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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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,â€� 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.â€�

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.�

You can learn a lot by looking at election seasons through the lens of gender.

The way Hillary Clinton juggled the images of commander-in-chief and mother-and-grandmother in 2016. The tenuous ease with which today’s candidates present themselves as mothers. The  show of masculinity embodied by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the styles of masculine authority displayed by the senators who questioned him.

This fall, Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill and her students are tackling issues of gender and sexuality in politics, ranging from the historical — how did women participate in politics at the country’s founding? — to the current, and from the national to the hyperlocal.

Here, Hill talks about how sex, sexuality, and gender  shape U.S. political history, the gendered politics she sees in the upcoming midterm elections, and how her class is working to elicit voters’ views of women’s concerns in Lewiston and Auburn.

What’s the central question of your course on gender and sexuality in U.S. politics?

The question is how gender shapes politics and vice versa. It’s important to think about the ways in which our ideas, our understandings of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, shape even what we think of as politics.

During a session of her course on gender and sexuality in U.S. politics, Associate Professor of Leslie Hill listens to Whitney Parrish, director of policy and program at Maine Women’s Lobby and Maine Women’s Policy Center.

The Founders thought that politics happens outside the home; that it happens only in the public space, and that space is appropriately inhabited by men, and in contrast, the home is a private space inhabited by women. The initial phase of thinking was, because women are dependent on men, they’re included in the political community as subordinates to men.

The Founders believed that women were subject to their own passions and did not have the rational characteristics required for citizenship — and that they consented to patriarchy! This is belied by Abigail Adams’ letter to her husband John as he was sitting in the Constitutional Convention. She urged him to “remember the ladies�; he wrote back that to acknowledge women as citizens would “subject us to the Despotism of the Petticoat.�

How did women, and transgender and gender-nonbinary people, participate in politics?

In domestic spaces where founders’ wives managed dinner parties for political elites. Around kitchen tables, where women wrote letters to local officials. With petitions to abolish slavery, lobby for suffrage and Progressive Era reforms. In Native communities, where women elders advised male Councils on entering treaties with the federal government. In black churches and social organizations, where working- and middle-class black women ran citizenship schools, preparing for the day when African Americans would be enfranchised.

At warfronts where some passed as male soldiers and where others fed, clothed, and tended troops as “camp followers�; and, in factories where “Rosies� riveted. Critically, in social movements, attempting to influence decisions of men holding office in formal political institutions. LGBTQ people are barely visible in these histories, but research on their more recent activism has been gaining visibility to give us a truer picture of politics.

“I want to bring to light an understanding of politics focused not just on formal institutions.�

One way of participating in politics is by entering our formal processes of decision-making on the terms of formal institutions. The vote was gained political struggle first, by working-class white men, later women, and eventually for people of color. They were not changing the institutions at all but entering political spaces from which they had been marginalized, where they had been objects of decisions rather than decision-makers.

I want to bring to light an understanding of politics focused not just on formal institutions. That’s part of the challenge with understanding women’s participation in politics. women were organizing around kitchen tables, in churches, and social clubs; LGBT folks strategized in private spaces where they met, learned, and provided care. If one were to study African American women’s political activism, you would go to the church. It’s a matter of asking, what spaces do people inhabit, where do they present themselves, their voices, their opinions, their interpretations of power?

What moments in U.S. political history are most useful in your class?

I’ll teach the 2016 election and the uses of masculinity in that campaign. In the United States, the president is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The “role� of masculinized men is to protect families, so the defense of the political community is understood as a masculinized role. That has a great deal to do with our understanding of the presidency as masculinized.

Michael Dukakis, for example, suffered on that account in 1988. He was perceived as effeminate, not masculine enough. George W. Bush once appeared on an aircraft carrier in full uniform, when that didn’t represent his military service at all. Donald Trump used language to denigrate the masculinity of his primary opponents and delegitimize Clinton’s qualifications for the presidency.

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill participates in a discussion during February’s Unity Conference, an annual celebration of the black community at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Hillary Clinton found a way to present herself as a mother and grandmother but also as someone capable of being the commander of military forces. That actually seems to contrast with the way female candidates are presenting themselves in the 2018 elections. It’s less risky now, it seems, to talk about being a mother and easier to talk about one’s fighter pilot experience. I’m wondering how motherhood self-presentations are appearing and whether or not there are differences between conservative female candidates and liberal and progressive female candidates.

What are some other ways you’re seeing gendered politics in this election season?

In Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings, and Trump’s response. Trump suggested that men are somehow more vulnerable to false accusations of sexual assault, with the presumption that a lot of accusations are indeed false. He’s trying to challenge the widespread incidence of sexual assault and sexual violence.

There are people in important positions of leadership who are pushing back against the movement, with the mindset of, “They’re saying well, gee, now men are horrible — we can’t have that.� I see that as gender politics.

A lot of people have compared Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings to those of Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. How do they compare for you?

You have at least one party on the Senate Judiciary committee represented entirely by white men; my students observed they were mostly older. In some ways they were embodying conventional masculine authority.

That was not unlike what went on in ’91. Senator Joe Biden, in questioning Anita Hill, at one point asked her to describe the very specific things that Clarence Thomas had done. I thought that was egregious. This time, forcing a kind of visibility of a woman’s sexuality didn’t seem to be out there in quite that same way. Maybe that was tempered by the presence of those two female Democratic senators in the hearing.

The intersection of race and gender in U.S. politics was on full display during those 1991 hearings — you yourself put your name on a famous ad in The New York Times that decried how Anita Hill was subjected to racist and sexist treatment. How are the race and gender politics different now?

There’s a fascinating documentary called Public Hearing, Private Pain, about perceptions within the African American community of what was going on in the hearings – what the racial and gender politics were. Thurgood Marshall had stepped down, and President George H.W. Bush wanted a court that appeared to include a black voice. Clarence Thomas embodied that appearance, but his politics were very much in line with those of the president who appointed him.

One of the images of 1991 was white feminists on Good Morning America saying, “Men just don’t get it.� The reaction by some black women on both sides of the Thomas-Hill hearing was, “How dare they speak without ever mentioning the racial politics of what’s going on?�

In January 2018, Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill inspects “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves,” an ad in the New York Times signed by 1,600 black women who protested the sexist and racist treatment of Anita Hill. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

With the presence of a black nominee and of a black accuser, racial politics was a subtext for the hearing itself until Clarence Thomas said, “This is a high-tech lynching.� The word “lynching� is just, trigger-trigger-trigger.

Liberals’ perception that talking about race was itself racist gave Thomas cover to intimidate opposition. “We can’t scrutinize him because it will appear racist,� so it disempowered Democrats. It put up a wall; “You can’t touch me now.� That way in which liberal discourse would not touch race made it a different kind of context.

With Kavanaugh, I still think race is a subtext, but we’re talking about the normalized sexuality of an elite, white male. If what various accusers have been saying about him bears any truth, there’s a way in which he’s using his class and race privilege as a kind of cover for his sexual predations. That raises the question, how does whiteness shape a presumption of innocence or guilt here?

One wonders if the identity of white female sexuality is so differently constructed from black female sexuality, presumed “hyper�. It seemed to come across with Anita Hill in 1991 — “Well, aren’t you just disappointed that he didn’t want to date you?� It still makes me angry, as if she’s sexually available all the time. That’s not the way Ford was approached at all.

More locally, your class is doing a project connected to voter engagement in Lewiston and Auburn. What was the project about, and what did you learn?

The Harward Center connected us to three groups. One is early childhood education students at Central Maine Community College. Two is Tree Street Youth, and these are young people, high school age. The third is the Center for Wisdom’s Women; they’re older women whose lives are multidimensional, sometimes burdened, not based in school.

My students tried to engage people in thinking about what politics is, asking, “what’s your understanding of politics and where have you learned about it?� “How does it appear in your own life?� “What are the issues that matter to you?� “What are some things that might make a difference?� Their job was to listen, listen, listen.

Whitney Parrish, director of policy and program at Maine Women’s Lobby and Maine Women’s Policy Center, helps Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill’s students debrief after the students held focus groups about voter engagement with local organizations. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Their findings were that sources of news varied. People cared about healthcare coverage and expense, child abuse, the fact that in Maine family leave is voluntary for businesses and unpaid. They’re also concerned about female representation in government.

There’s a lot of concern about Trump’s rhetoric. They fear violence, they fear being deported, and they’re concerned about what it means to build a wall. Some expressed a view that their votes don’t matter, they don’t vote because they’re disillusioned with the political scene, or because they feel they don’t know enough about the issues to vote.

What are your next steps?

With help from the Maine Women’s Policy Center, helping students understand what’s going on in the state with regard to some of those issues — whether or not there’s legislation out there, whether or not there are candidates out there that will support these issues.

The students can then go back to the community and say, “These are the people you should get in touch with; this is an issue that comes up. Make sure you vote because this is on the agenda.�

What varies across these organizations is whether or not people feel like their vote matters. We need to figure out a way to talk to people about that, because it’s just so important. The people elected in 2018 to Congress and, importantly, at the state level are going to be shaping policy agendas, the 2020 census, and a host of state-level initiatives with national significance.

That, and the fact that state legislatures have been taking up issues that Congress has not been acting on. There is a whole range of policy issues that have gone through state legislatures that are affecting people’s access to the system.

Voter ID laws, immigration policy, reproductive healthcare. We have these discussions about Democrats and Republicans at a national level, yet people develop their ideas about what politics is and how it matters to them based on what happens in their own lives, what happens locally.

“I’m really proud of this,� says Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill, holding a laminated, but yellowed, newspaper clipping that recalls a historic moment of protest by African American women.

The clipping is from the year 1991. In the midst of the infamous confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Hill was one of 1,600 black women who lent their names to a full-page ad in The Sunday New York Times. (Signatories also included Sue Houchins, now associate professor of African American studies.)

The ad, headlined “African American Women In Defense of Ourselves,� protested the racist and sexist treatment of Anita Hill (no relation to Leslie), the black attorney who had come forward to say that Thomas had sexually harassed her in their government workplace.

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill inspects “African American Women In Defense of Ourselves.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Hill, who joined the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty in 1988, has for a long time kept the clipping under wraps in her Pettengill Hall office. But this year, as the #MeToo movement has gained power, Hill “decided to go publicâ€� by sharing it with students in her course on race, ethnicity, and feminist thought.

Hill recalls the “disturbing recognition that Anita Hill was being incredibly disrespected.â€�

Today, the #MeToo victims often say they’ve kept silent out of fear of retaliation or that they would not be believed. Well, they have good historical reason: In 1991, the senators and the media alike treated Anita Hill shabbily, like a liar.

Back then, as Leslie Hill watched the hearings on live television with millions of other Americans, she recalls “a disturbing recognition that Anita Hill was being incredibly disrespected.�

In protest, a trio of African American feminist academics — historian Elsa Barkley Brown, sociologist Debra King, and historian Barbara Ransby — organized a response that culminated with a full-page advertisement in the Nov. 17, 1991, edition of the Times and other newspapers.

The ad reflected “this fury about the way Anita Hill was being treated, but also about the way in which black women’s experiences were being dismissed,� Hill says, recalling how the mostly white mainstream media framed the story through white women’s experiences, when it was about gender plus race and class — what we today call “intersectionality,� a term coined by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

There was a “reticence on the part of black women to assert the nature of our own experiences, lest black men come under attack.�

Twenty-six years after the Thomas hearings, Hill’s students know the concept. “They’re familiar with it, and so that door is already open for making sense of what’s going on now.�

In 1991, African Americans were divided about Thomas’ fitness for the Supreme Court. “That made it hard for black women to come out defending ourselves,� Hill says. In addition, many in the black community were wary about “airing dirty laundry in public�; alluding to Crenshaw’s work, Hill says there was a “reticence on the part of black women to assert the nature of our own experiences, lest black men come under attack.�

Thankfully, the combination of dynamic, new scholarship and the multitude of public voices and role models makes it possible “to engage in public discourse about gender discrimination and oppression in ways that do not exclude the experience of black women and other women of color.�

The text, surrounded by 1,600 signatures, of “African American Women In Defense of Ourselves,” as it appeared in the Sunday New York Times on Nov 17, 1991.

Hill points to Oprah Winfrey’s recent remarks at the Golden Globes and how Winfrey was able to “talk about sexual harassment and sexual violence and to do so in a way that brought in the experiences of black and working class women, in particular.�

In 1991, Hill was in Atlanta when the Times ad appeared. In that pre-Internet era, word of its pending publication “got out through various kinds of networks,� she recalls. “We bought every copy of the Times that was in Atlanta that day.�

Today, the historical memento inspires Hill’s efforts to create a classroom conversation about sexual harassment and sexual violence “that puts the most disadvantaged women at the center of the discussion: What kind of policy, what kind of action, what kind of practice, needs to be put in place in order to stop these violations, change this culture?�

For a first-year ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student, the leap from high school to college-level writing can be a daunting one.

You tackle new genres, you look at evidence more critically. And you learn that at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, good writing and good thinking are inseparable.

“Colleges are places where knowledge gets created,â€� says Daniel Sanford, director of Writing At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and the Academic Resource Commons (ARC), programs that provide resources for every stage of the writing process, in any discipline.

“When you learn to write and think in that setting, you are figuring out how to participate in the creation of knowledge.�

Claire Sickinger ’19 of Simsbury, Conn., a Peer Writing and Speaking Assistant for Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Nathan Faries’ “Defining Difference: How China and the United States Think about Racial Diversity,” discusses an essay for the class with Zhao Li ’21 of Guangzhou, China, in ARC. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

It can be a steep learning curve, but ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ newest writers are supported along the way. Most students take a First-Year Seminar, where professors teach writing alongside subject matter. They walk students through each step of the writing process and offer intensive feedback.

As the fall semester enters its second half, and students look to their final seminar papers, we’ve asked ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors and student tutors how new college writers can make their writing clear and compelling, and what common mistakes to avoid. Here is what they told us.

1. Before you start writing, know the assignment

One of the most avoidable mistakes Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill sees is not following directions. “Some students will write to the task they think they know, that may be familiar from high school — but the college professor may be asking for something different, in terms of content as well as the level of thinking.�

2. Know thy audience — and thyself

Don’t feel like you have to play the expert, says Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker. “First-year college writers often seem to feel as though they need to present themselves as ‘experts’ in their essays instead of presenting themselves as well-informed and capable conversation partners,â€� she says.

Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker teaches the First-Year Seminar “The Nature of Spirituality.” Here, in the 2015 iteration of the course, she shows her students a Rosh Hashanah tradition on Mount David. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

When students adopt the “expert� voice, Baker says, they sometimes feel that quoting heavily from sources means they’re not knowledgeable.

“It is far more often the case that professors are looking for students to demonstrate a firm grasp of the course materials and concepts by showing that they can synthesize ideas from a range of course readings and apply them to a particular problem,â€� she says. “This calls for positioning oneself in an essay as a well-informed conversation partner who thoughtfully and capably draws on a wide variety of others’ insights through extensive quotes and citations, rather than as a solo expert.â€�  

3. Pay attention to genre

Biochemistry major Kenyata Venson ’18 of Memphis meets with Bridget Fullerton, assistant director of writing at Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, to discuss her senior thesis on comparing synthesized drugs to herbal remedies for the treatment of glaucoma. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Technical writing is very different from expository writing in that there’s no fluff — readers just want what you did in the study,� says Technical Writing Assistant Ruth van Kampen ’19 of Brunswick. “That’s new to a lot of students.�

As a TWA, van Kampen helps biology students, often sophomores, with their writing.

4. Don’t lose the argument

Claudia Krasnow ’18 of Bedford, N.Y., works with Madelyn Heart ’18 of Winchester, Mass., on a paper for a Spanish class. Writing Tutors work among other student tutors in the Academic Resource Commons (ARC) in the Ladd Library. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Writing Tutor Mariam Hayrapetyan ’19 of Valley Village, Calif. recommends this exercise: “Write out the prompt in your own words and when you write, make sure that each paragraph somehow contributes to the prompt.�

Take it to the sentence level, too. “Something that can improve clarity is ensuring that everything in each paragraph relates back to the topic sentence, and each topic sentence relates back to the thesis,� says Writing Tutor Kiyona Mizuno ’18 of San Francisco. “This will help keep the writing focused and organized. I find that outlining can be a useful strategy.�

5. Keep it simple

Zeke Smith ’19 of Weybridge, U.K., a Peer Writing and Speaking Assistant for Associate Professor of Russian Dennis Browne’s course on contemporary European film, works with Henri Emmet ’21 of New York. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Don’t try to sound impressive, advises Mizuno. “A common trend I’ve noticed is sentences that are repetitive, are too long, or try to combine too many ideas. I would encourage students to try not to beat around the bush and to avoid forming long, complicated sentences to fulfill the word count — ideas can get jumbled and confusing fast if sentences get too wordy.�

Zeke Smith ’19 of Weybridge, U.K., who as a Peer Writing and Speaking Assistant helps First-Year Seminar students craft and correct their papers, often takes students through this revising exercise: “I have them reread their draft with a focus on which words can be cut out, and which sentences can be written more concisely. Sometimes finding the exact right adjective or verb can replace an entire description.�

6. Skip jargon

Chinese major Olivia Stockly ’18 of Cumberland Center, Maine, and biochemistry major Ken Hale ’19 of Cleveland, Ohio, prepare for a physics lab in the Academic Resource Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“It is very easy to use a lot of insider lingo, and writers should be conscious of this while they are trying to articulate their points,� says TWA Jackie Welch ’18 of Falmouth, Maine. “They should write as though the reader is familiar with their field but not necessarily with their particular discipline within that field.�

7. Cut the clichés

“Few people use ‘plethora’ right, and when they do, it’s a little precious,â€� if not downright pretentious, says Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read. “I would say we experience a plethora of plethoras in my world — that is to say, an excessive usage of this word!”

Adds Hill, “Nothing that comes after the phrase ‘throughout history’ is true.�

8. Revise, revise, revise

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill speaks during a 2016 panel on the recent presidential election. This year, she is teaching a First-Year Seminar called “Race, Justice, and American Policy in the Twenty-First Century.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“I have often advised students to use an after-the-fact outline or simply go through a draft and highlight their topic sentences,� Hill says. “That will tell you what exists on paper, and you can decide whether that is what you wanted to say or not.�

9. Don’t make the last least.

Bestselling author and syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson discusses her work and tells students how to tell their own stories during a session of “Family Stories,” Kirk Read’s First-Year Seminar, on Oct. 27. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Leave something for the end of your paper,� Read says. “Conclude without summarizing. Save something for the end, so that we appreciate what your point is and that you have proven it in some way.�

10. Record your paper, then listen to it

Reading a draft of a paper out loud can help you catch mistakes — and get around a fixation on grammar. “I try to tell students not to overworry about the grammar and mechanics of everything, but I am conflicted about that,� Read says. “I do want clean writers — so read your writing aloud. Record it and play it back to yourself to see if it makes any sense.�

11. Read!

Wenjing “Wen” Zheng ’21 of Wuhan, China gets her copy of “Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things” signed by the book’s author, Amy Dickinson, during a First-Year Seminar class on Oct. 27. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College).

“Read a lot of good writing — and read it as a writer,â€� says Cynthia Baker. “That is, think of yourself as a writer and study what the pros do. When you find course readings compelling, pay attention to how the writers make their content clear and compelling. What strategies do they use? How do they formulate their arguments and ideas? Give labels to those strategies, experiment with them yourself, and put them in your writer’s toolbox to pull out and use in your own writing.â€�

12. And write!

Paige Rabb ’20 of Stamford, Conn., takes notes during a meeting of her 2016 First-Year Seminar, “The Natural History of Maine’s Neighborhoods and Woods.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“It might be helpful to think of writing in any form — journaling, noting, ruminating, fine-tuning —as a daily practice,â€� says Read. “Something that you turn to regularly and happily. Something that might even center you or help sort you out, like yoga, working out, meditation. For many successful writers, it’s a regular practice — and a joy.”

A day before the election, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ politics department announced that it would offer a postmortem on Wednesday, Nov. 9.

And they couldn’t have picked a better title for the event: “What Just Happened?”

Those were likely the first words in households all over America Wednesday morning as both friends and foes of President-elect Donald Trump absorbed the news of his upset victory.

At midday, four members of the politics faculty propped their sleep-deprived eyes open for an hour to offer insights about the election and some predictions about U.S. governance under Trump.

John Baughman, an associate professor of politics, speaks during the Wednesday discussion in the Mays Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Concern evident in their faces and postures, about 200 students, staff, and faculty filled the Benjamin Mays Center to hear what John Baughman, Ben Moodie, Leslie Hill, and Will D’Ambruso thought about the outcome. In question-and-answer form, here are some takeaways:

Why didn’t the experts see Trump’s win coming?

Baughman, associate professor of politics and an occasional commentator for the news media, listed factors that the pundits didn’t see or couldn’t have seen.

He described some regional variations from past voting patterns, such as a strong showing for the Democrats by Latino voters that continued a recent trend — but that was offset by a surge, unforeseen by pollsters, in white working-class voters with less than a college education.

More culturally significant, perhaps, was Baughman’s observation that campaign organizations and their get-out-the-vote efforts in some ways “seemed not to matter” in a  presidential campaign driven less by party organization and affiliation and more by raw emotion.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Clayton Spencer takes notes in the Mays Center during the “What Just Happened?” panel analyzing the 2016 election. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Baughman said that this was “not an election that seemed to turn primarily on debates over key policy choices, the way that we’ve seen in other elections.”

Instead, “policy took a back seat to other kinds of debate and rhetoric” that appealed to voters’ anger and fears. He also noted that racial and ethnic animus was “a key factor” in the outcome, and suggested that the rhetoric of prejudice, now embedded in mainstream political discourse, will be hard to remove.

“This is one of the most troubling aspects of this election, and something we’re going to be responding to for a while yet.”

Baughman added, in response to a question near the end of the gathering, “You can’t just turn off divisive, racist campaign rhetoric.” Washington will find some way to govern, but hate rhetoric has been legitimized.

If the economy was not a dominant theme in this election, Baughman did note that “changes in partisanship over time map very directly onto changes in income inequality.”

The overriding message from Baughman was that the U.S. has arrived in something like political terra incognita. “The establishment has been repudiated,” he said, especially within a Republican Party divided over Trump’s candidacy. “But it’s not clear yet what the alternative is.”

With the White House, Congress, and in all likelihood the Supreme Court in conservative hands for years to come, how can liberals have a meaningful voice in policy-making?

Activism at the local level is imperative, the panelists agreed. Especially so, as Baughman noted, because the Democrats have for years been hobbled by a shortage of strong candidates emerging locally and working their way up to regional and national influence.

“It’s up to people outside the political institutions to push for these sorts of things,” said Leslie Hill. “The other piece is us in the community and the ways in which we can figure out how to go forward. We have the vote, but we also have other ways of engaging politically, and that’s really important.”

What are likely economic effects of the election?

Flanked by John Baughman and Leslie Hill, Ben Moodie discusses the economic implications of a Trump presidency during the Nov. 9 “What Just Happened?” panel discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Ben Moodie, lecturer in politics and sociology, explained that during the campaign, Trump made evident his lack of interest in policy details. That puts “congressional conservatives in the driver’s seat” when it comes to federal finances — and between big tax cuts for the wealthiest and expanded spending on infrastructure and defense, the national debt is likely to balloon.

Such deficit spending would be good for economic growth given current conditions, Moodie said. Although more-progressive tax relief would be better economic medicine, more government spending — whatever the money is spent on — could nevertheless boost the national economy.

Funding for liberal priorities is certainly threatened. While the panel didn’t agree on the feasibility of repealing the Affordable Care Act, it will be pruned, perhaps drastically, as will Medicaid and other benefits for the poor. However, Moodie predicted, Social Security and Medicare will likely be spared.

What are the election’s political implications for women and for minorities?

Students, staff, and faculty fill the Benjamin Mays Center to hear a Nov. 9 politics faculty postmortem on the 2016 elections. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

Echoing Baughman’s concern about racist campaign language, Hill wondered if misogyny has become “the new normal” in political discourse. For young women in the room, she said, the 2016 races must have been a devastating introduction to political participation in both tone and outcome.

Hill shared a quote from a Nov. 9 article in The Guardian: “Faced with the choice between a qualified woman with flaws and a man who had lied, evaded taxes and faced many sexual assault allegations, voters chose the man.”

Hill looked briefly at some demographic trends in the election. She noted that while Latin women and Asian–Pacific Islanders (men and women) voted in numbers roughly matching the past two presidential elections, their support for the Democratic candidate this time was less.

In terms of gender equality in political representation and especially leadership, the nation was trailing its economic peers when it entered the 2016 election, Hill said — and the events of Nov. 8  didn’t helped. She pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, which has materially affected access to the polls for African Americans and other minorities.

“I can only imagine what John Lewis must be saying,” said Hill, referring to the civil rights and VRA advocate who offered ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ Commencement address in May.

Hill said that the prejudice and hostility unleashed during the 2016 campaign “may come down to people’s everyday lives. It worries me.”

Trump’s temperamental unsuitability to be in charge of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was an issue during the campaign. Should we be worried?

Lecturer in Politics William d’Ambruoso talks about international nuclear weapons security during the panel discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Lecturer in Politics Will d’Ambruoso opened his segment with the laugh line, “I’m going to talk casually about armageddon.” But the outlook for Trump as commander in chief, he indicated, is actually complicated and hard to predict.

Seeking to reduce U.S. costs for defending its allies, Trump has supported opening the nuclear club to nations like South Korea. The question is, will more nuclear arsenals around the globe result in stronger deterrence and more stability, or the opposite — especially since the international commitment to keeping nukes out of the wrong hands is not ironclad?

On a different front, d’Ambruoso suggested that Trump’s ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin could actually reduce international tensions — “but human rights will be the loser,” he said.

D’Ambruoso summed up the uncertainty of Trump’s international role when he started an answer with, “I’m not exactly sure” but then added with a chuckle, “Well, of course I’m not sure!”

How will a Trump administration affect local law enforcement in terms of police misuse of force against blacks and others?

Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, listens to the discussion in the Mays Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Racial-justice interventions by the U.S. Justice Department like those we’ve seen under President Obama are unlikely under Trump, said Baughman. And a Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court is not likely to support African American rights. But the federal court system below that level could provide a buffer.

What will happen to political promises such as Trump’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton?

The next four years, Baughman suggested, will afford a chance to see how much Trump meant of what he said on the campaign trail. But his term “will also be an interesting test of political institutions” — notably the career civil servants who embody much of the experience and know-how in Washington.

Will they be a stabilizing force? Baughman wondered, noting that the civil service is “a part of our political system that we usually take for granted.”

What might a Trump presidency mean for LGBT equality?

“What Just Happened?” fills the Benjamin Mays Center on the day after the election. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Though unable to attend the Wednesday session, Stephen Engel, chair of the politics department, had already answered that question in October.

In a story for the McClatchyDC news service, Engel, who is the author of Fragmented Citizens: The Changing Landscape of Gay and Lesbian Lives, said that “the prospect for LGBT rights is not good� under a Trump administration.

Right off the bat, executive orders will likely be reversed, and, over time, courts will become more conservative.

A strategy to watch, Engel said, is states implementing “state religious freedom restoration acts.� Such acts could allow a baker, for example, to say no to making a wedding cake for a same-sex couple or a restaurant to deny an LGBT person a table based on religious convictions.

The ceremony beginning ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ 144th academic year on Sept. 9 took place on a choice afternoon, sunny and mild, and explored in depth the concept of choice — no small issue for 470 first-year students confronted with new freedom to make their own choices. (.)

“This is just the beginning of a long lifetime of making choices,” college President Elaine Tuttle Hansen said. Quoting Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, she said, “It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

She pointed out to the new students that a traditional residential undergraduate college like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is an accommodating arena for learning to make good choices — affording “the time, the space and the resources to explore lots of options,” as well as some buffering against the consequences of bad decisions.

If our choices show who we truly are, Hansen suggested, the new students might aspire to become “liberated consumers.” In contrast to the rampant infantilized consumption described by political theorist Benjamin Barber in the book , Hansen depicted the liberated consumer as one “who does not think he is free of the necessity of consuming — she is maybe even someone who likes to shop — but does not succumb to the pressure to consume mindlessly.”

She continued, “As individuals, it’s necessary and quite seductive to be focused on our personal consumption and our private choices. But as a society we know we must somehow make better collective, public, social choices about what and how we consume.”

“Somehow,” but how? Hansen offered: valuing complexity, participation, commitment, real human relationships and deep focus on the challenges at hand.

Hansen’s theme harmonized with the college’s efforts, intensified this decade, to come closer to environmental sustainability, exemplified by this summer’s charge to the new students to advocate for curtailing climate change. But Hansen ultimately steered back to an idea that could be as relevant to residential life as to global responsibility.

She brought up the famous psychology test called the Marshmallow Experiment, in which young children are given the choice of having one sweet treat right away or having two if they can wait a while for it.

Referencing an article about the experiment in the , Hansen explained that kids who can wait tend to be more successful as adults than the immediate gratifiers. The same self-control that enables them to wait for the treat, it turns out, translates into myriad practices and habits that cultivate adult success.

Noting that disciplined decision-making is as important to institutions as to individuals, Hansen segued to the topic in store for the featured convocation speakers: brief updates on the latest phase of the collaborative ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ planning process that began two years ago.

Each speaker was involved with a team developing recommendations for the college in a particular area. Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics and special assistant to the president for diversity initiatives, spoke first. Her team developed recommendations for the college on the theme of Learning at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Reminding listeners that “learning is what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is all about,” Hill wove together imperatives to deepen ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ intellectual community; use its tangible and intellectual resources wisely; and embrace diversity as something that needs to be enhanced at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and something that will enhance ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ commitment to excellence drives its commitment to diversity, Hill explained. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ can’t attain excellence without embracing the disparate qualities and contributions of all who come here to teach and to learn. “As importantly,” Hill said, “preparing all students for leadership and service in a multicultural, rapidly changing, and highly competitive world is our job.”

Matthew Côté, associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of the faculty, summarized the findings of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the Liberal Arts team. Of the team’s 11 recommendations, he highlighted two: the prioritization of a new facility where math and the sciences could be taught under one roof, and the redoubling of efforts to secure funding for student-faculty research.

Côté also mentioned four pedagogical projects now under way as a result of the team’s work: an integrated math and science course sequence, an effort to broaden computing experience and resources throughout those disciplines, a grant-funded process (undertaken jointly with Bowdoin College) to explore the teaching of quantitative reasoning and a project to improve communication within the science and math division.

Kirk D. Read, associate professor of French, co-chaired the team investigating The Arts in the College and the Community. Read’s humorous and expansive talk used his own experiences in theater as an undergraduate to illustrate the value of the visual and performing arts in the liberal arts context.

The late-afternoon ceremony also included addresses by Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich; Daniel Gimbel ’10, president of the college’s student government; and William Blaine-Wallace, multifaith chaplain.

President Elaine Tuttle Hansen has announced the program and speakers for the third annual presidential symposium at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College. Titled The Teaching and Learning Shift: Diversity and Technology in the Twenty-First Century, the event explores ways in which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and staff must both expand their knowledge of how students learn and deepen their capacity to engage them.

The April 30 symposium will focus on the intersection of two key differences between contemporary students and the generations of their parents and professors: their understanding and experiences of diversity and their uses of technology. [More…]