As two months have passed since the 2024 General Election, which saw Donald Trump re-elected as the 47th POTUS, people at CSUN and Los Angeles County have many opinions due to the intense election season. Political science major Logan Fisher, political science professor Jennifer De Maio and Judge George A. Turner Jr., a public defender recently elected to the Superior Court for California’s 39th district, shared their perspectives on the recent election.

De Maio, a CSUN faculty member for 18 years shared her perspective on how the election has affected the political climate on campus, “The 2024 election has provided an important opportunity for classroom discussions about political and social justice as well as about the economy and the impact of policy decisions on the electorate. Students seem to have been more politically engaged during the election,” De Maio said.
De Maio speaks on how the university must balance free speech with safety, which is a difficult topic to balance equally. On the topic of critical race theory (CRT) and its influence on political science, “Some students may have a limited or inaccurate understanding of what CRT is. This could create challenges to discussing race and justice in the classroom, but it also provides an important opportunity to foster critical thinking and dialogue about race, power and justice. It challenges students to question and think deeply about how race intersects with politics, law and policy,” De Maio said.
On how Fisher navigates the political dynamics on campus, “holding space for students who are devastated is really important, like especially students who are in the communities that are going to be directly affected, like our queer students and our undocumented students,” Fisher said.
On Critical Race Theory, “I know that it’s an academic theory basically used to look at race within the context of American history, you know, within the context of like slavery, white supremacy and how those systems of oppression still continue to affect people today,” Fisher said.

As political discussions can be overwhelming, Fisher offers a way for how people can engage with complex issues that foster constructive dialogue, “It’s important to approach with a sense of empathy. Try and understand where the person’s coming from. However, if they are saying stuff about other groups of people and in a discriminatory way or looking down upon them, you do need to hold them accountable,” Fisher said.
Turner is a public defender and newly elected superior court judge who participated in a campus panel on CRT and justice in October. On following a career in law, “It’s a lot of things that led me to become a public defender. It wasn’t just one individual thing, but it’s a lot of things. I guess the straw that broke the camel’s back or the final thing, the final story that I tell is I was in law school already,” Turner said. “I had already studied critical race studies. I had already grown up during the era of mass incarceration and saw friends and family and community members go into prison. I had already seen a sort of impact that jury trials can have on my community through the ‘92 uprising… I represent that young man or that young woman or that person of color who’s being pulled out of the car and I’m a zealous advocate for them.” While he was happy about the outcome of his election, he felt apprehensive about the local propositions that failed and other parts of the election.
On CRT, “My concentration was in critical race studies, but critical race theory is, literally, the story of the interaction between race and law in society. So it’s about how the law has helped to create our understanding of race and how race has helped to understand our relationship with the law,” Turner said.
While this political season was very divisive, the students, alumni, professors and allies of CSUN’s political science department have given space and resources for students to make themselves heard continuously, regardless of election year or not.