By Maybelline Somoza | Talon Staff
Tallahassee Community College political science professors are teaching their students about the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump by being objective rather than subjective and presenting their students with evidence so they can formulate their own conclusions.
On January 13, just a week before Donald Trump’s presidency term ended, he was impeached for a second time with a new set of charges including incitement of insurrection. According to the articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives, Trump had allegedly provoked a violent group of supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building.
He was also accused of disrupting the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College votes. The trial lasted four days before he was acquitted by the U.S. Senate after the Senate failed to achieve the two-third majority of votes needed to convict.
Associate Professor of Political Science Edward Duggan has been teaching at TCC for seven years and involves all of his students in class discussion by using the Socratic method; arguments with support while answering open-ended questions.
Professor Duggan approached the impeachment by dissecting it as if it was a baseball or football game and discussing the mechanics of what happened and what leads to an impeachment. His goal is to not tell students what to think, he believes in teaching how something happens and what leads to it occurring.
“The way that I taught it was not as should [former President] Trump be convicted or should he not,” said Professor Duggan. “That’s up to the student to decide. But I want them to know what probably to expect, and I want them to know, the dynamics of impeachment.”
Professor Duggan explained to his students the mechanics of an impeachment and how articles of impeachment are presented and voted upon in the House of Representatives, then the Senate, and finally an impeachment trial is held.
“Normally, they call witnesses [but] they didn’t call witnesses in this particular trial,” said Professor Duggan. “And normally the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial. But in this trial the Chief Justice did not preside over because he refused to be a part of the part process. So it was Patrick Leahy who was presiding over the trial. And then you hear witnesses. You hear the prosecution’s case, which was provided by the House of Representatives. And then you have the rebuttal which was provided by the lawyers from Donald Trump.”
Professor Duggan said this was not the typical impeachment process he is used to teaching and had to rely more on presenting facts and an unbiased set of questions for students to come up with their own conclusions. This method, for him, has been working.
Majority of the students were engaged in the discussion either by answering or posing questions in a civilized fashion. Though he hasn’t experienced any negative responses from students not paying attention or not wanting to corporate, Duggan has noticed that the majority of his students do not consider the impeachment to have been a major event in their life.
Adjunct Professor of Political Science Ronald Cave did something similar to Professor Duggan when teaching his students about the second impeachment of President Trump. Professor Cave began by reviewing the Constitutionality of the impeachment process and outlining the complete process.
“It is very challenging not to feed into the politicization of the events surrounding the impeachments,” Professor Cave said in a recent email. “I believe it is important to outline the process and the roles of the government.”
Professor Cave did also notice a majority of his students not grasping the historical significance of these events but despite that he remains optimistic that his students have grasped a lot about their government and the way the U.S. Constitution deals with many issues.
“All actions or inactions have consequences and that a process is established in the Legislative branch of our government for accountability of even the highest office,” wrote Professor Cave.
Adjunct Professor of Political Science Benjamin Morris relied heavily on video technology as a helpful tool in both his face-to-face and TCC Live classes. He presented videos from the U.S. Capitol insurrection as well as clips from President Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. However, the video did make it more difficult to keep politics out of the class discussion.
“By remaining as objective as possible, I believe I was able to teach the subject of impeachment and the separation of powers ingrained in our Constitution in a manner that allowed my students to focus on the process of impeachment and less on the politics of impeachment,” Professor Morris said in a recent email.
“Many of my students wanted to know how he could be found not guilty by the Senate given all of the evidence against him,” Professor Morris said. “Impeachment trials are not like traditional trials in a court of law. Impeachments are political in nature and Senators are not impartial jurors. This is why many of the votes for guilt or innocence in both the first and second impeachments were along party lines. As was the case with many Americans, some of my students had a difficult time coming to terms with this fact.”
Professor Morris said many of his students understood the political nature of former President Trump’s second impeachment trial and the outcome, but others expressed “disillusionment” with the political system. He worked around this by explaining to his students the difference between what he calls “healthy skepticism and overt cynicism.”
