The Public Professor

The Public Professor is Akim Reinhardt, Associate Professor of History at Towson University in Baltimore.

This Is Not Eight Years Ago

2 Comments / History, Politics / By

Eight years ago, I published what I considered to be a stirring post-election manifesto.  Partly it critiqued racism and sexism.  A chunk of urged readers  to support those who face bigger obstacles than straight, white, middle class men like myself.  Mostly it was a rallying cry about how to move forward in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. But early on, the piece also alluded to a 2,500 word screed I’d decided not to publish.  That one was way more critical.  Specifically, I lambasted white people: middle class liberals and Trump voters.  Both barrels blazing.  But I did not publish it because I thought it might be a bit too harsh. Eight years ago, we didn’t know what to expect, so I didn’t want to lay it on too thick.  Now we know exactly what to expect.  Eight years ago, Donald Trump was inexperienced and probably intimidated by the presidency, so he agreed to keep people around him whose purpose was to restrain him.  And to some degree they did.  This time he will face no constraints.  Eight years ago, Democrats were able to hold up large parts of Trump’s agenda.  But with the GOP about to control both houses of Congress, the only tool the Democrats will have is a Senate filibuster, and Trump will get more of what he wants, as will Republican congressional leaders.  Eight years ago, the Supreme Court was still salvageable.  No more.  Trump will likely replace two justices.  SCOTUS will continue to be a retrograde institution for at least a generation to come.  Perhaps longer. So fuck it.  I hereby present the post-election screed I wrote in November, 2016.  It is in its original form.  Eight years later, there are a couple of things I might write differently now, but for the most part, I still stand by it, and present here unedited except for tyopos.  And maybe I should have published it eight years ago.  But I didn’t.  This isn’t eight years ago, but what needs to be said still needs to be said.

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The Ghost of Elections Past

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Historians have spilled much ink analyzing and interpreting all of the U.S. presidential elections, dating back to George Washington’s first run in 1788.  But a handful of contests get more attention than others.  Some elections, besides being important for all the usual reasons, also provide insights into their eras’ zeitgeist, and proved to be influential far beyond the four years they were proscribed. 2016 and 2020 were almost certainly among those elections, though academic historians have not yet written much about them (or even Obama’s 2008 election) because we typically wait a couple of decades before sensing that an event has passed from current or recent events into our distant domain.  And anyway, it’s quite possible, even likely, that many future historians will examine the three Trump elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024 as a bundled set. But that still leaves about 55 elections historians have focused on and learned lessons from.  So here on Election Day 2024, I offer a brief digest of select, momentous presidential elections and explain how they connect to Trumpism and today’s contest. 1800– George Washington won uncontested elections in 1788 and 1792.  By 1796, he was a wildly popular war hero and founding father who could have held onto the office.  Some Americans even called for him to become a king.  But Washington valued the new republican experiment, and also wanted to go home, so he retired.  In doing so, he set an important precedent that lasted nearly 150 years.  No future president, no matter how popular, attempted to serve more than two terms until Franklin Roosevelt disregarded tradition and won four consecutive presidential elections (1932–44).

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Is Trump a Fascist? It Doesn’t Matter

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Some friends were recently debating whether or not Trump is actually a fascist.  Some think yes because, while he may not perfectly fit the definition, he’s rather close in many ways, and if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.  Some think not, that his beliefs and approach are just different enough to real fascism that he can be accurately called many things, but not an actual fascist. The truth is, history isn’t static.  Nothing in the 2020s can be exactly like something from the 1930s.  For example, today’s Cuban and N. Korean communism are quite different from 1920s–1930s Soviet communism.  So are today’s Cuba and  North Korea still communist or not? I’m not searching for an answer.  I’m asking that question rhetorically. Perhaps Trumpism is not exactly fascism, or perhaps it is a suitably updated version.  Either way, I think what matters most on the eve of the election is not which theoretical boxes Trump ticks, but which ideological and practical ones.  Donald Trump is a far right wing, misogynistic, homophobic racist who: radicalizes voters and politicians around phantom threats of the alien invaders making us “impure”; sets up leftist and even centrist opponents for persecution by defining them as the threat from within; erodes democratic norms through rhetoric (including calls to violence) and, when in power, through concrete political action; praises and cozies up to right wing dictators whom he clearly admires and strives to be like; and runs a kleptocratic, nepotistic regimes.

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The Wonder of it All

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It all happened very quickly.  Two nights ago a friend texted that he had an extra ticket for the Stevie Wonder concert here in Baltimore.  Last night he and his wife picked me up, and we made the ten minute drive the arena. The house lights went down, the stage lights came on, and out he walked, with Michelle on his left arm and Barack on his right.  And you know what the two of the said? Nothing. Because kings and queens bow down before Him.

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Why the Trump Conviction Matters Even if He Never Serves a Day

Politics / By

Three reasons. First, this is an example of the system working.  And that is very important because Donald Trump has spent the last eight years trying to make the system dysfunctional.  He has sidestepped it, perverted it, ignored it, attacked it, and mutilated it to further his own selfish ends.  His relentless efforts to erode U.S. democratic institutions have been dangerous, and too often the system he attacks seems incapable of defending itself has he exploits chinks in its armor of checks-and-balances.  But yesterday the system held.  While the official title of this case is State of New York, et al. v. Trump et al., the political reality since 2016 has been Trump v. U.S. democracy.  And today democratic institutions held their own as.  He was not convicted by pundits in the court of public opinion, or by politicians with axes to grind.  He was convicted by a dozen honest citizens who listened to the evidence and decided, 34 times, that he’s a felon. Second, anything that de-normalizes Trump is important.  In the long term, an authoritarian can destroy democracy by normalizing their anti-democratic and authoritarian behavior.  They keep pushing the envelope.  And each time no terrible consequences befall them, they push a little more.  They keep pushing until too many citizens come to accept their anti-democratic and authoritarian actions as normal.  Then a democracy is in a position to crumble.  Thus, Trump’s conviction is important because it makes it harder for people to fall into the false-equivalence trap.  It makes it harder for them to say, Oh well, Trump’s a crook, but they’re all crooks.  Even if all or most politicians are crooked (for argument’s sake, let’s say that’s true), it’s important to recognize that there are different levels of crookedness.  We may not like that many politicians engage in “regular” corruption (eg. protecting the interests of campaign contributors), but we understand that the system can withstand this regular corruption even as we rightly criticize it and work to end it.  But politicians whose corruption goes above and beyond are another thing.  Richard Nixon and his stooges committed several felonies for the purpose of meddling in the 1972 presidential election.  Other politicians are sometimes caught taking bribes and sent to prison.  Donald Trump is now the only president to ever be twice impeached as well as the only one to be convicted of a felony after serving.  And more trials loom.  This is different than “regular” corruption.  Trump is exceptionally corrupt and dangerous.  The conviction de-normalizes his corruption.  It is not “regular.”

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Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

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A little over a year ago I published an essay that implored my fellow educators not to panic amid the dawning of Artificial Intelligence. Since then I’ve had two and a half semesters to consider what it all means. That first semester, many of my students had not even heard of AI. By the very next semester, a shocking number of them were tempted to have it research and write for them. Many of my earlier observations about how to avoid AI plagiarism still hold: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; good policies and clear communication from the jump are vital; assignments such as in-class writing and oral exams are foolproof inoculators… However, other, more abstract questions with profound pedagogical implications are emerging. These can be put under the larger canopy of: What am I teaching them and why? Us Historians specifically, and Liberal Artists more generally, help students develop certain skill sets. We train them in the Humanities and Social Sciences, teaching them to find or develop data and use it effectively through critical and creative thinking. Obviously a political scientist and a continental philosopher go about this differently. However, the venn diagram of their techniques and goals probably overlaps a fair bit more than a lay person might realize. For starters, we all have the same broad subject matter. Everyone in the Liberal Arts, from art historians and literature profs to psychologists and economists, studies some aspect of the human condition. And while we each have our own angles of observation and methodologies, there are also substantial similarities among them. We all find or generate data (even if forms of data are different), analyze them, draw conclusions, and present our findings. And those presentations of findings, even when centered around quantitative data, include a narrative. In other words, words. All of us, in one way or another and to varying degrees, teach students to write. And that’s what Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence has me thinking about. If last year I was concerned about stopping plagiarism, today I’m contemplating what “cheating” even means and how its definitions are likely to change in the next few years. And that in turn has led me to reconsider the common calculator. Today, calculators are so readily accessible that you hardly think about where to find one should you need it. Your phone has one. Even my phone, which flips open and shut and has mechanical buttons, boasts a calculator. All your other computer devices have at least one as well, which is a nice reminder that “computer” literally means “computational device,” ie. “calculator.” And of course there are thousands of different calculators available online. But if you’re my age or older, you remember when calculators were dedicated pieces of technology. Large by today’s standards, they had physical buttons, ran on batteries, and appeared alongside another innovation, the digital clock, both of which used new technology to produce the digital display of numbers. Two hands circling a round clock

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