Political Science Educator: Volume 30, Issue 1
Teacher Scholar
By Elizabeth A. Bennion (ebennion@iu.edu)
Political science instructors have long asked students to engage across difference. What has changed is not the existence of political disagreement, but the context in which that work now occurs. Disagreement has always been part of democratic life. Yet increasingly, political differences are experienced not simply as disagreements over policies or ideas, but as conflicts tied to identity, dignity, and belonging. Canonical scholarship has long documented how partisan identity, affect, and selective media exposure structure political attitudes and perceptions (Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes 2012; Levendusky 2013; Mason 2018). What more recent evidence suggests, however, is that these dynamics have become more intense and more morally charged, creating new challenges for democratic learning today (Bennion 2023).
Students enter our classrooms shaped by polarized media environments, place‑based identities, and narratives that portray political opponents not merely as wrong, but as threatening or even immoral. While these dynamics are not new, contemporary polling indicates that they are now expressed with heightened distrust and perceived threat. Recent national surveys find historically high levels of affective polarization, with substantial shares of Americans describing supporters of the opposing party as enemies of democracy or as fundamentally dangerous to the nation’s future (Pew Research Center 2023; Bright Line Watch 2024; Mason and Warren 2024). For many students, this broader context translates into political engagement marked by caution, fatigue, or apprehension rather than curiosity or confidence.
These challenges came into sharp focus for me at the conference Democracy and Bridging the Rural–Urban Divide[i], organized by the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative in collaboration with the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. Although the conference focused substantively on geographic polarization, what struck me most as a teacher‑scholar was not simply what divides rural and urban Americans, but how profoundly those divisions shape people’s willingness to listen to one another. Misunderstanding and mistrust deepen when people experience politics primarily through distant representations rather than lived relationships. The conference underscored an insight with important implications for political science education: Polarization is not only ideological, but relational, emotional, and locational.
From Disagreement to Distrust
Much of the pedagogical literature on political discussion presumes a baseline of good faith. Participants may disagree sharply but still recognize one another as legitimate democratic actors. Increasingly, that assumption feels fragile. Conference participants emphasized that many Americans now perceive those on the “other side” not simply as mistaken, but as dismissive, condescending, or indifferent to their lives and communities. This erosion of trust does not make democratic disagreement impossible, but brings disagreement into a defensive posture, where persuasion supersedes understanding and identity subverts learning.
Conference presenters helped clarify why these dynamics feel so pronounced. Rural and urban Americans often share similar core policy concerns, including economic opportunity, education, healthcare, and community safety, even as their partisan voting behavior diverges sharply. Drawing on extensive survey and historical evidence, Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown argue that differences in desire for themselves and their families explain far less of the rural–urban divide than commonly assumed. In Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy, Mettler and Brown argue that the rural–urban divide reflects a sequential process rather than sharp differences in their desires.
Economic restructuring brought factory closures, population loss, school and hospital consolidation, and declining access to infrastructure in many rural communities. Meanwhile, decisions made by national political, professional, and media institutions that are largely urban‑centered are often experienced in rural places as distant, imposed from afar, and inattentive to local conditions. These grievances play out through conservative party networks, national advocacy groups, religious organizations, and right‑leaning media that maintain sustained presence across rural communities, gradually aligning geography with partisanship over time (Mettler and Brown 2023). Cathy Kramer’s ethnographic work in rural communities across Wisconsin similarly demonstrates how persistent feelings of being dismissed, patronized, or ignored by political and cultural elites produce durable resentment that cannot be reduced to policy disagreement alone (Kramer 2016).
Related work on affective polarization explains why these developments complicate political learning. When political engagement feels dismissive or extractive, individuals become less receptive to new information and more attentive to cues that affirm identity and group belonging (Iyengar and Westwood 2015). This does not mean students are unwilling to learn. Rather, it suggests that they often enter learning spaces alert to the risks of being misunderstood.
This dynamic is increasingly visible in our classrooms. Students do not arrive as blank slates, but bring assumptions about “real America,” stereotypes reinforced by selective media exposure, and anxieties about how their perspectives will be received (Cramer 2016). Under these conditions, even well‑intended classroom discussions can invite silence, strategic disengagement, or careful self‑censorship rather than open exploration (Hess and McAvoy 2015).
Listening as a Democratic Skill
Conference speakers returned repeatedly to a simple principle: Listening must come first. Listening, they emphasized, is not passive. It is an active democratic skill that requires curiosity, humility, and restraint. In polarized environments, listening can feel risky. People fear being misunderstood or mischaracterized, which encourages withdrawal rather than dialogue (Bennion 2024).
This insight resonates strongly with my own teaching experience. I see students eager to speak but reluctant to listen, as well as students who listen intently but hesitate to participate for fear of saying the wrong thing. Both patterns undermine collaborative learning. The challenge is not simply encouraging participation. It is creating learning environments in which listening is visible, valued, and practiced intentionally. Cultivating this environment using frequent, well-structured, opportunities for low stakes conversation and collaboration is key to creating a comfortable learning environment (see Bennion 2026 for examples). Research on deliberative pedagogy reinforces this conclusion. Studies consistently find that structured dialogue, guided by clear norms and opportunities for connection and reflection, is more effective than unstructured conversation or competitive debates in fostering understanding across difference (Garcia and Ulbig 2024; Hess and McAvoy 2015; Matto et al. 2017), and trust is more likely to emerge through sustained interaction rather than one‑time encounters (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006).
As I have written elsewhere, efforts to talk across deep divides are often more effective when communicators begin with what others care about rather than abstract partisan frames (Bennion 2024). A vivid example comes from the Nebraska Democratic Party chair who spoke at the Rural-Urban Divide conference and circulated a flyer designed to court Independent and Republican voters. The flyer emphasized shared commitments to agriculture, land stewardship, and gun ownership—leaning deliberately into cultural touchstones such as beef, land, and guns to signal respect rather than dismissal. This rhetorical approach (“Keep Your Beef. Keep Your Land. Keep Your Guns”) did not require abandoning policy positions, but it did require listening first and communicating from within the values of the audience being addressed. This allowed for further discussion about the details of the party platform, including specific regulations supported by state Democrats to protect meat and land quality and promote gun safety.
Learning Together Through Shared Experience
Several organizations represented at the conference offered practical models for building trust through shared experience rather than argument alone. Unify America[ii] facilitates structured conversations across political difference, Urban Rural Action[iii] combines dialogue with community‑based problem‑solving and informal civic gatherings, and the Brickyard, originally founded by veterans, emphasizes service, social connection, and shared work as foundations for trust‑building (Unify America n.d.; Urban Rural Action n.d.; The Brickyard n.d.). What these initiatives share is a recognition that trust grows through sustained interaction rather than episodic conversations, and that collaboration can open doors to understanding that debate alone often cannot.
For political science educators, these approaches invite us to reconsider classroom practices. Structured dialogue, reflective writing, paired conversations, and collaborative projects can help students engage across difference while lowering emotional barriers, without avoiding disagreement altogether.
Universities, Responsibility, and Repair
One of the most candid discussions at the conference focused on the role of universities themselves. Panelists acknowledged that higher education has often contributed to the rural–urban divide through curricular imbalance, extractive research practices, and institutional cultures that fail to make rural students feel welcome or valued.
Representatives from land‑grant universities emphasized applied research models that prioritize listening first and reciprocal engagement with rural communities, particularly in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta. Rather than extracting data, these efforts seek to understand what communities have already built and how universities might support locally defined goals (Blueprint Kentucky n.d.). Speakers also stressed the need for flagship and research‑intensive universities to recognize and elevate the work of regional campuses that play a central role in preparing students for local and regional labor markets. This includes helping students articulate the skills they gain across the curriculum, including in liberal arts courses, in ways that employers and families can recognize and value, reinforcing the connection between civic learning, professional preparation, and paid employment. Research on political science education reinforces this point, suggesting that civic and professional learning are not competing goals but mutually reinforcing ones, as the analytical, communicative, and collaborative skills cultivated through political science coursework are precisely those valued in both democratic participation and the workplace (Gatt, Hayek, and Huemer 2021).
Speakers noted that this work is also essential for addressing skepticism among parents and community members who view universities as disconnected from everyday economic realities or as sites of ideological socialization rather than skill development. By highlighting how many academic disciplines cultivate analytical reasoning, communication, data analysis, and collaborative problem‑solving, educators can explicate the role higher education plays in preparing students for a range of practical roles in rural economies as well as urban ones. Engineers, data analysts, supply‑chain specialists, and marketing experts are critical to modern agriculture and rural enterprises, just as much as to technology firms or urban industries. Strengthening these place‑based connections may rebuild trust in higher education as a pathway to meaningful work and community vitality rather than an abstract or distant institution.
Faculty and administrators at elite research universities also reflected critically on how their institutions frequently prioritized urban politics, policy, and social problems within curricula and course offerings, while devaluing rural politics and rural communities as peripheral or episodic topics. Speakers noted that this curricular imbalance is reinforced by the underrepresentation of students from rural backgrounds at highly selective universities and by the absence of visible spaces where rural students can connect, organize, and support one another. At Stanford University, leaders affiliated with the Hoover Institution described efforts to respond to these patterns by developing programs that connect students with rural communities through research, internships, and sustained engagement, and by encouraging student networks that make rural identity and experience more visible on campus, reframing rural America as a site of democratic learning rather than deficit (Hoover Institution n.d.).
What This Means for Us as Teachers and Scholars
The rural–urban divide will not be resolved by a single course or conversation. Still, higher education remains one of the few spaces in which students from different places can encounter one another in sustained and structured ways. That reality carries responsibility and opportunity.
For teachers of political science, these lessons call for renewed attention to listening as a core democratic skill. Discussions must be structured thoughtfully. Collaboration must be intentional. Trust‑building should be treated not as a byproduct of learning, but as its own learning outcome.
For scholars, the challenge extends beyond pedagogy. We must examine how our research agendas, curricula, and institutional practices shape whose experiences are valued and whose voices are marginalized. When rural communities appear primarily as deficient, and rural students as unlikely to belong, we risk reinforcing the very alienation we hope democracy can overcome.
Teaching across the rural–urban divide when trust is thin is demanding work. It requires patience, humility, and reflection. It also requires us to model the democratic habits we seek to cultivate. If we want students to engage differently with one another, we must be willing to listen differently ourselves.
References
Bennion, Elizabeth A. 2023. “Overcoming Party Polarization in the Classroom.” The Teacher-Scholar. The Political Science Educator 27 (1): 6–18.
Bennion, Elizabeth A. 2024. “Civil Discourse: Helping Students Become Better Conversation Partners.” The Teacher-Scholar. The Political Science Educator 27 (2): 6–20.
Bennion, Elizabeth A. 2026. “Protecting Free Speech While Promoting Civility: Pedagogical and Civic Strategies to Reduce Political Polarization.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.
Blueprint Kentucky. n.d. “Engaged Communities, Vibrant Economies.” University of Kentucky, Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. https://blueprintkentucky.mgcafe.uky.edu.
Bright Line Watch. 2024. “America Confronts the State of Its Politics in 2024.” Chicago Center on Democracy. https://brightlinewatch.org/america-confronts-the-state-of-its-politics-in-2024/.
Garcia, Chandler L., and Stacy G. Ulbig. 2024. “Building Political Discourse Skills: Students as Teachers.” Journal of Political Science Education 20 (2): 218–239.
Gatt, Silvio, Leonhard Hayek, and Christina Huemer. 2021. “Two Sides of the Same Coin: Political Science as Professional and Civic Education.” European Political Science 20 (3): 440–452.
Hess, Diana, and Paula McAvoy. 2015. The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education. New York: Routledge.
Hoover Institution. n.d. “People, Politics, and Places Fellowship.” Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, Stanford University.
https://www.hoover.org/people-politics-and-places-fellowship.
Iyengar, Shanto, and Sean J. Westwood. 2015. “Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (3): 690–707.
Iyengar, Shanto, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes. 2012. “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization.” Public Opinion Quarterly 76 (3): 405–431.
Kramer, Cathy J. 2016. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levendusky, Matthew. 2013. How Partisan Media Polarize America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mason, Lilliana, and Scott Warren. 2024. “Nearly Half of Americans View the Opposing Political Party as Evil.” SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University, in partnership with YouGov.
Mason, Lilliana. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Matto, Elizabeth, Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Elizabeth Bennion, and Dick Simpson, eds. 2017. Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.
Mettler, Suzanne, and Trevor Brown. 2023. Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
OECD. 2019. Reducing the Territorial Divide: Policies for Lagging Regions. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Pettigrew, Thomas F., and Linda R. Tropp. 2006. “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90 (5): 751–783.
Pew Research Center. 2023. Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics. Washington, DC.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-dismal-views-of-the-nations-politics/.
Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés. 2018. “The Revenge of the Places That Don’t Matter (and What to Do about It).” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 11 (1): 189–209.
The Brickyard. n.d. “Our Approach.”
https://www.thebrickyard.org.
Unify America. n.d. “Our Work.”
https://www.unifyamerica.org.
Urban Rural Action. n.d. “How We Work.”
https://www.urbanruralaction.org.
—
Elizabeth A. Bennion is Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science and Director of Community Engagement and the American Democracy Project at Indiana University South Bend. Her teaching, scholarship, and public work focus on civic education, democratic discourse, and preparing students for engaged citizenship. She has published widely on teaching and learning in political science and regularly collaborates with community partners to strengthen democratic practice inside and beyond the classroom.
[i] https://strategicframework.nd.edu/events/2026/04/02/democracy-and-bridging-the-rural-urban-divide/
[ii] https://www.unifyamerica.org/
[iii] https://www.uraction.org/
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. As part of APSA’s mission to support political science education across the discipline, APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Please visit APSA Educate’s Political Science Educator digital collection.
Editor: Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
Assistant Editor: Colin Brown (Northeastern University)
Submissions: editor.PSE.newsletter@gmail.com
