The latest podcast produced by the Center for Ethics and Education focuses on political disclosure in the classroom. I think a lot of CTers will find it interesting. Several students were interviewed, and they are quite insightful. For what it is worth, my view is that, in general, when teaching about controversial politically and morally-valenced issues it is usually pedagogically better for most of us not to disclose our substantive views about the issues we are trying to get the students to investigate (I can think of examples of people who do disclose where I think what they are doing is pedagogically superior to withholding in the way I do — Jerry Cohen springs to mind — but I think they are the exceptions). In the podcast my co-director Tony Laden expresses sensible disagreement. Well worth listening to, if I say so myself.
(By the way although I suggested the topic after discussing it with a couple of the students who are featured, as with all our podcasts I take no credit for its excellent quality (both in terms of production values and intellectual content), except in that I suggested to our program manager that she might make podcasts, having no idea quite how good she would turn out to be at doing it. A leading podcaster told me how excellent she thought one of them was, and then was horrified to find out just how much of a shoestring we have been operating on!)).
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
oldster 08.08.25 at 5:02 pm
Carrie Welsh has a great voice for podcasting!
Interesting content, too.
Sashas 08.08.25 at 8:57 pm
Very nicely done with the podcast! There’s an audio blip around 11 minutes FYI.
On the actual topic, I think one factor y’all didn’t discuss is possible circumstances where you might in fact want to suppress certain viewpoints. One that comes up occasionally in my home turf of Computer Science is the idea that women don’t have a legitimate place in a CS classroom. I know some of my students hold that belief. Some of my students are women. Taken in isolation, pretty much anything I do here will cause some of the students to tune out.
Fortunately, we don’t have to take it in isolation. What I actually do is set certain ground rules on acceptable discussion before we get to the more controversial topics, including emphasizing that all of them belong in my classroom and that statements saying some of my students don’t belong won’t be tolerated.
I think I’d handle this very differently in a Philosophy classroom, but it seems to work ok for my CS one.
One other thought I have on disclosure: You should also disclose in advance in situations where “leaking” is inevitable. We needed to talk about queer representation in one of my courses this Spring, and since I’m open with my students about my identity I think it was better to disclose my stance (and make clear that they don’t have to agree with me) rather than hiding my stance knowing they will make confident guesses about it. I think actually the leaking itself is less important than the knowledge that students will confidently guess. One should probably disclose if students are likely to think they know your stance even if they actually don’t.
Harry 08.08.25 at 9:16 pm
She really does. I think she’ll be ok with me saying this: We hired her as our project manager/administrator, and only afterward I found out that we shared an obsession with radio (specifically radio drama/comedy/documentary — yesterday was a VERY BAD day for us both, and maybe I’ll write later about why). Part of our mission is research dissemination, and I wondered if she would enjoy trying to make some podcasts. Yes, it turns out, she did, and is great at it!
engels 08.08.25 at 10:57 pm
all of them belong in my classroom and that statements saying some of my students don’t belong won’t be tolerated
I’m not sure what this intolerance amounts to if the belonging of the people making the statements can’t be questioned.
J 08.08.25 at 11:00 pm
I know Cohen as a great philosopher, and as a funny symposium giver (YouTube), but didn’t know he was a good teacher too. That’s great to hear. Anything specific about his approach to this that is of (quick) note?
Alan White 08.09.25 at 5:35 am
Not political disclosure, but when I taught philosophy of religion I always disclosed at the beginning of the course, with a detailed caveat, that I was non-religious after being a young evangelical Christian. I taught the course assiduously with arguments both pro and con, and in course evals could see that finally some students thought I was lying about my disbelief. I took great solace in that. It is possible to disclose but still teach thoughtfulness about controversial topics. I think the main point is to convey the love of truth over anything like personal views. In today’s political atmosphere that may be the most precious thing we can do, if we can.