AMHERST — Twice a week at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Raymond La Raja starts his American Politics class asking students what stood out to them in the news.
When the discussion one day last month landed on Jeffrey Epstein’s damning correspondence with the rich and powerful, La Raja proffered a question: “We’re facing things like inflation. Why is this an important issue?”
“It’s not, but it’s good politically,” a student answered. “Republicans have been doing things that are ... good politically for 10 years. The Democrats should start doing the same.”
It was a telling moment of open discussion on a university campus, one that not so long ago would feel fairly commonplace. But such examples have grown increasingly rare.
As American politics has become a lightning rod for controversy on campuses, professors and students said they find themselves choosing their words more carefully and reflecting on their own biases and balance in the classroom, even in a highly-educated blue state. Controversial subjects are touchier than ever. And no one wants to wind up in a viral video for saying the “wrong” thing in class or see their research, and reputation, dragged through the mud.
Student protests over the war in Gaza and the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk deepened divides on campuses, and the Trump administration’s campaign to remake higher education elevated the notion that colleges are “indoctrinating” students. Prominent universities face cuts to federal research funding and pressure to alter their admissions and hiring practices. Across the country, academic programs on race and gender have been eliminated; university presidents sacked; and faculty members fired or slapped with strict orders on what they can teach.
But what does all that mean in the classroom?
To find out, the Globe observed classes for a day at UMass Amherst and interviewed three dozen people at public universities around the state.
They said the status quo has largely held. The Commonwealth has not forbidden discussions of gender or cancelled classes that study racial prejudice. Unlike Florida and Texas, where state boards are dictating college curricula, officials here have stayed out of it. And most faculty are teaching classes as they always have, albeit with a few more conservative thinkers on the syllabi.
“We feel more sheltered from this moment because we’re in Massachusetts, but not protected,” said Jerry M. Whitmore, Jr., a higher education professor at Boston University.
Schools across the state have closed diversity offices and clamped down on student protest this year. And should a student or professor make negative national headlines, several faculty members worry their colleges are less likely to shield them from backlash.
The Professor Watchlist — a database launched by the conservative group Turning Point USA — has for years now fueled harassment toward faculty allegedly spouting “leftist propaganda,” including Christina Bobel, a UMass Boston gender studies professor.
“It looks like business as usual, but how I’m feeling and thinking is shaped by anxiety,” she said. “I do wonder, when is the shoe going to drop? When am I going to get called to the dean’s office because a student complained? When will I see my name in the news? I am almost waiting for the problem to come and visit us.”
La Raja, the political science professor at UMass, leans on a reliable philosophy in the classroom: “Do not take sides.”
He typically dons a corduroy blazer and whips around his thick-framed glasses, running his politics course as he has every semester for the last 23 years.
In November, when La Raja polled his students on whether universities are “hostile places,” 54 of 70 said no. Most found the notion that colleges give credence to “ridiculous ideas” — as Vice President JD Vance recently said — well, ridiculous. One student, a computer science major, said those ridiculous ideas often make “the best science.”
La Raja applauded the point.
He knows that what is happening at universities right now is not normal. La Raja was stunned by a 2021 campus survey that showed that most students were afraid to speak openly about politics and helped launch the UMass Faculty for Open Inquiry and Civil Dialogue. Earlier this year, he joined an advocacy group that encouraged universities to stand up to political attacks.
But in the classroom, La Raja sidesteps partisan commentary.
Leading a discussion about interest groups, he talked about how the National Rifle Association has been given government subsidies; how veterans became a powerful political force; and how roughly half the students are members of AAA, even though most of them support expanding public transportation — something AAA has lobbied against.
“Are lobbyists trustworthy?” he asked. “Evil?”
Some can be, answered a student in the back row. “The good guys,” he added, who align with his own politics.
“So you think the guys on the other side are liars,” La Raja jabbed, “but your people are not.”
A few students chuckled softly.
“One thing I always try to impress on my students is that democracy is messy,” La Raja said in an interview earlier in the day. “If you don’t make space for different viewpoints, they go underground, and they can become resentful.”
That messiness can create a gray area in the classroom.
Most academics agree that “academic freedom” means being able to teach in their fields without external influence from institutions or politicians, so long as they treat students of all political opinions equally. But faculty are divided on whether that freedom includes overt political comments made in the classroom, or what professors say or do online or on their own time.
“The thing about academic freedom is that you’re supposed to be allowed to say outrageous stuff, but litigating it in practice is always a lot harder,” said Matthew Baum, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the faculty council for academic freedom. “We’ve never had absolute academic freedom, but in a way, we have less than we used to.”
Dan Gordon, the longest-serving history professor at UMass Amherst, said he has an “allergic reaction” to politics in any form, though he self-identifies as more conservative than most faculty.
To avoid espousing his own opinions, Gordon assigns readings that showcase others’ controversial beliefs: “Mein Kampf,” for example, and 1400s text from Martin Luther that alleged that most Christians would be “eternally damned.”
Yet he struggles to see whose views are protected, and whose are not permissible, in the bounds of academic freedom.
In his book on the subject, Gordon quoted thinkers who said “academic freedom exists for everyone except fascists,” he said. “That is a live issue at colleges right now.”
The debate is putting campuses off kilter.
Three professors at state universities in Massachusetts said their institutions are now thoroughly vetting events that explicitly mention Palestine, Zionism, LGBTQ issues, or Trump in the title. One student of Gordon’s said her peer, a vocal Palestine supporter, dropped out of his class this semester because he felt targeted by another student. Some faculty are also steering clear of high-profile events to avoid controversy.
“The atmosphere of terror is showing up,” said Isaac Kamola, director of the Center for Academic Freedom at the American Association of Professors. “The intimidation factor and chilling effects are real.”
That said, most professors who spoke to the Globe said higher education remains a fundamental good. UMass, for example, has grown more selective, diverse, and reputed in national circles as students’ political views have drifted leftward this century. (In La Raja’s class, 72 percent of students identify as liberal.)
All in all, they said, students leave smarter and more open to opposing ideas, regardless of their political affiliation.
“We’re modeling what political discourse can look like,” said Erin O’Brien, a political science professor at UMass Boston. “My classroom has been a respite from the political world.”
But these days, the political world is hard to avoid. Universities nationwide have become more ideologically stratified since the 1980s, and fewer university students identify today as “middle of the road” politically. That has impacted campuses, simmering with distrust well before spring 2024 when students at UMass and many other schools were arrested during pro-Palestine protests.
UMass Provost Fouad Abd-El-Khalick said university-wide initiatives are gathering students and professors for contentious conversations, though academic freedom is “alive and well” in Amherst.
“It does get tougher to foster dialogue when you have not only a polarized national discourse,” Abd-El-Khalick said, “but when our young people are coming to campus having lived in this kind of environment in high school.”
After Trump was first elected in 2016, La Raja said some conservative colleagues in the political science department left for jobs in government. Conservative students have become harder to spot.
The only one La Raja never misses is a mustachioed undergraduate in his American Politics class who every day dons a cream-colored campaign hat that reads “Reagan-Bush.”
The student said his mom told him to stop wearing it on campus. Why make yourself a target? she asked.
But he refuses.
The quieting of conservative voices is no secret at UMass.
A senior English major said she elected to take La Raja’s class it in part to see more political diversity on campus. Another said she rarely hears from right-leaning students outside of Cru, the campus Christian ministry.
In a recent class poll that asked whether universities encourage “healthy debate,” about half of students said no. La Raja said he has to inject himself into debates more often now than 15 years ago, when students would raise their hands and themselves say: “I disagree.”
To shelter students and themselves, some professors have stopped recording classes. It can prevent political groups from snipping together clips to make a case against “biased” professors and vocal students.
But there are no guarantees. Almost a dozen states have removed the strongest speech protections for high-ranking academics, the Hechinger Report found. And professors said the Trump administration is stifling conversation on topics previously considered settled fact — the history of slavery, redlining, and violence against Native Americans, for example.
Sometimes, the de facto censorship is self-imposed, said Jonathan Feingold, a Boston University law professor and host of #RaceClass, a monthly podcast discussing race.
“When you are not in a moment where the mandate from the federal government is to purge race from the syllabi, faculty actually have historically chosen to avoid it, because it’s fraught,” he said. “The goal of the federal government now is to make it impossible to have those conversations.”
Many professors said they wrestle with how to remain politically neutral in discussions of politics or history, and students themselves disagree on how political they prefer professors to be.
In the final polling question to his class, La Raja asked UMass students directly if their professors’ political leanings were evident to them.
Nearly 60 percent said yes. Only 11 students said that “very few” faculty members keep their opinions hidden.
“I would say this is my only class where the professor isn’t clear about what their political views are,” a student said after the vote.
“I haven’t told you my political views?” La Raja mused.
“I’d say you’re pretty good about keeping it on the DL,” or down low.
La Raja seemed pleased.
“That," he said later, “is what I strive for.”
Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_.