With this year being an election year, it can be hard to keep politics and political agenda out of the classroom. It's understandable that even professors want to discuss political ideas, especially to expand worldviews, but this becomes a problem when it becomes less about inviting ideas and more about pushing an agenda.
Last semester I had a professor who was very openly liberal. Personally, I did not support Clinton or Trump, but lean toward conservative. The one time I spoke up during a political discussion about why I didn't support Clinton I got quickly shut down, even almost to the point of mocking and humiliation. You might think that the professor would stop this from happening, but it was the professor who would do this.
I think political discussion, especially during elections, is important to have in classrooms where it makes sense. Obviously a politics class should discuss it, and other classes should in the context of the class. A journalism class should discuss it in terms of coverage and ethics. A class should not push for either side's agenda though, or make one side feel uncomfortable speaking up. It's even more unacceptable when the professor is the one pushing the agenda. Everybody has opinions, but opinions on which candidate is better and only good things about only one candidate should be kept between peers in a less professional environment than teaching a class.
At the end of the election season, my professor mentioned thinking everybody in our class had similar views, and that she wouldn't have talked the same way if she had suspected anybody wasn't liberal leaning. The big issue here is that my professor would never suspect anybody had different views, because even mentioning not supporting Clinton was intimidating, and even more-so since nobody else said anything about it. I stayed quiet, because the one time I said something my speculation was met with a harsh call out that used incorrect facts I could not even refute because we can't use phones in class. This was from a teacher who told us multiple times to fact check our sources.
By the end of the semester, even though I did well in the class, I hated going there. There was more than just the political discussion that bothered me, but anytime we talked about the election I said nothing. It was uncomfortable to not be able to defend my views without getting hushed by incorrect information. Getting informed by discussion in classrooms is important, but when it turns to glorifying one candidate and demonizing the other it benefits no one.
