This article addresses three related questions. Does voicing a political ideology in class make a professor less appealing to students? Does voicing an ideology in class make a professor less appealing to students with opposing views? Does the intensity of professors’ ideology affect their appeal? We conducted survey experiments in two public national universities to provide evidence of the extent to which students may tolerate or even prefer that professors share their political views and under which conditions these preferences may vary. Results from the experiments indicate that expressing a political opinion did not make a professor less appealing to students—and, in fact, made the professor more appealing to some students—but the perception that a professor’s ideology is particularly intense makes the class much less favorable for students with opposing views. Students are indifferent between moderately political and nonpolitical professors.

The ethical risks inherent in student research on political violence that involve human participants are myriad. Undergraduate and master’s students face constraints that are different than those for many doctoral students and faculty researchers, and it is the responsibility of educators and academic institutions to ensure that students engage in ethical practices and to mitigate risks. This article focuses on formal mechanisms of oversight. Drawing on discussions with colleagues across the globe, we describe how institutions can design oversight mechanisms to manage student research. We present five distinct models for how ethical oversight of student research is provided in academic programs around the world, considering the costs and benefits of each model. The article concludes that whereas the creation of oversight systems can seem daunting, it is useful to start small—indeed, moving from no oversight to some oversight is a significant improvement. Programs and academic units then can build on these early efforts, experiment with other systems, and eventually develop a system that is adapted to an institution through iterative improvements based on student and faculty experiences.

Learning theories in political science can be difficult for students. This article describes a technique that helps students to understand how a theory about human characteristics may impact behavior. I use a mini-simulation in which two volunteers are asked to enact a gimmick in front of the classroom, demonstrating the theory of human territoriality (Asal et al. 2018). As the volunteers engage in small talk, I point out that they engage with one another at a certain distance and angle that reflects social space. As the exercise progresses, students easily relate to the theory of human territoriality, which is defined as the symbolic and physical connection to a space considered as their own. This mini-simulation achieves the following learning objectives: understanding (1) that theories are relevant and help to explain human behavior; (2) the workings of the individual level of analysis; and (3) that theories are not universal and have limits to their application across culture, time, and space. This teaching technique does not require preparation time or resources, and students easily comprehend the expected learning outcomes. Having received overwhelmingly positive feedback in evaluations, I offer this as a viable technique for teaching theory in general because it helps students to comprehend what a theory is supposed to do—that is, to understand, explain, and sometimes predict behavior.