Ex-lawmakers seek to bridge partisan divide on US campuses

In an era of deepening partisan divides in the US Congress and antagonistic free-speech debates on college campuses, a group of former lawmakers appears to have found a way to cut through the angry noise.

The 50-year-old US Association of Former Members of Congress is having a bit of a renaissance, driven by the simple act of sending ex-lawmakers into classrooms in bipartisan pairs to engage in calm discussions with students.

In the past decade, the Congress to Campus programme has doubled in size across the US while also spreading to Canada and the UK. Participating students report clear benefits in their understanding of and optimism towards politics, and institutions uniformly welcome return engagements.

“We had really outstanding feedback,” said Eliza Lloyd, a Colgate University junior who helped to organise an event last month for her classmates. “We got a couple of people saying I could have listened to them talk for hours more.”

“It may be a little bit idealistic,” said Robert Speel, an associate professor of political science who hosted a session at Penn State Behrend. “But the students like to hear that it’s still possible” to have reasoned political debate, “and they like to hear that there are members of Congress who try to work towards being more than partisan hacks”.

It even seems to be working overseas, both with visiting US politicians and with their local counterparts. Former US Representative Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat, recalled a pre-Covid visit to campuses in Manchester and Liverpool, where students seemed shocked to witness her talk politely to her Republican partner.

Her key memory, Ms Esty said, was “how their attitudes changed in just the course of the hour”.

The association of former US lawmakers makes no major claims of educational value. Its main measuring sticks are its own surveys showing that 63 per cent of participating students felt more confident that politicians of different parties could work together, 77 per cent developed better attitudes towards Congress, and 97 per cent felt the programme should continue.

In the past decade, the number of events has doubled to about a dozen a semester, pushed both by the popularity and – more recently – the move to online, which saves participants the time and expense of travel.

The usual format before the pandemic was a three-day campus session that would include meetings with three or four classes each day. The visiting groups of lawmakers, whether just a pair or multiples of them, are strictly balanced by party affiliation.

“Everything – everything – is always done on a bipartisan basis,” said former US Representative Larry LaRocco, a Democrat who has done about a dozen trips and once held the group’s rotating presidency. “If for whatever reason we don’t have a bipartisan team, that’s it; we don’t pull the trigger on the programme.”

The lawmakers volunteer their time, and travel costs are covered by a few thousand dollars in host fees and association fundraising events.

Political science classes are common venues, but many in other disciplines also participate. The association encourages other types of events during the trip, including talks with student organisations and local community groups.

“One of my favourite things to do,” said Peter Weichlein, the association’s chief executive, “is a pizza night, where the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans come together.”

That’s not to say that there isn’t some blunt talk. Ms Esty recalls a “super-intense” trip to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, where she and her Republican partner both faced questioning “that was highly suspicious and combative”.

“It's not like the students at Annapolis are immune from the toxic culture that’s out there, of suspicion and snarkiness,” she said.

Still, said one relatively new participant, former US Representative John Faso, the widespread surprise among students over the relative civility of the events is startling. “They realise that everything is not all fireworks and hand grenades,” said Mr Faso, a Republican who lost his seat in 2018.

Nevertheless, as he gets more chances, Mr Faso said he has plans to deliver more blunt messages about issues he finds troublesome, such as “cancel culture” in academia.

“There’s a lot of cowardice, frankly, in higher ed right now to deal with this, and I think that’s very problematic,” he said.

With Congress growing more nakedly partisan, Mr Weichlein acknowledged that he might have trouble finding former members with the necessary temperament. But there should still be enough for the programme to continue, he said.

“They don’t need to sing ‘Kumbaya’ while on campus,” Mr Weichlein said. “The opposite – we want them to be partisan beings.

“But we wouldn’t engage ones who don’t have it in their DNA to look at somebody from the other side of the aisle and say, ‘I can’t even look at you.’ That doesn’t help us.”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com