Posted By Gettysburgian Staff on Dec 10, 2024 | 1 comment

By Terra Hobler, Opinions Editor

Political science is currently the largest major by student participation on campus. The size of their department allows it to specialize into four different tracks: American government, international relations, comparative government and political theory. Each student majoring in political science is required to take three intro courses of different tracks and then continue to take upper level classes in two. 

The existence of political theory, as a standalone track that students can take many classes of varying levels, is part of what makes the Gettysburg political science department so noteworthy, and is at least partially responsible for my decision to attend the school to begin with. 

My favorite class that I took my first semester here at Gettysburg was professor Kevin Pham’s intro to political theory class, which exposed me to a wide array of different ideas of how society and government could be organized, and different rationalizations for each of them. I had never been humbled so quickly at the abysmal lack of knowledge I had on the topic considering I had known I wanted to major in political science for several years previous. That is what college is about; being thrust into environments where you need to confront your own ignorance, and then having the opportunity to fill the cracks in your understanding of the world. 

Terra Hobler (Sofia Gutierrez/The Gettysburgian)

Before I got to take my second political theory course however, Pham left to transfer to a different university. This left the political theory track without its sole professor, and professor Chungjae Lee was hired to take up the mantle Pham had left behind with little notice or time to plan before the fall ‘23 semester started. Of course, the disruption caused by Professor Pham’s departure stood as a testament to the fragility of political theory at Gettysburg College, as any subject with a single professor is likely to be. 

To compound on the issue of having one professor teaching political theory there is also the matter of tenure; of which there is none. Forcing a single professor to bear the burden of an entire quarter of the largest department on campus all the while not providing any promise of future employment is not a winning strategy for keeping faculty content at the College. The fragility of political theory at Gettysburg College was on full display last fall, yet it seems that the circumstances of such rapid change have been left untouched. Without providing a tenure track position for professors of political theory we can have no expectation that they will stick around to continue teaching here, and we should not be surprised if the situation that unfolded over the summer of 2023 were to happen again. 

This is not just a matter of faculty satisfaction. The absence of a stable professorial staff capable of teaching political theory leaves all students interested in studying the subject vulnerable to having their passion swept out from under their feet. There is already no capstone available for the political theory track, forcing all students who have committed one of their two tracks to theory to take their capstone in their second track; a track they might be less passionate about. The student experience has always been at the forefront of decision-making for the College, yet the calculations of how to spend finite funds can seem contradictory to this goal. If you were to ask me if I would rather have political theory as a part of the political science major, or a beer garden, I would choose the former every time. 

This article originally appeared on page 17 of the No. 1 December 2024 edition of The Gettysburgian magazine.