"What’s the role of politics in the classroom?" asks Professor Sidney Verba. Faculty members have the same rights as any citizen: the right to speak, to vote, and to write opinions. However, states Professor Verba, faculty members have some limitations, in that they should not purport to speak for the university and they should not use their expertise in an irresponsible manner.

What is the professor’s obligation in the classroom? Most faculty would agree that there is no place for their personal opinions about politics in the classroom. It’s inappropriate to use the authority of the lecture platform to deliver political messages. Yet, how do you keep politics out of a political science course?

When teaching political subjects, one must be aware that one’s task is not to indoctrinate. "In graduate classes, it's easy to know what it is we're supposed to do. We’re training graduate students to do research like we do. We teach them to learn statistics, how to analyze history, to do ethnographies, to learn the theories of politics, and how they relate to the data of politics. We try to make them into social scientists. But what are we supposed to do for undergraduates? This is less clear…as the Core course tends to go to students who are not specializing in our own field."

One of the goals in teaching undergraduates is to make them, in an abstract way, "better citizens," states Professor Verba. And, in making them better citizens, they can become social scientists. In order to be good social scientists, the students need to know how to gather and evaluate evidence. They need to know how to understand statistical inference; they must learn how to eliminate or see beyond biased information; they must not just observe the world, but know how to make causal inferences — that is, how to know what goes with what. Good citizens need to know what the consequences are of a particular law. What are the consequences of my own vote? How do I know that when I vote it’s going to push the country in the way I want?