Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed
Walk into the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago and you’re greeted with one word in big, multistyled letters: hope. It was the signature of Barack Obama’s election campaigns, and this week’s undeniable vote for change suggests the country is yearning for it. Heading into the midterms, polls showed most Americans are gloomy about the economy and worried about where the country is going. Among young people especially, just 9 percent say the country is headed in the right direction. Only a quarter of young people expect to surpass their parents economically, while AI-driven job displacement and corruption in government weighed on them at the ballot box.
Yet, despite the overwhelming support for Democrats in congressional and state elections, these problems remain. And after bitterly fought midterm races for Congress and statehouses, hope will not be evenly shared.
As I toured the Obama center last week, along with other attendees of the GSV Sports conference, the divisiveness of the midterm campaigns was pushed to the side by reminders of a more pluralistic time. Photos captured Barack and Michelle standing alongside George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, moments when they were able to set aside their political differences to celebrate milestones for our country. The Bushes even attended the launch event for the Obama center this summer.
A quote from Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, during his momentous Senate run, struck me: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America.” I read that the same week Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial television ad against his opponent Amy Acton aired and Donald Trump told campaign rallies that everything Democrats want is “bad” and they will “destroy our country.”
I texted the Obama quote to a friend of mine and she responded, “Remember who we were once?”
But, I wonder, could we be that accepting of each other again? Obama anticipated this feeling among visitors. At the opening in June, he said the center is “not meant to evoke nostalgia for some gauzy, bygone era, some unattainable past that we can dream about, and say, ‘Oh, we miss you, Barack,’” but is designed “to remind us of who we can be, to remind us of what’s possible.”
With a full-size basketball court, walking paths, artwork and a vegetable garden, the center should be a space where people can come together and “share the joys of art and music and sport and play,” he said. “It’s in those moments that we’re reminded of our common humanity and strengthen the bonds of trust that not only make our lives richer but make our democracy stronger.”
At their best, colleges are celebrations of community and democracy, too. Each campus brings people together in its own way, and students benefit. Baylor University President Linda Livingstone recently remarked that the institution retained 100 percent of the students who participated in at least one intramural sport last year. They’re now actively working with first-year students to increase participation rates by 20 percent. Studies show that students involved in co-curricular activities have higher grade point averages than students who don’t; employers also rate students who have been involved with co-curricular activities as more hirable.
Writing in Inside Higher Ed last month, Charlotte M. Canning at the University of Texas at Austin and Michael Sy Uy at the University of Colorado at Boulder argued that the performing arts, in particular, provide opportunities for community and relationship building—and can even strengthen democracy. “The performing arts can complement civics education by cultivating the practices of participatory deliberation, empathy and public engagement,” they wrote. “Democracies thrive on participation, convening and creativity, as do the performing arts.”
But campuses are not immune to polarization. We surveyed faculty ahead of the midterms and 43 percent told us they avoid communication with students about certain topics in and out of class, while 24 percent hold back from researching or publishing about topics they would otherwise pursue. Half of faculty said they feel less free to discuss diversity, equity and inclusion now than they did a year ago, while 45 percent feel the same about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Some 44 percent feel less free to discuss federal politics.
“I am not surprised that these are the topics faculty avoid the most, especially since we have seen many high-profile cases of faculty being punished or fired for discussing them,” Kristina Brezicha, an associate professor of educational leadership at Neumann University who studies education and democracy, told IHE reporter Emma Whitford. “On DEI and Palestine, faculty have been fired or disciplined for their speech or actions on and off campus.”
In an era of polarized social media and secret recordings, she continued, federal politics is another area where “many faculty members fear retribution for their statements.”
Our political divides will be on everyone’s minds this week and in the coming months. That makes it all the more important that colleges remain places where dissent and disagreement are safe. Higher ed must do more to live up to that ideal, but that’s where I’m looking for hope: in campuses that can rebuild trust between liberals and conservatives and remind us of our shared humanity.
