A previous version of this article misstated the college where Professor Nina Khruscheva works. Khruscheva works at the Schools of Public Engagement, not the New School for Social Research.
For New School professors, the current political situation is uniquely difficult to put in perspective for students. “You have alternative facts, you have fake news, so how do you write history in a post-truth moment when truth doesn’t matter?” said Nina Khrushcheva, professor of International Affairs at the Schools of Public Engagement and an expert in political media and propaganda. “We’ve never seen this before. We’ve never seen reality TV writing reality.” Khrushcheva is the biological great-granddaughter and adoptive granddaughter of former premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev.
Lisa Huestis, professor of politics at Lang and a former federal prosecutor, said her approach to teaching has changed substantially since the election in 2016. “For years I’ve attacked [the system’s] weaknesses in class,” said Huestis, “and for the first time I really feel like I have to sort of flip it, and say let’s just pause for a moment and not just criticize.”
Formerly part of the Department of Justice and an expert in constitutional law, Huestis believes that the value of representative democracy and the strength of American institutions should be her focus as an educator. “I have a very hard time imagining why your generation would not be disillusioned with institutions, or disillusioned with process, or disillusioned with any of the systems that are in place,” she said.
Michelle Mason, a senior studying politics at Lang, felt blindsided by Trump’s victory from within the liberal bubble of a metropolitan college campus. Students and professors only begin studying him seriously after the election. “During the fall semester professors were certain that he would not win,” said Mason about the late months of 2016. “Despite being in all politics classes, I don’t remember any significant discussions [about Trump]. I think everyone in New York City did not understand how popular he was.”
Mason also feels that politics classes have changed significantly after the election.“I felt the level of rigor go up,” she said. “All professors admitted they had never seen news become so unpredictable and cycle so quickly.”
As a politics major in her fourth year at the New School, Mason also understands that painting all students in Manhattan as trapped in the “liberal bubble” does not tell the whole story of the New School. “I don’t think the entire student body falls into line with this [left-leaning] ideology. I have had many classmates who lean far more to the right, they are just not as vocal,” she said.
Although Huestis understands our time as “a moment of absolute emergency,” that may not be enough to prepare Democrats and progressives for the upcoming election.
“One of the things that tends not to be much discussed, at least not an analytical way in Manhattan, is the depth of divisions within the Democratic party,” said David Plotke, professor of politics with a focus on U.S. politics at the New School for Social Research. “The political danger of lower Manhattan is you may overestimate Trump’s weakness to the point that you think any Democrat will win,” he said.
—Nina Khrushcheva, NSSR professor of International Affairs
“You have alternative facts, you have fake news, so how do you write history in a post-truth moment when truth doesn’t matter?”
Plotke, though, thinks that the New School student body remains mindful of the serious and complex dangers that we currently face, and of those to come in the next few years. “Even though lower Manhattan has its political culture, the students in the undergraduate level at the New School have generally lived here for a couple years, and many of them have lived in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Ohio,” said Plotke. “They are very aware that the country as a whole does not look like San Francisco or Manhattan.”
Looking ahead to the 2020 election, Plotke foresees a real challenge for Democrats to beat the current President. “Although Trump incites a lot of antagonism, you have tremendous advantages as an incumbent,” he said. “It’s very powerful to be president and you can do all kinds of things to augment your chances of winning.” Since World War II, seven US presidents have been reelected to a second consecutive term, and only Presidents Carter and Bush Sr. have lost their reelection campaigns since then, which makes George H.W. Bush (1988-1992) the last one-term US president to date.
Hoping to join the long list of two term presidents, Trump plans to use any weaknesses he sees in the Democratic camp to his advantage, Plotke explained. “Trump’s strategy is utterly obvious, which is to persuade voters in more centrist states that the Democrats are too far to the left,” he said. This classic strategy in presidential races entails “provoking or at least benefitting from the divisions in the opposing party,” Plotke said.
Similarly, Khrushcheva thinks that Trump has been effective so far in his political messaging. “I wouldn’t dismiss him winning [in 2020] because he’s very clever,” said Khrushcheva. “People just dismiss him all the time, but he’s incredibly clever at reading his audience.” Trump’s strategy to divide and conquer the American left is working so far, according to Khrushcheva.
“I think in 2020, the more our side would stop shrieking and actually start admitting what Trump’s strengths are, the better we are equipped to meet those strengths,” Khrushcheva said. “And we’re not really doing it.”
Still, most professors as well as students do not see any way to predict or anticipate what will happen in 2020, or even in the time leading up to voting day, which could give Democrats assurances about winning. “I have an idealistic view of my duty as an American to vote no matter what,” said Mason, “but the statistics show that I am in the minority. If there is anything I think I learned from the last election, it is that I don’t know anything.”
On the 2020 race, Khrushcheva said that ultimately no expert can really know how the next eighteen months or so will play out. “We don’t know,” she said. “We can’t know.”
“Because either side wants to believe, and this may sound ridiculous, that the truth is on their side — whatever the truth is,” Khrushcheva said.