Shutdowns, Drugs, and Campgrounds: Strickler's Leave in Motion
Jeremy Strickler used fall 2025 faculty development leave to push several projects forward. He is an associate professor of political science at UTC and has taught there since 2016. UTC presents this leave as an investment in faculty, and in the students, colleagues, and communities connected to their work. His projects touched presidential power, American drug-control policy, public camping, and a new class on U.S. political culture.
The work began with questions that already appear in his teaching. How do institutions shape everyday public life? How do people create meaning together? How can an idea become a policy or a habit? One thread came from the war on drugs, a topic he already discusses with students. Strickler wanted to study how presidents present drug use as a crime problem rather than a health problem.
He saw the presidency as a powerful stage. A president can define what the public is supposed to notice. A president can also shape how a problem should be understood. His research asks how the war on drugs became linked to national security. It also asks how that label can narrow the choices available to presidents. He first planned to use archives at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. A government shutdown blocked that visit. So he shifted to books, online primary sources, and scholarship about public policy and the presidency. That detour helped him sharpen the main point: framing can change what leaders think is possible. In June, he presented the work at the Conference on American Political Development at Smith College in Massachusetts. He was excited by the chance to connect American political development with international relations. He used drug policy as an example of an issue being treated as a security threat.
The same leave also led to a very different collaboration with his wife, Dr. Lucy Schultz. She is an assistant professor of philosophy and co-director of UTC's Environmental Studies program. Together, they wrote Camping and the Public Good for the upcoming edited collection Camping and Philosophy: Big Ideas in the Great Outdoors. It is scheduled for publication by Milestone Press. The chapter looks at camping on public land through John Dewey's ideas about democracy, learning, and shared experience. A campground can put people side by side who might not normally meet. It can also raise practical questions about recycling, nearby campsites, and care for shared spaces. For Strickler and Schultz, access to public land is part of the democratic value of the place.
Strickler's drug-policy project is not finished, and archive research is still planned. The camping chapter came from their own trips and from the rules, habits, and encounters that appear in public campgrounds. For faculty members considering development leave, the application deadline is Oct. 31.