Teaching Students to Think for Themselves Is Never Apolitical

My nomination for the most predictable platitude invoked by university professors to describe the essence of their job is “teaching students to think for themselves.”

During my 26 years at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was sometimes accused of politicizing the classroom, I repeated that phrase many times, not as a dodge but because I believed it was the right goal.

As with many platitudes, the problem is not that it is incorrect. Rather, it is inadequate. Teaching “critical-thinking skills” is at the heart of good teaching, but that phrase offers little guidance on how to do the job, especially in the social sciences and humanities. (I taught in a journalism school, which typically is a mix of those two traditions.)

I never met a professor—liberal, conservative, or centrist—who thought the job was to propagandize students, to push a particular belief system. But every professor makes decisions about topics covered, readings assigned, and the direction of class discussions in the limited time available, all of which require judgments that inevitably reflect a way of seeing the world. Call it a framework of analysis, a worldview, an ideology—no one understands human affairs in a purely objective fashion, without underlying assumptions about how the world works.

In short: Teaching is not politics, but there is always an underlying political current to teaching about human affairs because there is inescapably a politics to living. By politics, I do not mean partisan battles but, rather, competing claims about human nature, how to distribute power, what constitutes a good society, et cetera. In that sense, a form of politics pervades everything people do, whether stated or implicit. The question, therefore, is whether we can make a good case for the choices we make, which will inevitably be politically inflected.

As an example, I will describe a lesson I used in my Media Law and Ethics class that illustrates why no teaching is truly apolitical.

The exercise started by stating truisms. First, the primary role of journalism in a democratic society is to provide information and analysis people need to participate in self-governance. Second, one of the most consequential choices a government can make is to go to war, when citizens need especially fearless reporting. Third, in a society based on the rule of law—the idea that rules apply uniformly to everyone, including the wealthy and powerful—going to war should proceed lawfully.

I used the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq as a case study to examine whether that invasion was lawful and whether journalists gave citizens what they needed to understand that question.

"Challenging the assumptions of the dominant culture is crucial, especially in a journalism class."

I began by walking students through the relevant statutes, including international law.

The Charter of the United Nations authorizes a nation to go to war under two conditions: A collective security action authorized by the United Nations Security Council or self-defense when facing an “armed attack.” When the American military invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, there was no Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force, and Iraq had not attacked the United States. Members of the American government claimed that previous Security Council resolutions implicitly granted the right to go to war, but that claim was rejected by most experts and almost everyone outside of the U.S. The nation's unsuccessful attempt to pass a new resolution to authorize military action in February also suggested that many in the American government knew existing resolutions were not adequate.

Next, I pointed out that many war proponents argued the invasion was legal because in 2002 Congress had approved a resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq and that the U.S. should not be constrained by international law. But the country ratified the Charter of the United Nations, which has the force of a treaty, and Article VI of the Constitution makes all treaties “the supreme Law of the Land.” So, a violation of the Charter is not simply a question of international law.

Most of the students in the class said that my lecture was the first time they had heard this kind of analysis. That was not surprising, since there was little coverage of these issues in the American news media during the run-up to the war. Students agreed that journalists should have written more (and more detailed) stories about the legal status of an invasion, though some argued that it was understandable that journalists backed off in the post-September 11 political climate. I agreed, but that is an explanation rather than a defense.

We then turned to the ethical question: If journalists failed to provide citizens with the information and analysis they needed to participate in a democratic debate about going to war, was that an ethical failure? I encouraged students to decide for themselves, making it clear that I was not going to test them about a “right” answer.

After the invasion, it is not surprising that journalists avoided the question. If the American invasion had been illegal, then it constituted what under the Nuremberg Principles is called a “crime against peace”:

“Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.”

The crime was described by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which prosecuted Nazi officials, as the “supreme international crime.” Those principles do not constitute a formal treaty, but they inform both international and American law. They also serve as a moral benchmark for contemporary international relations.

Is it foolish to label the American invasion as illegal? Many experts around the world reached the conclusion that it was unlawful, including then-Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, who reluctantly acknowledged that in an interview with journalists—in the United Kingdom. That story forced coverage in American newspapers, many of which treated the question as a he-said/she-said controversy, implying that it could not be resolved. The journalistic dilemma, as I framed it, was whether that was responsible reporting of competing viewpoints or an evasion of responsibility that turned an analyzable legal question into dueling opinions.

How can professors teach critical thinking without imposing their own views on students, and did this lesson I once conducted cross that line?

I was familiar with this legal analysis because of my work in the anti-war movement, and some might argue that I was forcing my point of view on students, under the guise of an exploration of journalistic ethics. But the question is not how I learned of the critique but whether it was a helpful illustration of the pressure on journalists to “rally around the flag” in times of war. Students could assess whether the facts I presented were accurate, whether the legal principles and precedents were applicable, and whether the case study raised an important ethical question. I believe the answer to all three is "Yes."

However, there is a deeper point. What of the many professors teaching similar classes who did not raise these issues? If my anti-war activities led me to include this lesson, and that is political, then professors who ignored such a lesson were also making a choice that was, in the same sense, politically inflected.

I believe that the deployment of the American military should conform to international and domestic law. Others disagree. How professors present the legality of the American invasion of Iraq, and how they frame more recent military actions such as the Trump administration’s recent sea and land attacks on Venezuela, are no doubt influenced by their assessments. But labeling one side political because it emerges from critique while pretending that the other side is neutral because it embraces the conventional wisdom is itself a political act. There is no escape from making judgments that are, in some sense, political.

My hope is that the lesson succeeded in teaching students to think critically. The conventional wisdom is not always wrong, of course, but it is wrong often enough that reflexively adopting it is dangerous. Challenging the assumptions of the dominant culture is crucial, especially in a journalism class.

Outside of the classroom, I was politically active for most of my time at the University of Texas at Austin and sometimes ended up in the news because of that activity, especially after the September 11 attacks, when I was the subject of intense criticism for my anti-war writing. But I do not think my political activities outside of the classroom made me a bad teacher. I was aware of the scrutiny I was under and reminded students that they did not have to agree with me, always trying to anticipate objections to points I made and discussing them in class.

Instead, being self-aware of how my framework for understanding the world could influence my teaching made me a better teacher. Hiding my politics, from students or myself, would have been a mistake.

I know my position is not universally embraced. I was reminded of that one night at a dinner for professors who had won the University of Texas System’s Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award.

The group at my table was discussing politics in the classroom, back in 2014 when the subject was not quite as contentious as today. A political science professor said that he worked hard to hide his views, bragging that “my students don’t know how I vote.” This is a common claim, almost always made with pride, and others at the table nodded in support. I said that I understood his point but that I did not always try to hide my views. “How can students evaluate our choices about how to present material if we hide our approach to politics?” I asked. "Wouldn’t it be better if we were upfront about our own framework of analysis, worldview, ideology?"

When we do that, it is likely students could make a good guess at how we voted, but there is no harm in that. We expect researchers to disclose the sources of funding so we can assess whether money might have influenced a study. Should the same principle not apply in the classroom regarding ideology?

I respect that political scientist’s point of view; reasonable people can disagree. We did not reach a consensus around the table that night, but I worry that the charge that a professor inappropriately politicizes the classroom is too often a weapon designed to impose conformity. That demand for conformity can come from any ideological camp, and it should be resisted whenever it shuts down critical thinking.

To be sure, I do not believe professors should tell students what to think. But if we really want them to think for themselves, we should be honest with students about not only what we believe but how we came to believe it.

Robert Jensen’s new book, This I Don’t Believe: A Fulfilling Life without Meaning, will be published by Blue Ear Books in 2026. He is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, the author of It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics, which was released with Olive Branch Press in 2024. He is also the co-author with Wes Jackson of An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity, which was released with University of Notre Dame Press in 2022.