Jenny Kim / Inside Higher Ed
The Public Scholar discusses college student voter suppression, institutional responsibility and the power of public scholarship with Jonathan Becker, professor of political studies, director of the Center for Civic Engagement and executive vice president for academic affairs at Bard College.
Becker is co-editor of Youth Voting Rights: Civil Rights, The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, and the Fight for American Democracy on College Campuses (DeGruyter, 2026). He has recent articles about his youth voting research in The Nation, Forbes, Talking Points Memo and Times Higher Education. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q: You’ve called out an “assault” on youth voting, with college campuses as a primary battleground. Who’s behind this, and what “weapons” are deployed?
A: Attacks occur at three levels. First, hyperlocal attacks by local election authorities who don’t want college students voting locally. Our book discusses case studies at Tuskegee, Prairie View A&M, North Carolina A&T and Bard. Tuskegee was extreme; they gerrymandered the whole city to get rid of the university.
The second level involves state officials passing restrictive identification laws to make establishing residency difficult for out-of-state students.
Now, we have a federal assault. Recently, the Department of Education launched an investigation into the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement based at Tufts, which tracks campus voter participation. Secretary [Linda] McMahon said in the statement, “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning and research—not influencing elections.” But by “influencing elections,” she’s talking about students participating in voting, which is a core part of our educational mission. NSLVE does not track party affiliation. They don’t track who people vote for. It just reports percentages of students participating in voting.
Beyond these assaults are bureaucratic challenges. Voter registration is complicated, and people need guidance. Students used to doing everything electronically may not realize they can’t [show up to] vote in Dutchess County [two hours north of New York City] if they are registered where they live in New York City. There are both purposeful barriers and natural barriers to participation.
Q: Older voters outpace the youngest by nearly 30 points, according to your research. Is that apathy, or is the system designed for that result?
A: The easy claim is that it’s apathy, but [low] voter registration numbers are a real indicator. In addition to a voting problem, we have a voter registration problem.
Eighty percent of 18- to 24-year-olds who register vote. But registering when you’re a student is difficult. Students are often mobile, live out of state and are first-time registrants. All of those factors make it more difficult to vote.
If you vote locally, you must navigate logistical hurdles: What address do I use? Where do I go to vote? Do I have transportation to go to vote? If you’re voting by mail, many young people have literally never put a stamp on an envelope. Then there are rules: When can you submit? It can’t be too early; it can’t be too late. Some states, like Minnesota, require a witness or notary. As educators, we should help students overcome these barriers to civic participation.
Q: Should students vote in their hometowns or their university towns?
A: We encourage students to be part of the communities in which they’re situated. Many of them are invested there and don’t plan to return to their parents’ homes. Federal and state laws confirm their right to vote locally.
Still, we don’t tell students to vote locally. We tell them, “These are your options.” We talk with them about the implications of the different options.
Q: Did you come to this work after witnessing voting challenges Bard students faced?
A: I spent the 1990s promoting democracy in Eastern Europe—in Ukraine, Russia, Hungary and Czech Republic. To come back to the United States and learn that Bard students were systematically denied the right to vote locally by officials ignoring New York or federal law, that was stunning.
Colleges and universities can and should play a role. Here’s an example of why: In the 1970s, three Bard students sued for the right to vote in Dutchess County, and they won. But it was only germane to those three students. It wasn’t a class action. So the next year, it was all forgotten. When you’re dealing with egregious violations of students’ rights to vote, continuous institutional involvement matters. Students come and go, making it difficult to pass on knowledge. Also, administrators can mobilize resources.
Q: Is public scholarship a side pursuit, or do scholars have a duty to step up when democratic norms are under attack?
A: I am an educator who has written about deeds and words. In graduation speeches, we talk about the virtues of engaged citizenship and the link between higher education and democracy. If we take ourselves seriously as educators, and if the link between education and democracy is meaningful, then it is incumbent upon us to act.
Voting is the most foundational democratic right and an essential part of our educational mission. If we avert our eyes from violations, then we are hypocrites. When we act with students, we model behavior we want them to carry when they go out into the world. Also, people who vote young tend to vote for life. So we’re modeling future behaviors. Through our actions, we reaffirm that our institutions’ deeds are consistent with our words.
Q: What advice do you have for faculty who may want to share their expertise more broadly but feel constrained by university politics or government pressure?
A: First, everything we do is within the law. Federal law says we’re supposed to make a good-faith effort to provide voter registration information. Second, we don’t ask students who they’ll vote for. This is an educational process of engaged citizenship, not advocating for a specific party. We invite all parties to campus.
Third, we take an educational approach. To be honest, I’d rather spend more time educating students about government roles than fighting for their very right to vote. Last year, we mocked up a ballot to discuss what a comptroller, sheriff, town councilperson and county legislator actually does. This is part of our educational mission.
Q: Does your public scholarship have lessons for scholars beyond political scientists?
A: There is room for everyone. Our art department has students make signs about why they vote. There’re signs like, “I vote ’cause my mother told me to.” A Bard biologist, Felicia Keesing, studied the relative COVID safety of campus voting versus local polling stations in our fight for an on-campus polling place. Even simple actions matter—like faculty asking students if they’ve checked their registration status before a deadline.
Q: What might Inside Higher Ed readers be missing about the role of public scholarship in fraught times?
A: We need to make our voices heard. Some of our publishing about voting challenges Bard students have faced has been in the Albany Times Union. Later, New York State passed a law mandating the possibility of polling places on campuses with 300 or more registered voters. That came out of us telling our story. By telling these stories, we helped diminish the isolation of others facing similar challenges.
These are positive stories of students successfully fighting for their rights. Right now, the message that people can stand up and have their voice heard is really important. If we can’t do that in higher education, then why do we exist?
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