Politics – News

The ‘limitless curiosities’ of �ֲ��ý’ Watson finalists

Meredith McCarroll — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 20:57:16 +0000

Four �ֲ��ý seniors are hoping to get the chance to spend the next year seeking answers to some big questions. Finalists for the Watson Fellowship, these students are exploring differing approaches to work across cultures, persistent traditions amid changing political boundaries, how meaning can be made from movement, and community-driven approaches to power grids.

The Watson Fellowship offers college graduates support to travel for a full year exploring a complex topic. Fellows receive $40,000 along with health insurance and a year’s worth of student loan payments (if needed). In exchange, they must remain outside of the United States for a full year, beginning in the August following their college graduation.

“This is some version of heaven,” said Robert Strong, director of national fellowships. “The Watson allows �ֲ��ýies to spend a year traveling the earth constrained only by the limits of their curiosities, which Watson believes should be limitless.” �ֲ��ý is one of 41 colleges and universities that can nominate students. Each institution is allowed to nominate up to four students from within their own highly competitive pool. The last time �ֲ��ý students were awarded a Watson was in 2023, when two �ֲ��ý seniors, and , received the prestigious fellowships.

This year �ֲ��ý has four nominees: Poppy Marsh ’26 of San Francisco, Calif., John Harun-DeLong ’26 of Fairbanks, Alaska; Brett Karpf ’26 of Ridgewood, N.J., and Linh Hoang ’26 of Hanoi, Vietnam. And if awarded, their travels could span 19 countries — from Nepal to Norway to New Zealand.

We caught up with these four finalists, to learn more about what they hope to accomplish if they receive a Watson. Poppy Marsh, a double major in English and politics, has proposed a project to explore identity and community among those impacted by political borders in five countries. Marsh was an Otis Fellow in 2024 and spent eight weeks in the Italian Dolomites, hiking and talking to people about climate change and environmental degradation. Marsh sees the Watson as “the grandparent of the Otis,” with a longer time frame, larger scope, and increased independence on the part of the fellow. For the Watson, she explains, “I’m curious about individual and communal conceptions of identity as it relates to the invention of the modern state through, around, and between communities whose presence on this land predates the state’s modern borders. So my project is thinking about this through distinct methods of cultural, linguistic, and social preservations of these communal identities as they relate to the land that they’ve remained on.”

Marsh’s interdisciplinarity shows up in her work at �ֲ��ý. Her politics thesis, which is “a comparative study of the refugee accommodation regimes in Greece and Kenya,” focuses on policy differences in shifting communities. Her year-long poetry thesis allows another way to explore questions of place. “For that, I’m interested in ideas of homeland, ideas of what it means to come from a place and no longer be with it or what it means to come from a place and remain with it.”

Poppy Marsh ’26. (courtesy of student)

Marsh’s idea for the Watson builds on questions of belonging, but never aims to find answers or offer solutions. “I’m not really after a specific political or social definition. I’m not interested in proving a rightful belonging to land or affirming a rightful belonging to land. That’s so far from my place. What I want is structured around open-ended curiosity. I want it to be stretchy. I want it to be bent and folded and contradicted. I want it to be able to hold water and leak as well, depending on where I am.”

Marsh credits her first-year seminar professor and advisor, Senem Aslan, professor of politics, for her growing enthusiasm and curiosity about these questions. Aslan has been Marsh’s advisor all four years and has encouraged Marsh to move toward these goals.

John Harun-DeLong ’26 of Fairbanks, Alaska, could have selected any number of big questions to follow for his proposed year abroad. He is a cellist, on the debate team, and majoring in biochemistry with minors in philosophy and Hispanic Studies. But within those varied interests is a throughline: “Climate change is what really drives me. I need to think of it. For me, my life isn’t just my own body. It’s like my entire community of Alaska and my hometown. And so the destruction of that is fundamental. Everything that shaped you, if those are being destroyed, that’s the most complete destruction of the self that can exist, really.”

John Harun-Delong ’26. (courtesy of student)

Though he aims to work toward a MD/PhD in the future, Harun-DeLong first wants to spend time understanding, and comparing, power grids around the world to work toward more sustainable and safer solutions for the U.S..

His plan is to travel to countries with a decentralized power grid or microgrids that are more resilient than the aging – and vulnerable – grid in the U.S. It isn’t only the science that interests Harun-DeLong. These microgrids also “allow [citizens] to have truly democratic control over the grid because the people in the village are supposed to maintain and decide what the best grid policy is.”

There’s a precedent for Harun-DeLong to figure it out as he goes, and find opportunities along the way. Last summer, when Harun-DeLong knew that he wanted to work with some of the top cancer researchers in the world, he cold-called them. He showed up in Spain and ended up working as a research assistant for Maria Blasco, director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center.

Linh Hoang ’26 of Hanoi, Vietnam was traveling in Svalbard, Norway, when she met a stranger who changed her life. In a shared kitchen, over instant ramen, Hoang struck up a conversation with a man who explained his own big questions. He had spent the past two decades in constant motion, always striving through work to reach the next rung on the ladder. He suddenly stopped and asked himself: “What do I actually want?” That reflection struck Hoang as she was busy working toward her own future. Why wait for a mid-life break to ask this question? Talking to friends across the globe who are building lives in a time of uncertainty, Hoang believes that it is worth pausing to notice how various cultures respond to and help shape relationships to work.

Hoang’s Watson project emphasizes existential questions and places her generation in a broader context of work culture. “From my Watson, I will learn how people across cultures navigate the same tensions I’ve felt: between ambition and meaning, belonging and freedom, expectation and reality. I will return with a deeper understanding of how systems and emotions intertwine, and with the humility to know that both matter.”

Linh Hoang ’26. (courtesy of student)

Those who know Hoang as a double major in math and economics might be surprised that she is focusing on philosophical questions. Hoang’s understanding of economics will certainly impact the questions that she asks, but she really is interested in a more personal approach in her travels. Hoang’s proposal lays out a plan to visit nine countries in the coming year.

Hoang is already making plans to pursue graduate work that bridges math and finance. She isn’t on the fence about her next steps, and she does not see the Watson as “opting out.” Instead, she is remembering the stranger in Norway reflecting on his life and his choices. And in framing these questions comparatively in cultures both known for their high-pressure or their laid-back approaches to work, Hoang is certain to move toward her next phase with more understanding. “What I’ve found,” Hoang says, ”is that when I talk to more people, I learn more about myself.“

Brett Karpf ’26 of Ridgewood, N.J. spends a lot of time walking. Whether covering hundreds of miles along trails in Italy on his Otis Fellowship, wandering through urban Morocco during study abroad or simply moving from place to place in Maine, walking gives meaning to his life. As he has grown and reflected more on the role of motion in his own life, he has begun asking more questions about walking and movement, such as “Why is it that moving, walking especially, can enable us to gain a better sense of faith or understanding or contentedness?”

Brett Karpf ’26. (courtesy of student)

An English major, Karpf is deeply engaged in analyzing words; his two-semester thesis project explores sublimity in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! But Karpf has also served as an assistant to �ֲ��ý horticulturalist Jeremy Lavertu and worked as a gardener for Sanford Freedman, associate professor of English. His proposal for the Watson allows him to combine his love of the natural world with his analytical skills as he works to understand what happens for people who spend time walking outside.

Though Karpf’s experiences walking have been selective and intentional, he is drawn to nomadic cultures whose very existence is tied to movement. “I’m looking for similarities and oppositions between different groups. You can find so much cultural similarity between places that are thousands of miles apart, if not tens of thousands of miles apart, and who are using motion to sort of reach similar ends.”

Karpf will explore people who walk for various reasons, including religious pilgrims. He hopes to learn “by interacting with people who are walking as a means of religious observance or as a way to become closer with what they deem to be divine.” The project will also explore “cultures where motion and movement are prioritized — herders, semi-nomadic peoples, including people that used to be nomadic and no longer are,” in order to understand the drive to hold to traditions that are increasingly threatened.

Karpf hopes to find meaningful answers — and at minimum, answers that help him understand himself more. “I am seeking how others experience purpose and understanding when it feels deeply entangled with movement: Can their experience help me understand my own?”

Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, professor of politics, receives Kroepsch Award

Alexandra DeMarco — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:01:14 +0000

Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, professor of politics, at the Kroepsch Teaching Award Pedagogy Panel. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

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.”

Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz teaches courses in comparative politics, Latin American politics, Latinx politics, and international migration. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

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.”

Meet new faculty: Lisa Gilson and political words that fit the need

Emily McConville — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 13:18:48 +0000

Each week this fall, we’ll introduce new �ֲ��ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the fifth of our nine new faculty members, Lisa Gilson

Name: Lisa Gilson

Title: Assistant Professor of Politics

Degrees from: Yale University, Ph.D and M.A. in political science; Tufts University, B.A. in political science

Before �ֲ��ý: Postdoctoral fellow in social studies, Harvard University

Her work: Gilson focuses on political reactions expressed outside of mainstream political channels, from abolitionist movements to contemporary far-right groups.

A political theorist, she is working on a book about the relationship between such social movements and social critics, including artists and writers, and the idea that the various political actors involved in a movement “are each doing particular kinds of things. Each has strengths that are particular to what kind of organizing they’re doing and what kind of protest they are doing.”

Assistant Professor of Politics Lisa Gilson works in her new, not-quite-yet-furnished Pettengill Hall office on Aug. 14, 2020. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Example 1: In one chapter of her book, Gilson looks at Walt Whitman. While his writings were sympathetic to egalitarian and anti-racist ideas, his work didn’t actively call out racists and Southern sympathizers.

Yet, as Gilson argues, political actors like Whitman must be viewed in context. Whitman was uniquely situated to speak to a particular audience — Southern whites — that otherwise would have been “disgusted by, or not respond well to, a broader anti-racist movement. He spent a lot of time really trying to target that audience and work with that audience.”

Meanwhile, other actors in the movement, including Radical Reconstructionists, “were facing other kinds of demands. They couldn’t speak directly to white Southerners because the white Southerners obviously had no interest in listening to them.”

Example 2: Gilson pointed to recent Twitter comments from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responding to critics who said that Black Lives Matter activists’ language around defunding the police doesn’t play well among voters.

“We shouldn’t be attacking people for playing a role that is adapted to their specific situation.”

AOC’s response, in effect, sums up Gilson’s book project. “Activists who are trying to get people out into the streets will use language that might not poll well with the broader voting public. But it’s not the activists’ job — nor would it play to their strengths — to use language that polls well.”

While elected officials have to think about what language they use to further their goals, activists “use the language that works best for their specific and immediate goals,” she says. “For example, the slogan ‘defund the police’ may appeal more to people who actually show up at protests rather than those who don’t participate. And that’s fine. We shouldn’t be attacking people for playing a role that is adapted to their specific situation.”

Ideas in the classroom: Gilson is teaching “Politics and Literature” this fall, looking at how writers target “different audiences with work that’s outside of what is traditionally considered to be ‘political.’” For example, the class will read, among other works, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which raises questions about race, class, and gender through its depiction of a young Black girl who believes that her dark skin makes her ugly.

Assistant Professor of Politics Lisa Gilson photographed on the historic Quad and in her new Pettengill Hall office on Aug. 14, 2020.

Working outside traditional political spheres, writers like Morrison seek to “change our broader culture and the broader discourse that people have around certain topics.”

Finding her path: Gilson grew up in a diverse area and says she quickly learned that her experiences as a white person were fundamentally different from those of her Black neighbors.

In school, “I started connecting my experiences growing up and being in a more racially diverse neighborhood and being treated better, and not having to think about my skin color, and how that related to my interactions with the police” with a broader system of racist oppression — one she wanted to study and fight.

Sample lesson: Gilson often teaches introductory courses in political theory. In one class, after having her students read the works of theorists like Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx, she gave them Politics of Piety, by Saba Mahmood, a book that analyzed a women’s piety movement in Cairo.

“The women who are in this piety movement are choosing these religious precepts which place them in submission to their husbands,” Gilson says. “Mahmood makes a complicated argument that the women are expressing a type of agency.

“It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve ever taught because it’s challenging to me, and because the students themselves have to take a step back and ask, ‘What does it mean to say that I support a position that [they wouldn’t naturally agree with?]”

Why �ֲ��ý? Gilson’s undergraduate college was Tufts, where programs such as the Experimental College Tisch College of Civic Life informed her belief that there were “things that you could do as a scholar that also would contribute to the community,” Gilson says.

During her job search, the “importance of community-engaged learning was one of the first things that I noticed about �ֲ��ý,” she says, finding the college’s approach — forging long-term relationships with community partners — preferable to the drop-in model of community work, where students do a few projects, write their papers about it, and then graduate.

“If you’re really interested in your community, shouldn’t you be thinking about the long-term needs of the community? About how the community has already tried to organize around those needs? And how might you be able to support what exists already?”

Meet new �ֲ��ý faculty: Seulgie Lim and gender equality in West Africa

Emily McConville — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:54:15 +0000

Each week for the next nine, we’ll be introducing new �ֲ��ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This week, we introduce Seulgie (Claire) Lim.

Name: Seulgie Lim

Title: Assistant Professor of Politics

Degrees from: Boston University, Ph.D. in political science; Seoul National University, M.A. in international cooperation, B.A. in international relations

Her research: Lim studies efforts at gender equality in West African nations, particularly the effects of a 2010 gender parity law in Senegal that mandates that the country’s National Assembly and other legislative bodies comprise 50 percent women.

“There are different ways of looking at the concept of gender equality or gender parity,” Lim says. “For Senegalese women, their roles and identities as mothers, wives, and caregivers are very important. Passing this law on gender parity didn’t necessarily mean that they wanted to give up their household work or have men do half the chores, for example.”

Assistant Professor of Politics Seulgie (Claire) Lim poses on the Historic Quad on Aug. 21, 2020. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Law does not exist as a legal tool only. It has to fit within society. My argument is that the gender parity law does face certain social and cultural and religious challenges — but from a theoretical perspective, it contributes to the diversity of feminisms in Africa.”

Finding her path: Lim was born in South Korea. Her father had a steady job but it “didn’t necessarily allow him to spend that much time with our family.” That’s not what he wanted, she says.

“West Africa definitely holds a special place in my heart.”

So he decided to take “a big adventure, a big risk” by taking a position in Mauritania, a country he’d never heard of until someone he knew went to work there. The family lived there for 15 years before moving back to Korea for Lim’s and her sister’s college education.

“West Africa definitely holds a special place in my heart,” Lim says. She lived there as a young child and teenager, not yet able to grasp its “political, social, or religious aspects.”

When she arrived at Boston University for doctoral study, “one of the first classes I took was on African politics. It confirmed some of the things I instinctively knew because I had grown up there, but it was a shift in terms of how I can see these things from an academic perspective.”

Inside out: On a flight to Senegal to do fieldwork, Lim looked out the window as the plane was about to land. “The landscape is just so different from what I was experiencing traveling back and forth between the U.S. and mostly Korea. It was like going back home for me — it’s very similar in many ways to Mauritania.”

Being both an outsider and insider, “thinking about my identity within all of that, was actually a really exciting part of field work and research.”

That aspect of fieldwork was alluring to Lim, the “feeling of going back home — eating the food that I used to eat when I was growing up. It’s not necessarily academic but has to do with how you feel as a researcher. I met childhood friends that I had not seen for more than 15 years.”

Being both an outsider and insider, “thinking about my identity within all of that, was actually a really exciting part of field work and research.” Along the way, Lim learned to interrogate her inside-outside perspective.

During doctoral studies, a professor from Senegal was “really good at making me aware of my own prejudices as I was doing my research — after all, it had been such a long time since I left the country. And so I had some preconceived notions that I wasn’t even aware of, and he pointed those out.”

Why teach: “I really like the fact that students can learn as much from me as I can learn from them. It’s not just a one-way process where I’m regurgitating what they have read.

“One of the things that impressed me during my visit to �ֲ��ý is that whenever I was talking to a faculty member, there would always be one or two students passing by and waving hands. I really liked that connection, that we get to know students not only as students, but also as individuals who have their own experiences and stories.”

Sample lesson: “For all the classes I have taught, I show a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘,’” Lim says. The well-known talk explores how stereotypes and misunderstanding emerge when we hear and accept just one story about another person or country.

“It’s a continent of energetic women’s movement, positive political and social changes, and promising technological advances.”

“I like to set that as the foundation — we are going to pay attention to all the different stories that are out there,” Lim says.

“I want students to know that Africa is not just a continent with civil conflicts, with diseases, with debts, but there are so many different things we can learn about all the different countries on the continent — it’s a continent of energetic women’s movement, positive political and social changes, and promising technological advances.”

The lesson I look forward to: Giving democracy a number

Emily McConville — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 14:28:08 +0000

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.”

Want some insight into the 2018 midterms? Look through the lens of gender.

Emily McConville — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 19:05:28 +0000

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 �ֲ��ý. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý 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/�ֲ��ý 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/�ֲ��ý 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.

2018 Kroepsch awardee Engel shows ‘overriding concern for his students’ progress’

Doug Hubley — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 16:44:34 +0000

Allen Sumrall ’16 says that professor Stephen Engel made him stop caring about what, for some, is a defining point of academe: the grade.

“I became more concerned about the material and writing a well-organized, interesting, thought-provoking paper than about the grade it would get,” says Sumrall, who took four courses with Engel and enlisted that associate professor of politics as his honors thesis adviser.

“That’s probably the single best lesson I learned in college,” Sumrall says. “He inspired my own thinking. I became truly interested in the material for its own sake.” In other words, he discovered what’s known around �ֲ��ý as purposeful work: the kind of work that aligns interests, abilities, and a sense of higher meaning.

In a video by �ֲ��ý director of photography Phyllis Graber Jensen, Stephen Engel explains what the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching means to him.

“It’s only because of his courses that I’m doing a Ph.D. in government,” adds Sumrall, who’s building on his �ֲ��ý honors thesis to earn that doctorate, combined with a law degree, at the University of Texas at Austin. Engel’s “willingness to nurture and promote that enthusiasm in students allowed me to discover what I wanted to do with my life.”

It’s not surprising that students of Engel would undergo such conversion experiences. Engel’s teaching, says politics department colleague James Richter, “is characterized by encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, clarity in its presentation, extraordinary preparation — you should see the outlines on the board when you walk into one of his 200-level classes — and an overriding concern for his students’ progress.”

Engel recently received a different kind of acknowledgement of his work with students: the 2018 edition of �ֲ��ý’ pre-eminent faculty honor, the Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Charlotte Karlsen ’20 of Portland, Ore., sits with Associate Professor of Politics Stephen Engel in his Pettengill Hall office. She is taking Constitutional Law II with Engel as an independent study. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

On April 30, to mark the award, Engel presents a talk suggesting that conservatives may come to accept Supreme Court decisions that advance gay rights, because such decisions could ultimately serve the right’s legal objectives.

Engel joined the faculty in politics, one of �ֲ��ý’ most popular majors, in 2011. The author of three books, he teaches constitutional law and development, American political development, and courses that focus on LGBT social and political mobilization.

For him, part of the appeal of a small school like �ֲ��ý is that “there is both the expectation and the excitement of being in the classroom on a regular basis with undergraduates. The classroom is where I get to test ideas, challenge students, have students challenge me about those ideas,” Engel says.

In March, Timothy Lyle of Iona College and Stephen Engel (at the far end of the table) packed a Commons seminar room with their research presentation “F***ing with Dignity.” The talk was presented in coordination with �ֲ��ý’ production of “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“And it’s where I can really think through, in the context of politics, how contemporary policy disputes can be understood both in the moment and in the historical context.”

Now in her second semester of studying constitutional law with Engel, politics major Charlotte Karlsen ’20 of Portland, Ore., seconds Sumrall’s assessment of the professor’s ability to engage students. Where “Con Law I” could have been a dry and arcane exposition of relationships among the three federal branches and between D.C. and the states, Engel instead made it captivating.

“I think a lot of us were like, ‘We’re going to go through this kind of taxation or interstate highway conversation,’” Karlsen says, but instead, “we walked out with a really funny story or a life that had been changed by a federal decision. He really is excellent at balancing the personal and the academic in a way that makes constitutional law feel alive.”

Associate Professor of Politics Stephen Engel is the 2018 recipient of �ֲ��ý’ Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

She adds, “Everything he says is so specific, so direct, and so comprehensible. I think that’s critical, because he reaches every member of the class.”

“One of the things that I’ve come to learn at �ֲ��ý,” says Engel, “is how I value my students so much, and how important it is to me that we create environments which are nurturing and challenging.” It’s an approach that Karlsen especially appreciated during Con Law I — which Engel taught during the emotional roller-coaster ride of the 2016 election season. He provided the tools to understand the new status quo, along with some implicit reassurance about the ultimate solidity of the U.S. political system.

“To feel like there’s a structure to our country and there’s a way that things are supposed to go,” Karlsen says, “helps us have hope for the future. And also to know what expectations we should hold for our current government. It gives students agency in discovering what responsibilities they have toward our country and how the country should be responsible to us.”

2018 Kroepsch Award recipient Stephen Engel, associate professor of politics, teaches in Pettengill Hall on April 6. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

To Allen Sumrall, who came in thinking that political science was pretty much all campaign tactics and dull institutional studies, Engel introduced intriguing dimensions of the field: specifically, the sub-discipline of American political development, which studies the causes and effects of major shifts in political history.

It was a game-changer. “APD scholars always press for historical context,” Sumrall says. “Something a political actor does at Point A may not have the same effect as if they had done it at Point B. That point alone made my brain explode.”

Engel also wins praise for his ability to challenge students while equipping them to meet the challenges. “He asks a lot of his students, but gives them all the tools to succeed,” says Bennett Saltzman ’18 of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

“He gives great feedback — often writing a full page of notes on every student’s paper. This feedback shaped my senior year, as the paper proposal that I wrote in ‘Politics of Judicial Power’ last semester turned into my thesis this semester.”

Politics professor Stephen Engel is known for his ability to engage students with challenging material. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The rewards are mutual, says Engel. “One of the fun things for me, especially when it comes time to advise a senior thesis, is to watch a student take responsibility and ownership over what they’re doing,” he explains. “And also the idea that they come to recognize that they are a bit of an expert — and often more of an expert — on a particular question than I am.”

On a recent weekend, Engel read “a senior thesis that was using some quantitative and statistical modeling techniques that were extraordinarily impressive.” Engel was struck by the intellectual maturity of the student’s argument: “He walked the reader through to understand not just what his methodology was, but why it was this, and why it was an improvement over existing attempts to answer the question that he was answering.”

It was a great moment, he continues. “I was like, ‘I’m learning!’” For Engel, that experience is part of a dynamic wired into the �ֲ��ý education. “In the first year, you really are the professor and they really are the student.

“And by the point of the thesis, the roles can reverse in a way where the professor can be actively learning and the student can take responsibility for how to teach — that exciting moment where they realize what they actually have accomplished.

“You really do, as a professor, get to see the arc of a student’s academic progress.”

The decor in Stephen Engel’s Pettengill Hall office speaks volumes. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Look What We Found: Leslie Hill’s prized document of protest by African American women

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 21:12:33 +0000

“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/�ֲ��ý College)

Hill, who joined the �ֲ��ý 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 public” 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.”

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?”

�ֲ��ý at Night: Watching election results

Joshua Kuckens — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 16:54:35 +0000

As students, faculty and staff gathered to watch the election results in the Chase Hall Lounge, the mood was probably similar to other college campuses of �ֲ��ý’ ilk, with many expecting the historical news of the first female president-elect.

But the end of a bruising campaign that saw its share of unprecedented moments, election night delivered one more surprise.

Emily Bowen '19 of Pasadena, Calif., Afia Sekyere ’19 of Tampa, Fla., and Mickai Mercer ’19 of Philadelphia, Pa., cheer for a positive blue state projection. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Tessa Holtzman '17 of Las Cruces, N.M., Zoe Seaman-Grant '17 of Charleston, S.C., Arianna Fano '19 of Lincolnshire, Ill., Matthew Davis '19 of Chicago, Ill., and Daniel Basuk '19 of New York City react to early east coast results. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

Students swarm freshly delivered pizza in Chase Hall as the early election results come in. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

Kayla Jackson '19 of Metuchen, New Jersey, who found the results of her first presidential election as a voter "heartbreaking." (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Michael Stone '17 of Litchfield, N.H. and Honor Moshay '17 of Los Angeles, Calif pore over results in the Bobcat Den with Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Arianna Fano ’19 of Lincolnshire, Ill., and classmate Zoe Seaman-Grant ’17 of Charleston, S.C., had spent the entire day encouraging fellow students to vote. “One of my favorite things about �ֲ��ý is how politically active it is, and that’s why I came here,” Fano said around 10:30 p.m. “It’s nice to come together as a community and watch the results…even if it doesn’t go well.”

As early results came in around 8:00 p.m., there was nervous optimism. Cheers accompanied the projections for New York, Massachusetts, and the great state of Maine, but the “too close to call” reports from swing states and lopsided red state wins were met with groans or silence.

Associate professor of Politics John Baughman and Tim Kaplowitz ’20 of New York City attempted to relive some of the tension. “After today, we won’t have Nate Silver to make us crazy anymore,” Kaplowitz said.

By midnight, as the outcome became more apparent, the nervous optimism had fully transitioned to dejection and disbelief for students like Kayla Jackson ’19 of Metuchen, N.J., who found the results of her first presidential election as a voter “heartbreaking.”

Slideshow: Presidential politics vs. (not-real) smallpox crisis, hour by hour

Jay Burns — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 15:35:03 +0000

Eighteen students in the course “Presidential Campaign Rhetoric” have been going full tilt on a mock White House campaign since September. And today, Oct. 25, full tilt becomes warp speed as the Republican and Democratic campaigns face what’s known in politics as an October surprise.

8:28 a.m. — It’s a crisis! (Well, not really)

Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano steps to the lectern in a first-floor Pettigrew Hall lounge and gets right to the point. “You’re being brought into a crisis that’s international in scope,” she tells the students seated before her. “And you’re being brought into the loop because it’s your job to help communicate the crisis, announce a plan to deal with it, and to calm the public.” That’s not your average class assignment. Then again, Presidential Campaign Rhetoric isn’t your average course.

Associate Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley-Romano announces the (not real) smallpox outbreak. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

8:32 a.m. — And the campaign is on!

Each campaign has already developed biographies and platforms, the Dems offering “Progress We Can Count On” and the Republicans, “The Future We Deserve.” They’ve held conventions, deployed candidate videos, held debates, used polling data collected by a sociology course, consulted with a music course on campaign music, reacted to attack ads, and, today, have to face a crisis. All that has drawn in hundreds of other students: “voters,” more than 600 at last count, who include all rhetoric and debate students plus students in 23 other �ֲ��ý courses. “President Clayton Spencer has registered to vote, as have alumni and parents,” Kelley-Romano says.

From left, Republican campaign members Jacqueline Forney ’18 of Bloomington, Ind., Molly Chisholm ’17 of Boston, and Honor Moshay ’17 of Los Angeles listen to the details of the public health crisis. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

8:34 a.m. — It’s smallpox! (but not for real)

The “crisis” at hand is an outbreak of smallpox in the U.S., and the campaigns have until noon to develop a public statement that will inform and calm the nation while announcing a containment plan. “I mean, smallpox is supposed to be eradicated,” says Gabe Nott ’17 of Bronxville, N.Y. He’s playing a Democrat from Maryland running for president. “Yeah, I know,” Kelley-Romano says, deflecting the implied question. Another student tries to pull info from Kelley-Romano: “What vaccine do you need to prevent smallpox?” The professor doesn’t bite: “I don’t really know. Maybe you should check with the CDC.”

Gabe Nott ’17 of Bronxville, N.Y., is the Democratic candidate for president in the mock campaign that’s a key element of the course Presidential Campaign Rhetoric. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

8:40 a.m. — ‘A real disaster’

The campaigns spend the first half-hour or so figuring out what smallpox exactly is — a reminder that they’re young (or I’m old). Lots of us were aware of the last smallpox outbreak (1972 in Yugoslavia, killing 35 people), but these students were born between 1995 and 1996.

“Don’t fear monger.”

The Democrats’ candidate for vice president, Courtney Foster ’18 of Newton, Mass., notes that smallpox was “a real disaster” before being eradicated. Campaign manager Amanda San Roman ’17 of East Setauket, N.Y., responds that their statement doesn’t need to talk about the horrors of the disease. “The public is not already worried about smallpox. Don’t fear-monger,” she suggests. A senior interviewer for Admission, San Roman has to switch hats because she’s got two interviews scheduled at Lindholm House. “Sorry, I can’t work on this now,” she says, and heads off.

At right is campaign manager Amanda San Roman ’17 of East Setauket, N.Y. Next to her is press secretary Ian Erickson ’18 of St. Albans, Vt. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

8:46 a.m. — Is it terrorism?

The campaigns have split up to work. Upstairs in the Republicans’ war room, they’re getting clues about how presidents handle health crises by watching, on a widescreen TV, how President Obama talked about Ebola in 2015. Downstairs, the Dems analyze Obama’s May 2016 briefing on the Zika virus. Like the Dems, the Republicans are trying to grasp the historical scope of smallpox. They learn that smallpox was used as a biological weapon in the 18th century, when the British intentionally gave smallpox-infected items, including blankets, to Native Americans. And now, smallpox and bioterrorism, plus some ambiguous hints in two official-looking memos given to the campaigns by Kelley-Romano, has the campaigns on high alert. The Republicans’ presidential candidate, Molly Chisholm ’17 of Boston asks her team, “Do we need to address that?” Downstairs, the Democrats ask the same question: “Are the Republicans going to go to national security?”

On the stool, Molly Chisholm ’17 of Boston, the Republican candidate for president, and her team review President Obama’s statement on Ebola. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

9:08 a.m. — ‘We need a lab coat’

On the question of whether to speak to the bioterrorism threat, Chisholm makes the call: “We need to talk about bioterrorism. As Republicans, we need to be the national security party.” Following her lead, her team comes up with rhetorical tactics, and Honor Moshay ’17 of Los Angeles, the campaign’s media director, is a font of ideas: “Why don’t we get a �ֲ��ý EMS student to stand next to her during her address? We need a lab coat, too.” She adds, “Maybe we could get Paul Menice,” mentioning a well-known officer with Security & Campus Safety. Matt Baker ’17 of Clinton, Md., Chisholm’s running mate, texts a friend who’s a �ֲ��ý EMS. “We got him,” he says.

Matt Baker ’17 of Clinton, Md., is the Republicans’ candidate for vice president. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

9:17 a.m. — A short walk to another world

When Kelley-Romano told Nott to check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she wasn’t kidding. A little after 9, the campaigns leave Pettigrew, cross Alumni Walk, and enter Hathorn Hall for their meeting with CDC consultants, aka students in the course Mathematical Models in Biology, taught by Associate Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer.

The Republicans, pictured, and the Democrats head into Hathorn Hall for their meeting with the CDC consultants, aka math students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

9:30 a.m. — ‘We have guests’

The short walk from Pettigrew to Hathorn takes the rhetoric students from one academic world to another. “We have guests,” Greer tells her students as the Democratic and Republican candidates and their staffs enter Hathorn 303. The professors give a brief overview of the mock situation before the group splits in three: Democrats, Republicans, and students playing the media. Greer and Kelley-Romano have teamed up before to deliver a public-health “crisis” to the PCR class. That was Ebola in 2014, when that disease was in the news.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Meredith Greer and Kelley-Romano brief the students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Chisholm, in fact, was part of a student team that worked with Kelley-Romano to tweak the course during her freshman year. “It’s really cool to see the interdisciplinary side of the course come into full effect,” she says.

9:42 a.m. — Mars and Venus

According to the memos, two smallpox cases are in Massachusetts, where the Republican candidate, Chisholm, is governor, and two cases are in Washington, D.C., next door to Maryland, where Democrat Nott is governor. The campaigns are meeting with the CDC consultants to develop a strategy for containing the smallpox outbreak in their home states. It’s slow going at first as the two groups, rhetoric and math, weren’t quite sure what the other needs — Mars and Venus and all that. “It was a tough barrier,” Chisholm says later. “They knew a lot about smallpox and not a lot about rhetoric. We knew a lot about rhetoric and not a lot about smallpox and modeling.” The students’ discomfort is part of the plan, explains Greer. “They learn so much from working it out on their own.” Moshay, the Republicans’ media director, asks what seems to be a reasonable question: “Can we quarantine a city?” The math students chuckle — from their reading, they know that large-scale quarantines are easier said than done. Moshay tries again: “What are the typical responses to smallpox?” which elicits the most blackly humorous line of the day, from a math student: “Widespread panic and death.”

Math students Evan Goldberg ’19 (right) of Belmont, Mass., and Joseph Torres ’17 of Los Angeles work with the campaigns during their visit to the “CDC” in Hathorn Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

10:30 a.m. — ‘That was awesome’

Math student Gabe Whitehead ’17 of Shaker Heights, Ohio, who is working with the Republicans, uses a computational software called Mathematica to run various epidemic scenarios. He pumps his fist: He’s figured out that a blend of vaccinations and quarantine measures for Chisholm’s home state of Massachusetts would result in a manageable death toll. Without a containment plan, the model predicts all-out catastrophe: 85,000 dead. With the plan, the deaths would number 7,000. Whitehead shares graphs with the Republicans that show various scenarios. “When we got the graphs from Gabe, that was awesome,” said Chisholm.

“How can theory be used in current-day life?”

It also represented a communication breakthrough. “When we outlined what we wanted to do in our speech — dissuade fear and show the public that we have this under control — they were able to give us what they knew.” Greer says her students were jazzed to link their knowledge with a real-world scenario. “They loved the feeling of working with data and with real disease ideas,” she says. “This project has an especially realistic feeling, one that is important to see in math classes. All this theory we have learned: How can it be used in current-day life?”

Math student Gabe Whitehead ’17 of Shaker Heights, Ohio, talks with the Republican campaign. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

10:53 a.m. — ‘We don’t want to sound paranoid’

The two campaigns head back across Alumni Walk to their Pettigrew war rooms to work on their smallpox statements, which they’ll deliver in the Digital Media Studios at noon. Chisholm wants her statement to explicitly say that a foreign country might be to blame. She also says that the statement “has to be a rallying cry. We are still trying to win votes.” Her campaign manager, James Erwin ’18 of Yarmouth, Maine, is more cautious. “We don’t want to sound paranoid.” A minute later, Moshay shows up with facemasks and a white lab coat for their �ֲ��ý EMS person to wear.

The Republicans’ campaign manager, James Erwin ’18 of Yarmouth, Maine, plugs away on the statement. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

11:13 a.m. — “I don’t always know what I’m doing”

Amanda San Roman, the Dems’ campaign manager, who had to leave to do Admission interviews, returns. “I talk about this course in all my interviews,” she says because prospective students “are so impressed by it.” She tells the prospies that the course “is more in depth than anything they’ve experienced before. And it ranges so far around campus. We have all different groups coming together and teaming up to make this as real as possible.” And what does “real” feel like? “Adrenaline,” San Roman says. “As a 21-year-old student, I don’t always know what I’m doing in this. But it’s cool to be going through it with people who are interested in it and who are trying really hard.”

The Republicans’ printed statement cleverly incorporated the campaign logo and those of FEMA and the CDC. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

11:29 a.m. — Thai chicken

A half-hour remains until each candidate has to deliver their address, and 95 percent of everyone’s attention is focused on prepping their statements. Moshay speaks to group’s remaining 5 percent. “What’s for lunch?” she asks. “Thai chicken,” answers Michaela Britt ’17 of South Burlington, Vt., who handles video production for the campaign. “Oh, that’s good,” says Moshay. Then it’s back to work.

Moshay displays progress on their statement. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

11:55 a.m. — ‘We will not crumble’

Gabe Nott will deliver his statement first, and Foster, his running mate, tries to calm his nerves. “Stay calm and controlled,” she says. “You know me,” he says with a tight smile. “If there are two things I am, it’s calm and controlled.” The speech goes without a hitch. “Smallpox has been eradicated before, and it will be again,” he says, channeling every president from FDR to Obama. “We did not bow to Pearl Harbor…. We will not crumble now.”

Nott delivers his statement in the studio of the Digital Media Studios in Pettigrew Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

12:08 p.m. — “Stay calm and follow instructions”

While Nott delivers his talk alone at the lectern, Chisholm is flanked by the �ֲ��ý EMS student Sam Whitaker ’18 of Hollis, N.H., who plays a CDC staffer, and Erwin, her campaign manager. Nott alludes to the possibility of bioterrorism without naming a country, saying that the “re-emergence of the disease could have been an intentional attempt to undermine American safety and well-being.” The Republicans hit the bioterrorism angle, too, saying it’s “very unlikely” that the smallpox came from a U.S. source. Chisholm goes a step further, mentioning specifically that Russia has smallpox stocks and that the outbreak “is a new type of international terrorism to consider.” “For the rest of us, it’s important to remain calm and follow instructions from public-health officials,” she says. “We have faced crises of this magnitude in the past, and every time, our attention to detail, our intuition, and our deliberate approach has guided our country. Events such as these endure as memorable moments of strength and unity for our country.” She concludes her speech by saying, “God bless America.”

Chisholm prepares to deliver her briefing. In background, �ֲ��ý EMS Sam Whitaker ’18 of Hollis, N.H., gets ready to play a CDC staffer who will stand by the candidate. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

12:18 p.m. — Is there a winner?

“They both did well with the specifics of containment and using action verbs to put themselves in the action and in the solution,” Kelley-Romano said. Beyond the lessons of the day, Kelley-Romano puts a fine point on her course. “I think life is interdisciplinary — a �ֲ��ý liberal arts education demands the simultaneous consideration of multiple fields of knowledge,” she says. Rhetoric, specifically, “prepares students because it forces them to consider not only the construction and content of what they see and hear but also examines the medium — radio, television, film, and social media — and its impact.”

Chisholm, flanked by the Republicans’ video production staffer Michaela Britt ’17 of South Burlington, Vt., and Brennen Malone ’17 of Philadelphia, who plays the husband of Democratic presidential candidate Nott, confer with Kelley-Romano after the briefing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)