"The forces he is up against are much bigger than President Trump and are tectonic in nature. There are a set of forces that push us apart rather than bring us together," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. But, he adds, "I do think having a period of time for the country to experience the absence of the daily melodrama of the Trump presidency will help."

"CCE [Citizenship and Civic Engagement] stresses how important it is that we resist the tendency towards imposing our own understanding onto communities, and instead equip communities with the tools to share their own understandings with the rest of the world," says sophomore Maggie Sardino.

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks thinks the delay by the Trump Administration to share information to Biden will be "negligible to none." However, he feels it comes with other costs. "I feel a great deal has been lost symbolically and I believe our democratic institutions have been severely beat up by the bruising battles that have been fought for no good reason," Banks says.

"All in all, freeing Cienfuegos without any charges or penalties showcases that his arrest was a complete debacle for both the DEA and DOJ [Department of Justice]," says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

Mark Jacobson, assistant dean of Washington programs says that "the [John] Kerry pick [as Biden's special presidential envoy for climate] is really incredible from a structural standpoint." His selection, Jacobson says, is "an admission that our mid-20th century national security structures were not designed to deal with some of the more holistic and potentially existential threats, in this case, climate change."

"If there’s going to be some type of rapprochement with China on this [trade deals], there’s going to have to be negotiations before that between the Chinese and the Americans that deescalate the conflict and result in some other wins from both sides," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

Shannon Monnat talks with NPR about the negative effects of COVID 19, especially the urban/rural divide where rural hospitals do not have the capacity to treat sick patients, and when they are sent to urban hospitals, puts strain on cities to keep up with the influx of hospital patients. 

Steven White, assistant professor of political science, says one reason it's so hard to fire a police officer, even one who appears to have broken the law, is because there are so many opportunities for the officers and their unions to appeal. "It's not surprising that police unions want it to be harder to punish officers," White added.

In his presentation, Mark Monmonier, Distinguished Professor of Geography, criticizes the destruction of copyright "deposit copies" by the Library of Congress. 

"Following through on prosecuting Cienfuegos would have compromised intelligence gathering and joint military operations for years to come, which is part of the reason why the original arrest was so scandalous," says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

"I thought at some point, reality would come back in for people and they would have a hard time balancing their motivations to stay consistent with their partisanship with what's going on on the ground," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science.  "That was wholly optimistic on my part."

"Each day we tolerate President Trump’s behavior we aren’t just humoring an incumbent who refuses to accept the election results. We are putting American citizens at risk," says University Professor Sean O'Keefe.

"White women have to disabuse themselves en masse of the notion that they are inherently good. They have to put themselves in harm’s way, disrupt the status quo of their own complicity in white supremacy and defer to those who are more vulnerable than themselves," writes Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.

Under Biden, New York state could find itself having a much more responsive federal government, and a number of Democrats, not just Cuomo, could be among the beneficiaries, says Grant Reeher, professor of political science.

"It’s not just the rural health care infrastructure that becomes overwhelmed when there aren’t enough hospital beds, it’s also the surrounding neighborhoods, the suburbs, the urban hospital infrastructure starts to become overwhelmed as well," says Shannon Monnat, Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion.

Robert Murrett, professor of practice of public administration and international affairs, says he "would be more concerned" if the president-elect was someone other than Biden since he "is so familiar with the national security arena" from his tenure as vice president and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.