Recently, I was reading the speech President John F. Kennedy was scheduled to give on that fateful day in Dallas nearly 57 years ago. In it, he had written that “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” Currently, I am teaching a course on American Politics.  I am proud to see the level of sincere openness in our conversations regarding our presidential candidates. Every day we discuss the issues, reflect on the often biased delivery of “news,” and consider possible voting trends in an attempt to forecast the 2020 election.  Each student is following a swing state, monitoring the polls, researching past election outcomes, following other state elections, and comparing and contrasting events this year to ones that occurred in 2016. Some students have shared their views and whom they favor in this election, yet the conversation has never turned into an mêlée as we respect each other and agree that we do not have to see eye to eye on every topic.  If that were the case, what would there be to converse about?  When John F. Kennedy died, Walter Cronkite reported to the nation his passing.  His voice cracked in the delivery, obviously shocked and saddened by the events that had unfolded.  When I showed that scene to my students they were shocked, themselves, as they thought he did not express enough emotion. Emotion, I told them, was not his job. His job was to deliver the news and his bosses at CBS reminded him of that. When we end this course in late November I am confident that the students moving forward will not only be consumers of news but mindful interpreters of that news, too. No one can say with certainty what will happen next Tuesday, but at NYMA I already know. Next Tuesday night there will be a bunch of cadets glued to the television eagerly awaiting the returns all the while respecting the outcomes. I am glad they are our future leaders.