, Calif. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Over the course of two or three class sessions and the intervening homework, her students divide into groups and choose a specific country. They come up with questions that would indicate how democratic a country is: How are elections set up? How robust are individual rights, civil liberties, and media freedom? How effective are checks and balances? 

Once they’ve tried to answer those questions, they classify their country based on an existing measure, such as ; or the same organization’s scale of one to seven. 

Students quickly realize that measuring democracy, or even coming up with a good method, is as fraught as can be. 

“In the classroom you can’t teach everything, but you can teach students to become aware of what they don’t know.”

For example, what do analysts miss if they only read English-language sources? How would, say, an American scholar’s evaluation of Russia differ from a Russian’s? How do you figure out if a country’s constitution actually reflects what’s happening on the ground? What if the laws promise free and fair elections, but opposition party leaders are being jailed? 

“There was definitely real awareness of sources and bias, and some humility,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “It’s nice to say, ‘Wow, I really need to be an expert.’ There’s even some question of, ‘When do you become an expert?’” 

Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz says she’s noticed a fundamental change in how students define democracy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

It can take a professional analyst months or years, of course, to come up with and implement a democracy measure, whereas �ֲ���ý students only have a couple of days. Pérez-Armendáriz therefore grades the assignment primarily based on the quality of the questions students come up with and critiques of existing indicators, rather than the results they present. 

“In the classroom you can’t teach everything, but you can teach students to become aware of what they don’t know,” she says.  

Pérez-Armendáriz, who joined the �ֲ���ý faculty in 2009, has noticed a marked shift in how her students conceive of democracy, which she attributes to generational changes in students’ values.

“If you asked a student to put it concretely, 10 years ago they were more likely to say that democracy is a system of government where people choose their leaders through elections,” she says. 

“Today, they’re more likely to say, ‘Democracy is a governing system where people’s rights are protected.’ They talk a lot more about equality and outcome-oriented things as opposed to process-oriented things.” 

This perspective could have implications down the road, especially for a college whose mission statement promises “informed civic action” among its graduates. That’s why it’s important for students to think in the classroom about deceptively basic concepts like democracy, and to reflect on how those concepts impact their own lives. 

“If [the traditional definition of democracy] isn’t good enough for you, that’s okay,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “Trust in yourself, and be really rigorous and critical.”  

In the wake of the midterms, will Democrats moderate or move to the left?

Will Republicans continue to own the issue of immigration? And will the country’s urban vs. rural political divide continue?

Comprising professors from the Department of Politics, a noontime panel the day after Election Day briefed the �ֲ���ý community on those questions and more in the wake of the latest high-stakes election cycle.

For the Democrats, “we saw an expanded [party] in terms of embodied diversity,” Professor of Politics Stephen Engel.

“We saw LGBTQ candidates win; the first openly gay male governor was elected in Colorado; and on the policy side we saw an anti-trans policy go down in Massachusetts.”

Professor of Politics Stephen Engel, seen in the classroom in April, says the midterms yielded greater “embodied diversity” for the Democratic Party. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill pointed out that the percentage of women in the incoming House won’t be much higher than the current one.

But she saw the elections of women of color, in particular, as building momentum for women entering politics, on the right or left.

“We have two Native American women entering the House,” she said. “Two Muslim-American women are entering the House. We see women of color entering the House from districts that have elected white men to office.

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill, seen at a faculty panel following the 2016 presidential election, says the election of women of color in the midterms “is building momentum for women entering politics.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“What we’re seeing is a greater presence. What’s that going to do? Some folks suggest it will increase the confidence of more women to run for office.”

Hill, who is teaching a course on gender and sexuality in U.S. politics this semester, paid attention to the rhetoric female candidates used in their ads. She said that while they presented themselves as both mothers and, say, fighter pilots, emphasizing qualifications like military experience does “reinforce the idea of politics as men’s business.”

What did the election of more women to Congress mean in terms of the policies likely to be enacted? Hill did not want to speculate too much, but she said it helped the Democrats that Republicans did not focus on the growing economy in their campaigns.

“It gave room for those Democratic candidates across the board to be able to talk about healthcare, to be able to frame that very strongly, to be able to talk about some of the social policy issues, the family care issues, the family responsibility issues, the work equity issues,” she said.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman speaks during a faculty panel Wednesday on the recent midterm elections. (Emily McConville/�ֲ���ý College)

Instead of talking about the economy, as Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman pointed out, “the president and some Republicans talked about immigration and the caravan and birthright citizenship.”

That, added Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, was an indication that while healthcare is being debated on Democrats’ terms, immigration is being debated on Republicans’.

People who live far from the southern border see immigration as a key issue, and President Donald Trump and other Republicans are “bringing up birthright citizenship or detention of immigrants and building tents, because we’re not going to invest in prisons,” said Pérez-Armendáriz, whose specialty is international migration.

That kind of discourse is making it so that Democrats, especially in the Senate races that they lost, went far to the right. Joe Donnelly and others were like, ‘Yes, I support the wall.’”

Pérez-Armendáriz predicted that post-election, Democrats would allow funding for a wall along the southern border, and other border security measures, in exchange for protections for recipients of DACA protection. Immigration reform, meanwhile, would continue to be elusive, as policy is made by executive order and then litigated in courts whose judges were appointed by the administration.

Democrats, especially in the Senate races that they lost, went to the right on immigration, says Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa��Pérez-Armendáriz, seen speaking to newly admitted students in April 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“That’s a useful strategy, [for the White House] to think, ‘How can we do this implementation through the executive, put it through the courts, and the courts may increasingly implement restrictive immigration policy?’”

Pérez-Armendáriz said that even if Democrats were more successful in places like Texas and Arizona — in other words, if voters for either party were more balanced — she worried that the divide between Democrats and Republicans is too broad and they will remain unable to find common ground.

“Are we talking about, half the population thinks the world is going to end if the other half wins, and vice versa?” she said. “That’s a negative undercurrent of this.”

A fundamental question, said Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Jacob Longaker, will be the extent to which the party should try to court moderate Republicans or white people living in rural areas.

“Are we talking about, half the population thinks the world is going to end if the other half wins, and vice versa?”

“There’s an increasing urban and rural divide,” Longaker said. “We know that Democrats have been doing quite well in urban centers fielding very far-left candidates, and Republicans have been doing quite well in rural areas, though they’re being fended off in some ways and being challenged by more moderate, center-leaning Democrats.”

The party, Leslie Hill said, will “have to figure out how to have some very serious conversations about issues where they can land, where they can create some spaces.”

One of those spaces could be acknowledging and decrying white supremacy, which Hill saw in conversations about immigration. She said she was happy to see Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum address racism and white supremacy specifically.

“For me to be able to see Stacey Abrams present herself and get so close, that’s profoundly important,” she said.

“That’s glass half-full for me. There are a lot of people who did not take a colorblind approach. They said, ‘No, I’m standing against that, and that’s really important because that’s a piece of the conversation that’s opened up.”

�ֲ���ý has announced faculty promotions, including tenure awards and full professorships, effective for the 2016-17 academic year.

“These promotions recognize the achievements of faculty members who personify what it means to be an outstanding teacher and scholar at �ֲ���ý College,” said Matthew Auer, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty.

“These faculty members teach with passion and purpose, they cross academic and scholarly boundaries with skill, and they are fully engaged members of our liberal arts community and leaders in the academy.”

Recommended by the faculty’s Committee on Personnel and approved by the �ֲ���ý College Board of Trustees, the promotions have been awarded to faculty members in the fields of dance, economics, English, environmental studies, politics, psychology, and religious studies.

Promotions to associate professor with tenure

+Eden Osucha

Eden Osucha has been promoted to associate professor of English at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Rachel Boggia

Rachel Boggia has been promoted to associate professor of dance at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Senem Aslan

Senem Aslan has been promoted to associate professor of politics at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Clarisa Pérez-Armendáríz

Clarisa Pérez-Armendáríz has been promoted to associate professor of politics at �ֲ���ý. (Mike Bradley/�ֲ���ý College)

+Paul Shea

Paul Shea has been promoted to associate professor of economics at �ֲ���ý. (Mike Bradley/�ֲ���ý College)

+Nate Tefft

Nathan Tefft has been promoted to associate professor of economics at �ֲ���ý. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Promotions to full professor

+Cynthia Baker

Cynthia Baker has been promoted to professor of religious studies at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Holly Ewing

Holly Ewing (center) has been promoted to professor of environmental studies at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Sylvia Federico

Sylvia Federico has been promoted to professor of English at �ֲ���ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

+Nancy Koven

Nancy Koven (center) has been promoted to professor of psychology at �ֲ���ý. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)