Milton W. Wendland (J.D., Ph.D.) is a professor of instruction in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of South Florida.
We’re all aware of the current political and cultural landscape when it comes to higher education (in fact, education at all levels). The past several semesters have been tremulous, with more to come, topping even the anxiety-laden and stress-producing “pandemic semesters.” What new edict will come down today? Will my class end up on the news? Will I be fired, or will my department be shut down? These aren’t just philosophical questions in 2025.
I’m particularly aware of this situation because I live in Florida, the state where “DEI goes to DIE,” as our governor put it, where I teach courses in feminist theory, LGBTQ+/queer studies, sexuality studies, and other “woke” and “gender ideology” topics in a department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
No matter what our level of teaching or our subject area, how can we be ethical educators covering relevant, meaningful learning materials in today’s climate? Here are a few strategies that may help you think through the thicket.
Know the rules and your rights
The first step is to know and understand any policies or laws that exist at your institution or in your state and to know what rights you have as an educator. This is especially important given differential power among faculty (e.g., tenured faculty, instructional faculty, adjuncts, etc.). Start with your employment contract, your union (if you have one), and the teaching and learning center (or the equivalent) on your campus.
Embed policies in your syllabus and course design
Most schools have a variety of policies regarding academic misconduct, disrupting class, harassment, and more. Include these in your syllabus along with an inclusive statement laying out parameters for critical discussions and other learning behaviors. Most campus teaching and learning centers can provide vetted examples and guidance. The key here is to refer to these policies regularly before issues arise, and to stress that these policies are aimed not to suppress thinking but to support learning. Good teaching practice suggests creating a “classroom conduct contract” as a class so that all students have a voice and buy-in.
Speak up forthrightly
While it is always inappropriate for instructors to impose their personal views on their students, it is learning-supportive to raise relevant issues. For example, it is entirely appropriate in the current moment to discuss how the removal of research materials and data from sites like those of the CDC and NIH affect healthcare, research (including research your students may be conducting), and people’s lives.1 Students may not fully realize how these actions affect their college educations and their intended career fields.
Leverage diversity across the course
Amplifying marginalized voices can happen in many ways in the classroom: by letting students know that part of your role as an educator is making space in class discussions for all students and viewpoints; by using alternate forms of classroom discussion and participation (ie., GoogleDocs), where students can contribute; by using problem-based learning that allows students to bring their lived experiences into assessments; by using learning materials (readings, documentaries, guest speakers) that come from a variety of backgrounds and contexts; and by sharing background information about the scholars, writers, and researchers who are the source of these learning materials. Increasing the diversity of learning materials, voices and representation, and avenues of assessment does the important work of allowing students multiple ways to connect with and see themselves in the course.
Own the difficulty as typical rather than atypical
In my own classes I regularly remind students that in our class, just as in life, we’re going to cover materials and ideas that may excite us, anger us, amuse us, embarrass us, or cause us to experience any number of reactions. That this is not only okay—it’s an integral part of the learning experience. I tell students, “No matter what your beliefs, it’s always good to know how others view the world. Maybe encountering other ideas will cause you to change your views entirely, and that’s okay. Maybe encountering other ideas will cause you to modify some of your views while maintaining others, and that’s okay. Maybe encountering other ideas will cause you to realize that your views still work for you, and that’s okay. Our goal in class is to add more tools to the toolboxes of ideas and knowledge we use to navigate our lives and the world we live in.”
Discuss problematic statements
Obviously we confront explicitly racist, homophobic, ableist, etc., language head-on as a matter of civility and respect. But what about when a student or group of students offers a comment or submits an assignment that is problematic in some way? A strategy that is learning-supportive is to remove the statement from the individual or group and instead reposition it as a topic for critical consideration. For example, we might respond by positing a question like “Many people think this way. Why do they hold this view?” or “What is inaccurate or missing from this view? What are the implications?”2 In this way we maintain the student’s or group’s position in the learning process while also bringing critical thinking to bear on the comment or idea.
Model vulnerability
In trying times it is more essential than ever that we model for students the vulnerability that produces empowerment and supports learning.3 We do this by sharing our own experiences, within certain bounds, to help students connect course concepts with their lived lives. For example, in a video in my online course I inadvertently used some non-person-first ableist language. When a student pointed this out to me, I was ashamed and wanted to rerecord the video as soon as possible. But I reconsidered and instead left the video as it was, adding a prefatory note explaining that I had misused some language, noting that I appreciated having a student point this out to me, and detailing a couple of steps I was taking to learn and grow. I included a couple of links to relevant websites. In emails and course evaluations, students praised this approach as “showing what it’s like to make a mistake and still be okay” and thanked me for “showing that even professors can fail sometimes.”
Teaching at any level is rewarding but difficult work, made all the more difficult in the current political and cultural landscape. Strategies like the ones I’ve shared can be the start of fruitful conversations with colleagues to think about how we can use the precariousness of the present moment to improve our course design and teaching.
- See, for example: Stobbe, M. & Schneider, M. (2025, February 03). Trump administration’s data deletions set off ‘a mad scramble,’ researcher says. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/trumpadministrations-data-deletions-set-off-mad-scramble-118412713, and Steenhuysen, J. & Hesson, T. (2025, January 31). US health agencies scrubbing websites to remove ‘gender ideology.’ Reuters.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-health-agencies-scrubbing-websites-remove-gender-ideology-2025-01-31/ ↩︎ - Stanford Graduate School of Business. (2023, May 09). Inclusive teaching topics: Handling sensitive subjects.
https://tlhub.stanford.edu/docs/handling-sensitive-topics/ ↩︎ - See, for example: hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, and Gittins, P. (2020). Being vulnerable in the classroom: presence, power, and pushback in peace education. In E. J. Brantmeier & M. K. McKenna (Eds.), Pedagogy of vulnerability (pp. 259—273). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. ↩︎
MEET THE AUTHOR
Milton W. Wendland (J.D., Ph.D.) is a professor of instruction in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of South Florida, where he specializes in equitable and inclusive online education. He regularly teaches Queer Film and Television; LGBTQ+ Cultures; Gender, Sexuality, and the Law; Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies; and related courses in online formats.