In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Eitan Hersh, a professor of political science at Tufts University, about teaching students of radically different political and religious views how to speak to one another. College campuses have been a hotbed of contentious conversations, especially on issues around Israel, and Prof. Hersh is someone who’s been teaching his students to turn their disputes productive. In this episode we discuss:
What happens when Hersh brings up Jewish topics in his college classes?
How are students discussing the issue of removing international students who support terrorist organizations?
How would Hersh teach Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews to understand one another?
Tune in to hear a conversation about what happens when personal subjects become the content of a college course. Interview begins at 7:25. Eitan Hersh is a professor of political science at Tufts University. His research focuses on US elections and civic participation. Hersh is the author of Politics is for Power (Scribner, 2020), Hacking the Electorate (Cambridge UP 2015), as well as scholarly articles. He earned his PhD from Harvard in 2011 and served as assistant professor of political science at Yale University from 2011-2017. His public writings have appeared in venues such as The New York Times, USA Today, The Atlantic, POLITICO, and The Boston Globe. References: “Where the Left Studies the Right” by Barton Swaim