This fall, United States campuses will be awash in what Howard Zinn called “election madness”. It will be a veritable cornerstone of campus culture. Universities will host debate viewing parties. Campus Republicans and Democrats will table in our student centres, squaring off to recruit members and organise campus events. Faculty will encourage students to attend electorally oriented campus programming. Voter registration drives will tout non-partisan motivations for encouraging student participation in the upcoming presidential race.

These students are no stranger to election madness. They have long been taught that ratifying the American system by voting is politics par excellence. Their K-12 classrooms were also imbued with this common sense. Voting, then: a hallowed civic duty. Alongside writing to elected officials, speaking at town hall events, or petitioning Congress, they have been taught that this is how to do politics in the US.

But at this moment, America’s electoral common sense is in crisis. If my inbox is any indication, today’s students were rocked by the climate of repression faced by anti-genocide protests last year. Many of these uprisings ended in police crackdowns and academic discipline for student organisers. These students have had a front row seat to a McCarthyistic climate, one that saw their faculty members fired, censured........

© Al Jazeera