Faculty Advice: What Keeps You Up at Night?

I have lost sleep over this administration with its plutocrats, autocrats, and kleptocrats—not social justice role models. I worry the U.S. is becoming my worst nightmare: a country of limited standing and international engagement, rejecting diversity, fact-based discourse, and human rights. I am terrified that inequalities will grow while social safety nets shred, that checks and balances will erode, and that countless Americans will lose health care or the vote. I fear we will exhaust ourselves resisting, enabling Trumpism to become the “new normal.” – Beryl Levinger, Distinguished Professor and Program Chair, Development Practice and Policy

People are talking only to those who already share their same way of speaking—their same “words.” We—new Americans, academics, urbanites, global citizens, travelers—need to learn to tell our stories in other peoples’ words, words which make sense to them. We also need to learn others’ ways of speaking, freeing those others to tell us their stories in their own words—the words which offer the teller the most freedom and comfort. This is what language education fundamentally is. – Thor Sawin, Assistant Professor, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages / Teaching Foreign Language  

My greatest worry is the new administration’s apparent disregard for objective truth and disdain for rational thought. The administration appears to rely on hearsay and be motivated by personal gain instead of using well-reasoned and informed decision making. To me, the current situation underscores the importance of quality education here in the U.S. and around the world. Citizens must be equipped to take up the hard work of thoughtful scrutiny and critical analysis of important domestic and international policies when governments do not. – Anne Campbell, Assistant Professor, International Education Management

So far, President Trump and his administration have not strayed away from the worrisome predictions made after he won the election. I find myself dealing with a completely new breed of discourse type in class and it is a cause for concern for me. I use a wide range of speeches by government officials as class materials. The new administration’s divisive and belligerent discourses are at times very disturbing, especially in classes where the majority of students are immigrants and non-U.S. citizens. – Miryoung Sohn, Professor and Program Coordinator, Korean Translation and Interpretation

I’ve been having sporadic Trump administration nightmares. What is literally keeping me up at night, and also making my sleep less restful, is a combination of the temperament of our new president and the dysfunctions of his both ill- and understaffed administration. The pathologies of governance we’ve seen so far will only be magnified by inevitable crises and likely conflicts. And those will play out in the shadow of nuclear weapons that could change and even end life on earth as we know it. – Philipp C. Bleek, Assistant Professor of Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies

What alarms me most are the invisible “tipping points” we may soon reach. So far, the effects of global climate change and biodiversity loss have mostly been linear. But we’re starting to see negative feedback loops that show nonlinear rates of change. Once declines go exponential, it doesn’t take long to erode the conditions that make life on earth possible. Bottom line: four years of inaction now could lead to decades or centuries of negative, perhaps irreversible, consequences. – Jeff Langholz, Professor of International Environmental Policy