BY MATTHEW BOEDY

It’s that time of year again for professors across the nation. End of the semester review. What worked well? What didn’t? What can or should I change next time? And how might I make it all more relevant?

This run-of-the-mill academic action should take on much more importance if you look up from your desk filled with ungraded papers. The calendar is changing as usual, but next year is a presidential election year.

It’s not without notice that over the first week in December a slew of articles, books, interviews, and columns all painted the same picture: A Trump win in 2024 would end our constitutional republic.

Among other harrowing plans, Trump has said he would target critics in the media and government using the Department of Justice. I will only assume that such tyranny will be directed toward critics in higher education. Some of us are already listed on long-ago prepared “watchlists” and so the coming presidential election is fraught with much trepidation.

We also have ongoing state-level attacks on higher education too many to mention. Cuts to programs, erasures of diversity as a value, fear in faculty, and of course the gutting of tenure. All this has impacts on students, too.

Not to mention the recent House committee hearings that have embroiled three of our best universities in a partisan attack on diversity.

Many faculty are voting with their feet and leaving states that are intent on reducing their institutions to partisan indoctrination centers. And of course any citizen, especially professors, should vote with your hands, too. Mark that ballot as if your job depends on it.

In response to these very high stakes, I propose a vote by syllabi. I am calling for a national teach-in, a collective show of unity using our most powerful leverage as faculty: our courses.

If you are to teach a general education or “core curriculum” course in the fall, center it on democracy.

Teaching intro to biology or psychology? Teaching US History 101? Teaching College Algebra? Take next fall as an inflection point, as the current president likes to say.

Principles of academic freedom as defined by the American Association of University Professors require faculty to stick to our academic discipline. So I’m not asking you to veer from your expertise.

For some courses, this may be more difficult than for others. It’s why I am asking for you to think ahead now. You have several months to research, collaborate, and then revise your syllabus. But surely, if your course is relevant to the nation, it has a link to democracy somewhere in it, right?

My call may mean one assignment or one reading or one day. It may mean one week or one module. It may be working democracy into existing assignments. Or if you are game and have the time, a complete erasure of your current syllabus and the creation of a single use course for this extraordinary moment in time.

As an English professor who mainly teaches first year writing, here is what I am thinking for my own courses.

First, borrowing from Ian Porter, a lecturer at the University of Washington, I am assigning a “Democracy in Action” research project. It will be campaign season, with many candidate forums, rallies, and events. And if your campus and students are far from the battlegrounds, there are city, county, and state meetings.

I hope to make this a visual analysis assignment. Students attend the event, take some photos, and analyze how the pictures reveal, frame, define, or act out democracy.

Second, because my first year course is centered on the topics of reading and writing, I will ask students to write on the need for educated citizens in a democracy. In other words, what type of reading and writing must all have to foster democracy?

Third, in an attempt to help students see the writing process as a corollary to democracy – both are social actions, not done in isolation – I will ask them to argue for an amendment to the Constitution they would like to see. And specifically, how they would convince “red states” and “blue states” to vote for it.

Finally, revising my usual student reflection assignment at the end of the semester, I will ask students to reflect on how they have or have not participated in democracy, specifically through reading and writing. The low-hanging fruit here is researching candidates and then voting. Maybe this will be their first vote. Maybe they didn’t vote.

But the more serious reflection will be on how students see the link between higher education and democracy.

I hope this last link will be the one you pursue however you think best for your course.

No one is coming to save us. We all have to do this together. So then imagine thousands if not millions of faculty across the nation putting democracy on the syllabus.

Contributing editor Matthew Boedy is the Georgia AAUP president and professor at the University of North Georgia. He is on Twitter or X @matthewboedy.