After the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, many faculty at universities canceled classes, either due to believing that they had to take time to deal with their own disappointment or that students needed time to process their negative emotions. Other professors took class time to allow students to “process their feelings” and deal with what was perceived as a devastating event for all on campus.
In 2024, some faculty followed the same playbook at universities such as Harvard, Michigan State, and UPenn, among other institutions, by canceling classes or using class time to deal with anticipated student emotions. This was a mistake for a number of reasons.
Let us start with the faulty assumptions made by faculty who are canceling their classes or using them to deal with students’ emotions.
Certainly some if not many students in our classes voted for Trump.Myth I: Every student in their class is devastated by the results of the election. Given that Harris lost much of the youth vote (18-29 age range) compared to Biden in 2020 and beat Trump only 52 percent to 46 percent, this is a faulty belief. Certainly some, if not many, students in these classes favored or voted for Trump.
Myth II: Students who were disappointed with Trump winning are not mature enough to deal with losing an election. They therefore need time to handle their emotions because they cannot function otherwise.
Myth III: Faculty who use their classes to help students process their emotions have the skills to guide the conversation productively.
Myth IV: Students prefer using class time to discuss politics instead of learning the subject they signed up to study.
In sum, such faculty believe that their students are unhappy with the election results, are emotionally immature, lean politically left, are taught by faculty who are suited for facilitating emotional conversations, or want to use class time to discuss politics. While these assumptions may be true in some individual cases, I am doubtful that they are the case broadly among the student population.
Does this mean faculty should not discuss the election outcome at all with students? Of course not. Using class time to engage students on the election is fine if it is relevant to the course.
For example, my first-year seminar is “History, Myth, and Modern Leadership,” and we discuss political leaders such as Pericles, Gandhi, Mandela, Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson. Thus, it made sense to spend the last part of my class on the day after the election talking about the results. We discussed the two candidates’ strategies, which ones we thought worked, which were not effective, and the potential policies of the new administration. All my students handled the conversation thoughtfully.
Canceling classes or using them to process emotions is a perilous path.There are many other types of courses within a university curriculum (e.g., political science, law, public policy, etc.) in which talking about the outcome of the election was the proper thing to do, assuming the discussion was put in the context of the coursework.
However, canceling classes or using them to process emotions is a perilous path for the following reasons.
1. Most Students Are Resilient. While some students may not be happy with the election, most are mature enough to deal with it. Those that are not and need some time to deal with it could decide not to attend class or get help outside of class.
(Of course, if a student comes to a professor and is distraught, clearly the faculty member should take time to listen and, if it’s more serious, refer the student to the campus mental-health unit.)
2. Students’ Politics Are Not Monolithic. While campuses lean left, students are not monolithic in their political beliefs, and professors should not assume they are. I was walking on campus the day after the election, and some students had a chalk board with two columns and were asking their peers to put a mark down if they were happy or sad with the election results. The “I’m Happy” column had as many chalk marks in it as the “I’m Sad” column. So clearly not everyone was unhappy.
3. Trump Was Not a Shock. The students in my first-year seminar reminded me that Trump had been their president when they were kids, so his being president again was nothing new or shocking.
4. Gnashing Teeth Signals the Professor’s Politics. Canceling classes also signals to students the politics of their professor, which could lead to less open conversations going forward. It would be interesting to know how many of the professors who canceled their classes after Trump won also canceled them after Biden won.
5. Canceling Classes Reduces Trust in Higher Education. By taking a visible political stance that the election of Donald Trump is a disaster, academics play into the view of many that universities are ideologically driven. Although the number of professors doing so is small, the stories that are published are widely publicized. This further erodes the already falling trust the public has in higher education.
By calling the election of Donald Trump a disaster, academics play into the view that universities are ideologically driven.6. Canceling Classes Sends the Wrong Message. Canceling classes because a professor believes some students cannot deal with the results sends the wrong message. As was said by one professor online, “Please do not send out messages implying that students should be feeling sad/traumatized/angry because of election results. This will do the opposite from promoting good mental health.”
Universities are not helping our students by trying to shield them from reality. That approach does not help students prepare themselves to handle the many challenges they will face in life and will not help them going forward.
It is clear that the coming decades will likely be quite dynamic and unstable. War among the major powers is increasingly likely (think Taiwan and China). Meanwhile, new technologies such as artificial intelligence will change how we think and live and also have an impact on employment. Given these and other changes, our students are going to need to be resilient to deal with a very challenging future. We need to engender resilience, not fragility.
7. Faculty Should Be Role Models. Based on my conversations with students, a number found it off-putting if a professor canceled class. As faculty, we are the role models for students and need to show by example that, though elections may not turn out in one’s favor, (a) life goes on, and (b) there will be another election coming soon which may have different results.
8. Canceling Class Impacts Teaching and Accreditation. From a pedagogical and accreditation standpoint, every course must meet for a set number of hours. Unless a professor makes up the time lost when canceling their class, they are not meeting the educational and accreditation requirements of the university.
9. Other Venues Exist. There are organizations on most campuses (such as the Program for Public Discourse or the School of Civic Life and Leadership like ours at UNC) that are the proper venues to have constructive dialogue about issues and events such as elections. In fact, I was able to attend the end of one such post-election session and was impressed by the students’ ability to discuss the results maturely and constructively.
In sum, we do our students a disservice by canceling classes or using class time to deal with the emotions some students may be feeling. Unless an election or other current event is aligned with the course content, faculty should focus their classes on the matter at hand, namely the knowledge their students signed up to gain. By doing so, faculty can serve as examples to our students on how to deal with the changes and challenges life gives us.
Mark McNeilly is a professor of the practice at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. The views expressed are his own and are not meant to represent the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.