Every question we ask in the classroom is, quietly, a bet on the future. Even when the news is bleak. Even when everyone is tired. Even when we don’t know what the end of the semester — or the world — will bring. To ask a question is to assume there’s still something worth understanding. To pose a problem is to believe that thinking together still matters. In difficult times like ours, that may be the most radical thing about teaching and learning: It insists on the possibility of meaning.
A few weeks ago, I was very disheartened by the election results in Germany, where I grew up. The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party won over 20 percent of the vote. One of their platform positions is that the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated, part of what they dismiss as a national “guilt cult” that the country should move beyond. That rhetoric — casually cruel and deeply dangerous — has a way of lingering. That same week, I taught a unit on everyday encounters during World War II. In class, we discussed blurred moral lines and moments of unexpected solidarity. Students asked thoughtful, tough questions. And somehow, that was enough to lift the weight for me. I walked out of class reminded that learning from each other can be a quiet act of resistance. Not just resistance to a broader ecosystem of disinformation, where denial and distortion of history become tools of political power. At a time when higher education is also under attack here in the U.S., the classroom remains a space where nuance, complexity and historical truth can still be defended. In other words, paying close attention to one another is itself a form of hope. And that learning, in all its vulnerability, is a form of courage.
What does it mean to teach and learn in uncertain times — both in the world writ large and here on campus? We have seen tensions spike, trust break down and people sometimes pull back into their own spaces. It is easy to grow cynical, disengage and lower expectations — not just of others, but of ourselves. But learning resists that. It means showing up, with openness, with the willingness to rethink. With the belief that what we do together in a classroom still matters. That education is not just the transfer of knowledge, but the slow, collective construction of meaning — a kind of shared vulnerability.
Lately, I keep going back to my old copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (1921–1997), the Brazilian educator who laid the foundation for what we now call critical pedagogy. He grew up in Recife during the Great Depression and frequently experienced hunger. Though he studied law, he quickly found his purpose elsewhere — teaching Portuguese, and later, working on literacy efforts for Brazil’s poorest communities, a direct reflection of his family’s own hardships. His method wasn’t just about decoding words; it was about interpreting the world. For him, learning was about daring to challenge injustice and dream up other possibilities. After the military coup in 1964, he went into exile, but he carried this vision with him, believing that teaching means hope. And so is learning—especially when it demands effort, risk or the courage to reconsider what (we thought) we knew. I’ve come to see learning as a form of resistance: not just against growing authoritarianism, but against resignation.
That kind of learning doesn’t always look impressive in our day-to-day lives. It unfolds in small moments: a follow-up question after class, a pause in a lecture, a shift during a discussion. Sometimes it means staying with a difficult idea instead of turning away when writing. Sometimes it means saying: I’m not sure I understand this yet — but I really want to. And that willingness matters, especially now that we near the end of the academic year — when exhaustion sets in and deadlines pile up.
To students, I would like to say this: You all come from an astonishing range of backgrounds, identities and experiences. Some of you are the first in your families to attend college. Many of you are navigating neurodiversity, burnout, grief and other struggles we do not see in class. You’re balancing coursework, side gigs, family responsibilities — and you’re still showing up. You engage, reflect and take intellectual risks. You try to make sense of the world, even (or especially) when it feels off-balance. Learning thus becomes generative. It builds something new, something that only exists because you are part of it.
And as professors, we’re still learning too — in fact, learning never stops. I remember a class last fall when a student gently pushed back on a term I’d used, wondering if “defiance” might mean something different depending on whose narrative we focus on. It caught me off guard — in the best way. We decided to follow that line of thought together as a class, re-examining a case study of behaviors in Nazi-occupied Poland I thought I had figured out. That day, I didn’t teach a lesson so much as learn one again — on how vulnerability can unlock new insight, how learning often begins off-script.
Research on how people learn backs this up: We learn best when the material feels personal. When we’re asked not just to absorb facts, but to think with them — to explore how they connect, why they matter, where they lead. Professors don’t always get to see the impact, and students don’t always know what ideas have taken root. But still, we all plant seeds. We trust — together — that our classroom is a space for connection, for reflection, for imagining better ways to live. And that’s an ethical stance — a refusal to give up on what’s possible.
So if things feel heavy right now — in your classes, in your heart, in the world — I want to say this: Learning matters all the more. Trusting one another with complexity matters. We may not always get it right, but the effort is itself a form of hope. Whenever we pose a question without a known answer, we offer more than just information—we offer a gesture of trust: The belief that everyone’s thinking has weight. That dialogue is worth having. That the future is worth preparing for.
And that’s the quiet promise behind every syllabus and every class: In learning together — honestly, imperfectly — we are part of a much longer, deeper conversation. Not just about what has been, but about what will be. After all, a classroom is not a place for easy answers: It’s a place to listen, to imagine and to begin again.
Jan Burzlaff is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program for Jewish Studies. Office Hours (Open Door Edition) is his weekly dispatch to the Cornell community — a professor’s reflections on teaching, learning and the small moments that make a campus feel human. Readers can submit thoughts and questions anonymously through the Tip Sheet here. He can also be reached at profjburzlaff@cornellsun.com.
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Jan Burzlaff is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program for Jewish Studies. Office Hours (Open Door Edition) is his weekly dispatch to the Cornell community — a professor’s reflections on teaching, learning, and the small moments that make a campus feel human. Readers can submit thoughts and questions anonymously through the Tip Sheet here. He can also be reached at profjburzlaff@cornellsun.com.
