Teaching Trump: Professors face yuge challenge in classroom

For more than a decade, Dan Schnur had a rule: no hats.

He’s told hundreds of University of Southern California students in the campaign strategy class he teaches that when politicians wear hats, it tends to distract from the message of even the best-orchestrated campaign appearances.

Then, Donald Trump donned his now-famous “Make America Great Again” cap, which became a visual centerpiece of his presidential campaign and turned Schur’s rule from conventional wisdom to punch line.

While Schnur still stands by his hat rule because, “unless you’re a megalomaniac billionaire, wearing a hat is a potential visual distraction,” he says that Trump’s hat is emblematic of the many ways he’s been forced to reshape his course to account for Trump’s unconventional presidential campaign.

“Whether you love Donald Trump or hate him it’s impossible to teach a traditional approach to political communications when he is communicating his message in such an untraditional way,” Schnur says. “I find I start almost every other paragraph ‘except for Trump.’”

And he’s far from alone.

As Trump’s campaign has upended conventional wisdom about American politics time and time again, professors tell USA TODAY College they have been scrambling to rethink how they teach their courses. Their tasks include explaining Trump’s expectations-defying candidacy and choosing whether to share their own views of his campaign with students in the classroom.