A Class on Presidents That Doesn’t Mention Biden or Trump

Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll look at a summer school class on the presidency. We’ll also find out why a beloved Brooklyn hardware store is closing.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

The professor in Politics 3316, a class on presidents and the presidency, had talked about how popular Franklin D. Roosevelt had been, how unpopular Harry Truman had been and how historians have come to see Truman more favorably as the years have passed.

Natale Cipollina, teaching the class at Baruch College in Manhattan, had also talked about Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. “Both of them are tragic in the sense of ancient Greek mythology — you are brought down by hubris,” he said.

But Cipollina had not mentioned the current occupant of the White House or his predecessor, now the presumptive Republican nominee. Nor had Cipollina brought up the recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. Cipollina said regularly tells students, “If you want a class in current events, go find it.”

That did not stop Lisbeth Tavarez from giving a current events answer when I asked her, during a break, how Politics 3316 was relevant to today’s world.