Both Sides of the Aisle: UVA Politics Professors Offer Differing Perspectives in "Election 2024" Class

Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” played in the University of Virginia’s McLeod Hall lecture hall last month while politics professors Jennifer Lawless and Mary Kate Cary conferred on the elevated stage from which they’d shortly address the students enrolled in their popular “Election 2024” class. 

The curated playlist of political-themed songs transitioned to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” before fading down as students settled and Lawless and Cary introduced the morning’s lecture topic: the media’s role and impact in political campaigns. 

In this presidential election year, the two Department of Politics colleagues with opposing political viewpoints had anticipated broad interest in the “class they are co-teaching this fall. The sight of students seated on the floor of an overflowing lecture hall the first day of classes caught them by surprise, however. So, Lawless, a Democrat who once sought her party’s nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in Rhode Island, and Cary, a Republican and former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, expanded enrollment to nearly 500 students, making it the largest undergraduate class offered this fall within the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. 

“The way they incorporate current events into the class has been awesome because it gives me a reason to keep up with the news, which I would already be doing in an election year,” said second-year student Dalton Haydel, a philosophy major from New Orleans. “It’s great to be able to engage with these topics in a classroom setting that inspires a different level of intellectual curiosity you don’t get if you’re just following the news and reading about these topics by yourself.” 

On this particular morning in early October, before Lawless and Cary discussed the impacts of declining newspaper readership, the rise of social media as a primary news source for many voters, selection and production biases in media coverage, and other topics explored in a variety of political science and media studies classes, the two professors segued to “She Said/She Said.” The regularly scheduled feature of their class offered an opportunity for them to share — and gently spar over — their individual assessments of the previous week’s vice-presidential debate. 

Not surprisingly, they offered differing opinions on whether Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance or Democratic candidate Tim Walz had fared better in the debate. The two found consensus, though, in the candidates’ ability to debate each other civilly, with apparent mutual respect. 

“This is how debates used to be, which I liked,” said Cary, director of Think Again@UVA, a University initiative to promote free speech, viewpoint diversity, critical thinking, and intellectual humility through student events on Grounds. 

Rooted in political science

This semester’s class is the second one co-taught by Lawless and Cary, the first one since the pandemic to be offered in person. 

UVA’s Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor of Politics, Lawless has taught presidential election courses for two decades. When she became chair of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Politics during the pandemic, she sought a teaching partner to develop an interesting, innovative large lecture class on Zoom. 

Cary was the obvious choice, Lawless said. In one of their first conversations, they decided to take advantage of their different perspectives and different political connections to deliver to the students a class unlike any they’d ever taken. 

“We actually do like each other, which helps,” Lawless said. “If you like the other person, you're more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, and then at least engage in a little bit more of a back-and-forth to find out, ‘why do you think that?’ Or ‘how have you arrived at that conclusion.’ … Democrats and Republicans might not agree on the conclusion about which policy is the best one, or which candidate should be a leader, but they generally can agree on how to get good information, how to watch an election, and how to analyze a poll. 

“If we can give the students those skills, and then they can take those skills to analyze the examine coverage that they're looking at, for example, or the races that they're following, then that's a win.” 

It helps, Cary added, that the class is rooted in the factual underpinnings of how democratic elections operate in the United States. 

“How polling works, how the U.S. Constitution sets up the framework for elections, what the rules are for voter turnout … there’s not much to disagree on there,” Cary said. “And when it comes to debating our political differences, what’s encouraging to me is that students are hungry to hear both sides.” 

Spurring conversations

In a class survey taken at the beginning of the semester, about 70 percent of the enrolled students identified as liberal or progressive in their political views. The remaining 30 percent identified as conservative. 

Third-year student Lauren Bradshaw, a biology major from Centreville who is also minoring in French and Foreign Affairs, considers herself a “libertarian conservative” but did not vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. 

“I’m definitely in the minority in the class,” Bradshaw said. “I do like, though, that both Professor Cary and Professor Lawless each get to discuss what they think is interesting in politics at the moment and to offer their spiels on it … I do think that as a class, the students are way more politically involved and knowledgeable about the election topics covered in the class than the general public, and that’s great.” 

Guest speakers this fall have included CBS News’ Margaret Brennan, one of the moderators of the vice-presidential debate. Other guest speakers from earlier in the semester included Republican strategist Karl Rove, Democratic strategist Paul Begala, NBC political commentator Chris Matthews, CNN political commentator Scott Jennings and former Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. candidate Joe Watkins. A bipartisan panel of former presidential speechwriters is scheduled for later in November. 

Fourth-year student John Tharp said Lawless and Cary’s class had been helpful in spurring conversations about the election with friends and classmates with differing political views. 

“I like to think of myself as someone who enjoys bipartisan cooperation,” said Tharp, who grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia and considers himself a Democrat. “Just hearing from Professor Cary and getting that other perspective has been really valuable for me. I’ve actually found myself agreeing with her more than I thought I would.”