In Political Science Pedagogy: A Critical, Radical, and Utopian Perspective, William Sokoloff asks, “How can we best educate the increasingly diverse students we encounter in the classroom and make political science more relevant to their lives? How can pedagogical practices play a role in the creation of a better and more just world?” (p. 20). Through a critical intersectional approach that is explicated across nonlinear but nonetheless interrelated chapters, Sokoloff offers a largely convincing answer to these increasingly important questions.

Pedagogy is not typically considered a subfield of political science, never mind a form of political theory. However, as Sokoloff shows, pedagogical concerns are not only crucial to the discipline of political science but also have been at the heart of political theory (or political philosophy) for at least the better part of 2,500 years. Drawing on an appropriately and performatively diverse range of political theorists and pedagogy scholars (without reifying any hard distinctions between these categories), Political Science Pedagogy presents a compelling case for the importance of pedagogical approaches in political science and political theory that center the practice of equality. The text as such persuasively convinces the reader not only that pedagogy is an appropriate subject matter within political science but also that it is necessarily of political theory and vice versa.

Sokoloff begins by arguing that political science as a field has not shown a great deal of concern about pedagogy (pp. 1–2). Doctoral students being trained as future professors are given little to no formal pedagogical training, are not given paid time off to develop their pedagogy, and are not incentivized by their supervisors (or the job market) to research pedagogy on their own (pp. 12–13). When this apathy or outright hostility to pedagogy is combined with the dominant perspective that teaching should be (or even can be!) politically neutral, Sokoloff shows that the hegemonic forms of political science pedagogy produce and reproduce an extremely hierarchical and frankly uninformed mode of teaching that reinstantiates the political status quo (ranging from moderate liberalism to right-wing authoritarianism; pp. 5–8). The result also further distances the field from the genuine interests and concerns of our students, as well as the needs of the broader public.

One of the most theoretically interesting aspects of the book is the chapter that explores the pedagogical similarities reflected in the political theories of purported nemeses Leo Strauss and Sheldon Wolin (chapter 2). Although it is not surprising to read Strauss characterized as a proponent of a top-down approach to teaching, it is jarring to see Wolin described in a similar (albeit not identical) way. While not entirely persuasive, the argument here is well reasoned and thought provoking. Chapter 3, which presents Sokoloff’s critique of the Socratic method is similarly intriguing. With nuance and close reading, Sokoloff explains how this pervasive approach to teaching is based on aggressively masculinist and domineering pedagogical assumptions that reproduce social oppressions.

Current political science pedagogy—as reflected well in chapter 7, which juxtaposes it against the alternative pedagogical approach offered by Paulo Freire—is deeply political. It is invested in the political status quo, and the claims to neutrality that are asserted or set up as goals for teaching politics are themselves not neutral: they reinforce existing inequalities (pp. 133–34). The argument here is that to connect more effectively with students so they can actually learn what it means to be a participant in an ever-precarious democratic society in the United States and to make this world more just, we need a different kind of politics to inform our pedagogy in the field of political science.

In addition to providing a description and reflection on a superbly innovative field trip to a prison (chapter 4), Sokoloff concludes his book (chapter 8) by providing autoethnographic examples for how one might implement critical intersectionality and everyday utopianism into the classroom. These examples are offered not as a rigid blueprint, which would be self-defeating, but instead as a catalyst to allow the reader to see what this kind of pedagogy can look like, not what it must look like. What is presented is a radically democratic pedagogy that requires each teacher to self-reflect in an ongoing process of exploration and experimentation that is engaged with the specific students being taught, both demographically and individually, semester after semester. This means that a political science pedagogy that conforms to Sokoloff’s standards would necessarily look different in different contexts—in fact, it must look different in different contexts, even though it is motivated by a consistent political ethos.

Sokoloff claims in one instance that his pedagogy, drawing on Rancière, Freire, Fanon, Derrida, hooks, and Hardt and Negri, is in one instance something that “gnaws at the foundations of oppressive political orders” and then in the next breath that it “[enacts] and [rehearses]… revolution” (p. 147). As great as it would be if the latter claim were true, Political Science Pedagogy only provides support for the former, which is still a worthwhile accomplishment and absolutely necessary starting point. The book shows quite well that a critical, radical, and utopian pedagogy, defined as an everyday utopian practice of equality, can contribute to the development of vital skills and ways of thinking about politics that contribute to (future) revolutionary change. However, this pedagogy itself, although indeed radical, is not the revolution. It could not be, and even if it were, that would necessitate a line of argumentation that this book simply does not offer.

Sokoloff’s book instead emphasizes the need to take the positionality of students seriously when teaching. This case is well made throughout, but he also mentions the positionality of the instructor in relation to students. As the extremely onerous workload of Sokoloff’s own online political theory course (chapter 6) exhibits but does not reflect on, a critical, radical, and utopian pedagogy nevertheless also requires the time and economic security of the instructor. The teacher must have time to think, experiment, and engage in discussions, particularly if one is to develop intellectually stimulating and interactive learning opportunities—crucial for effective online teaching but nonetheless equally important for face-to-face (F2F) teaching (pp. 119–20). In this context, it is noteworthy that Political Science Pedagogy overlooks, nearly without exception, the issue of the “adjunctification” of higher education resulting in increased course loads and the erosion of tenure.

Sokoloff suggests that “clearly any pedagogical technique in the hands of a bad teacher will lead to bad outcomes” (p. 66). But, what if we are looking at bad outcomes produced not by bad pedagogy or a bad teacher, but rather as the result of a pedagogy produced by a teacher who is running five or six courses per semester with no contract and no benefits, and who may be working other jobs or likely at least applying to multiple other academic jobs per week, to say nothing of research, writing, and service? Looking at the recent labor actions by graduate students across the country should inspire us to think about how political scientists can organize ourselves more effectively to not only meet the real-life needs of the future of the discipline but also protect the ever-increasing adjunct and temporary faculty who need lighter workloads and better pay and benefits to be able to successfully practice the critical, radical, and utopian pedagogy this immensely valuable book defends.