Discussion leader Herb Asher (center) and event organizer Kathleen Hallihan (right) engage in discussion with an attendee (left) at Tuesday’s “Town Hall Talk.” Credit: Helena Hennessy | Lantern Reporter
The Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs hosted a lecture for its Town Hall Talks series Tuesday, at which approximately 70 attendees gathered in the Page Hall Policy Forum for a discussion led by Herb Asher, a professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science.
According to the college’s website, the lecture series encourages community members to educate themselves on prevalent public issues by engaging in dialogue centered around current events. The lectures double as interactive conversations led by field experts in an open-discussion format, allowing for a diverse range of viewpoints to be shared.
Asher has conducted yearslong research on public political behavior, with a specific focus on electoral campaigns and public opinion polling within the sphere of United States politics, according to the Department of Political Science website.
Perhaps most notably, Asher is known for his role as founding director of the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, which evolved to be the College of Public Affairs, he said at Tuesday’s event.
Discussion
The event began at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday with an introduction from event organizer Kathleen Hallihan, assistant dean of students and instruction at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.
In her opening statement, Hallihan said, “Engagement isn’t meaningful if belonging isn’t felt.”
“The purpose of these talks is to foster community and dialogue on key current public issues and challenges, and these are designed to extend classroom learning and encourage participation,” Hallihan said.
As Asher took the stand, he initiated participant involvement by asking for a show of hands from attendees who remained undecided regarding their vote for the 2024 presidential election.
“[News outlets] are making the undecided voters sort of the most important people in the United States,” Asher said.
Asher then shifted his focus and opened the discussion by asking for attendees’ opinions on the recent presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
After an attendee made a point of their disappointment in the debate’s moderators, saying the moderators tried to “play the role of fact-checker,” Asher said without them, it would be “up to [a candidate’s] opponent to, in fact, criticize them or check their misstatements.”
This response led Asher to acknowledge that candidates can often get off-track during debates, asking audience members for feedback on how they think formal debates can be improved upon.
“For debates to be meaningful, there have to be some guardrails,” Asher said.
Asher then turned the discussion to comments made by Trump regarding Springfield, Ohio — where the candidate falsely claimed immigrants were “eating dogs” and other household pets, per prior Lantern reporting. Asher noted how headline news issues can be represented differently based on media outlets’ political biases.
“Clearly, we are in a polarized time,” Asher said.
Around the half-hour mark, Asher and Hallihan fully opened the discussion to attendees, allowing them to share their thoughts and perspectives on the issues discussed thus far.
The first discussion topic brought up by an attendee was the U.S. stance on immigration.
Asher later asked why the political system cannot have “an intelligent discussion about immigration.”
“The media, of course, will then start saying, ‘Well, let’s not really get into the issue of immigration,’” Asher said. “‘Let’s get into the process by which this issue was raised.’ So even then, it might be somewhat of a self-defeating thing.”
For the event’s remaining half hour, attendees continued to propose points of discussion that built off one another. The most heavily debated topics were the impacts political rhetoric has on outward violence and fear-mongering tactics.
“It’s become so easy to say any issue that you bring up could, in fact, inspire people to do actions that we might not like,” Asher said.
In terms of the potential for political realignment — which references a change in voting behavior among previously established groups — within future elections, Asher said the most prevalent roadblocks are “the rules and regulations that guide our elections and guide the whole notion of a political party.”
“Those rules are so stacked in favor of the two major parties, so what happens here is the major changes are happening within the parties, and especially within the Republican Party,” Asher said.
Before closing remarks, Asher focused on ranked-choice voting — a method that allows voters to rank candidates in order of their preference — along with its potential benefits for United States voters.
Asher said ranked-choice voting is “a very good system” in his opinion.
Event context
Hallihan said she wanted to encourage “respectful dialogue” across campus in order to engage students in the political landscape.
“We want to encourage this dialogue in an atmosphere that is experimental and brave,” Hallihan said. “There were so many brave students that brought their questions here tonight.”
Hallihan said opening a dialogue among students is important because it “is not as common as it used to be,” and the event’s ultimate goal was to give students an outlet through which they could express themselves.
“We want our students to feel like they’re a part of the Glenn College and a part of The Ohio State University,” Hallihan said.
Hallihan said the Town Hall was “only the beginning” of creating dialogue surrounding politics at the university.
More information about the John Glenn College of Public Affairs’ upcoming events can be found on its website.
