Clarification: A reader points out that I was unclear about whether I wear my political campaign buttons on campus. I do not.

When I was a college student, and election season rolled around, I knew the politics of my professors. It was the late 60s, and the politics of the Vietnam War generated a high-pressure steam that penetrated all aspects of college life. We students held endless discussions and debates, not merely among ourselves, but with our professors — about the War and about politics in general. I don’t recall any professors wearing political buttons in class supporting a particular candidate (something I had grown up with, since my parents always wore political buttons during presidential campaigns), and I can testify that I never witnessed any of my professors talking about their political preferences inside a classroom. Even so, my college was very liberal. These very same professors had no qualms about passionately revealing both their general loathing for the war, and their particular political leanings in the wrenching 1968 presidential election, whenever they were outside the classroom.

Forty years later, I am a college professor in an art department with about 160 majors within a mid-sized university. Most faculty in my department know the students the way I do — both in and out of class. We mix and mingle during opening receptions of student shows in our student-run gallery, we meet at lectures and receptions for visiting artists we’ve invited to our campus, we lead students on field trips to the galleries in Chelsea or the museums in New York, and we have extended conversations — about a variety of topics — in the hallways, between classes, or in our offices, after advising sessions. It’s not uncommon for students to ask me, point-blank, who I’m supporting for president in the upcoming election.

Following my mother, I have always been fairly politically active and demonstrative about my politics — i.e., I endorse candidates by sending money and volunteering my time to their campaigns, I talk endlessly about politics with my family and friends, and I always wear political buttons during the last couple of months leading up to an election. In this particular election, I have a chosen a candidate to whose campaign I am regularly contributing money.

Yet I am sensitive to the power imbalance between professors and students, and to the oftentimes overwhelmingly liberal, noisy bent of college professors that, on the face of it, suffocates genuine differences of political opinion on college campuses. I have, therefore, reluctantly decided that I will not discuss politics with my students one bit — certainly not in the way my teachers did with me.

Instead, when students ask me whom I’m supporting in the upcoming election, I offer cheerful words along these lines: “Look, I have a candidate I strongly support, and I have positions on issues from global warming to health insurance. But I don’t think it’s right for me to talk about this with you because I don’t want my politics to interfere with my being your professor. I hope instead that you’ll find the candidate you believe in and that you will argue your political position for hours with your friends. I’ll be voting in the fall and I hope that you’ll be voting as well.”

Unlike my decision to never discuss my personal life with my students, I’m not sure I’m right on this stance. I have the nagging fear that in choosing this route — that of the seemingly dispassionate professor whose politics are neatly tucked away in a corner — I have lost the political vigor and commitment my college professors, through their fierce political asseverations, taught me.

(Image from Photobucket.com)