A frequent charge against academics is that we engage in liberal indoctrination of our students. After all, academics (particularly outside of the sciences and business) are predominately liberal, and those with college degrees tend to be more liberal (particularly on social issues; on fiscal issues, the tendency of graduates to earn more confounds this effect), so there's definitely a correlation there. And many of us have known that teacher/professor who consciously tries to instill their values into students, so the causal mechanism isn't far-fetched.
However, there are also countervailing norms in academia--particularly in political science--that our goals are to impart truth and to give students the tools they need to reach their own conclusions; indoctrination is something that is either unseemly or is "applied" work (which some academics think is "beneath" them, in some way). "If I wanted to affect the real world, I'd go out into it--and get paid better!" I have friends who are as liberal as the day is long who are proud that (they think) their students can't tell their leanings.
Personally, I've tended towards the "truth-telling" side, but I include some things that there are disagreements between the left and right on as part of that truth; I don't tell them that they should be pro-life or pro-choice, but I also don't pretend that academics haven't figured out some stuff about how liberals are more open to new experiences while conservatives are more conscientious and prone to motivated reasoning (I'm more on the Jost side than the Kahan side in that literature).
But, for any poltical science professor who doesn't think that creating clones of themselves is OK, this election poses a quandary. How should we handle Trump? While the nascent research is a bit divided on where his support comes from, these are differences in degree, not kind. Are they nativist populists or authoritarian personalities? Either way, they are nakedly hostile to reason and nonwhites. Trump himself is the least qualified person to get a major party nomination since....well, ever. Trump's "positions" on issues are frankly ludicrous: American manufacturing jobs didn't go to Mexico and China, they went to robots and productivity increases; there is no precedent in history for getting a country to pay for your police wishes (like a wall) outside of reparations as a condition for ending a war; his tax cuts are overwhelmingly targeted at the rich; "respect" in international affairs is total bullshit. This is a DANGEROUS man to let near the White House.
What fealty do we owe neutrality in such a case? Do we risk our claims to expertise to speak the actual truth? Or are we so blinded by our own ideology that we can't accept that there might be two sides to this question?
Personally, I'm both glad and sad that I'm only teaching California politics and grad students for the next year (seriously: 3 classes on California--1 of those supersized--and one grad course). I don't have to wrestle with the decision to hijack my own course to make a stand, but neither do I "get to" make a difference. Faculty in swing states and/or teaching Intro in the fall: I'm not sure whether I envy or pity you.
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