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| Landon Lauder Class of 2017 |
By Landon Lauder, Class of 2017
It is true, should you ask me, my friends, family, or colleagues, I have had many interests over the course of not only my college career, but also my time in high school. In high school, I became interested in the biological sciences and entered college as an intended Biology major. However, that did not last long at all. I quickly switched to my other strong interest: politics.
It is true, should you ask me, my friends, family, or colleagues, I have had many interests over the course of not only my college career, but also my time in high school. In high school, I became interested in the biological sciences and entered college as an intended Biology major. However, that did not last long at all. I quickly switched to my other strong interest: politics.
That’s when I hit the nail on the head, but it would be a long time before I completed the structure.
Ever since I made that switch, I have struggled finding a niche within Political Science. For a while, I had the stereotypical vision of working in Washington D.C., meddling in national affairs on a significant scale, perhaps working for a think tank, a Senator, or even becoming a legislator myself. Yet, it did not feel right. Something about national politics was frustrating. Perhaps it was the breadth without depth of the issues handled on that level. Maybe it was the incredibly intense environment of national politics. I would be lying if I said it also did not have something to do with fellow classmates: my passion for national government did not quite match theirs.
Then, I set my sights on something larger: international politics. I became infatuated with the United Nations and U.S. foreign policy, especially the more social side of things: helping an area rebuild after disasters and examining the social and economic situation of countries. After taking a couple of classes focused on the UN and U.S. foreign policy, it became an unnavigable quagmire that lacked focus and I became distant with my original idea of world order.
After I returned from Bosnia and Herzegovina this summer, where I assisted with psychological research, I signed up for a class titled “Urban Politics and Government” for this semester. I figured that I should leave no level of government unexplored at this point and decided to take the class.
The class started with a rather depressing piece, Michael Katz’s “The Existential Problem of Urban Studies” published in Dissent. The main point of Katz was the field of Urban Affairs and the resulting politics and governance is upsetting. By examining human issues such as racism, poverty, and the environment, it does not paint a pleasant picture. Often, people are deterred by such upsetting statistics and trends that come from studying up-close governmental policies and the human reaction to them.
But I was attracted.
My strange attraction to trying to understand the negative issues in life rather than exalting the positive things has always been difficult to both explain and reconcile. I am not necessarily a negative person. I just believe focusing on the bad issues of life allows us to understand what the issue is so that we can work towards a solution. You cannot ever clean something up when you are not willing to dirty your hands.
Having read many theoretical pieces on urban governance and dynamics and now delving into case studies both in class and on my own, I know that the field of Urban Politics is something that matches me entirely. It is government applied to something we see and interact with each and every day. It is not some unreachable city upon a hill as Washington D.C. is and it isn’t as confusing or discombobulated as international relations. Politics on an urban scale examines what really happens when policy meets the humans for which it was created.
McConnell Scholar Landon Lauder, of Russell, Ky., is a junior at the University of Louisville. He is studying political science, psychology, social change and peace, justice and conflict transformation.
McConnell Scholar Landon Lauder, of Russell, Ky., is a junior at the University of Louisville. He is studying political science, psychology, social change and peace, justice and conflict transformation.