Teaching Politics in Times of Polarization

This roundtable will explore opportunities and constraints that come with teaching politics in a context of increasing political polarization. Political scientists are uniquely positioned to offer students opportunities to engage deeply with our shifting political contexts, to identify the implications of these shifts, and to explore individual and collective pathways to knowledge and agency. The political science classroom also provides a space for students to learn and employ various methods of deliberation, disagreement, and evidence-based analysis. Drawing on participants' experience with critical pedagogy and scholarship on the history of political science, this roundtable seeks to share and analyze methods both within and beyond the classroom to help professors and students resist the erosion of democratic norms around the world. Specific topics discussed will include combating misinformation and "fake news," the use of narrative as a form of radical democratic knowledge production, and the role of care ethics in building critical learning communities.