By Emma Miller

Denisonians are not short on anxiety—whether it’s the mountain of homework, an upcoming sports game, a test for which you didn’t study enough, oh… or the looming threats of weapons of mass destruction and the devastating effects of climate change. With so many global issues hovering over Americans’ heads, what do students see as the most pressing foreign policy concerns?

127 collected data concerning students’ foreign policy concerns in October of 2023 and 2024. In both of these surveys, students were given twelve prominent foreign policy topics and were asked to select which three they believed to be the most pressing.

Overwhelmingly, climate change was voted the most pressing foreign policy concern with 343 votes. Falling behind, with 254 votes, was global human rights. And in third place, over Russia’s aggression, China’s rising power, or even weapons of mass destruction, Denison ranked the state of United States politics as a top three security concern.

This makes sense considering last week’s whirlwind of an election… except for the fact that students have been feeling this way for quite a bit.

One year can, and has, changed a lot in United States policy and world affairs. Let me jog your memory about the political climate in October 2023: Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel, marking the beginning of the Israel-Palestine War; the Russian military continued its assault on innocent civilians in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War; the UN reported that the world was falling short of meeting the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement; and China’s military remained dangerously close to Taiwan – just to name a few.

But in the wake of these events, Denisonians still saw their own home as facing the greatest threat – regardless of their political party. Looking back at the same poll administered to students in October of 2023, many security concerns have remained consistent. The bolded titles above represent foreign policy concerns that have stayed in the same order for the past year, including U.S. Domestic Political Instability.

The majority of chosen foreign policy concerns were backed by the expected party affiliations. Let’s take a look at a few in the figure below.

Topics such as climate change and human rights were more frequently selected by Democrats, while Denison Republicans tended to prioritize issues like international migration and China’s rising power. Notably, the importance of global human rights, ranked as the second most important foreign policy issue among all students, significantly declined as the Republican affiliation of students increased. Furthermore, the most important security concern on campus, climate change, was hardly selected by strong Republicans at all.

But here’s one thing political parties can all agree on… our own political instability.

With polarization plaguing the country, election results glooming over many, and the growing distrust in institutions, this comes as no surprise. A more recent 127 blog post shows that due to the election, 80 percent of the student body believes violence could erupt, more than half believe that the United States may lose its world power status, and three-fifths believe that there could be a decline in democracy.

So while Densionian political parties continue to feed into polarized debates over topics such as trade or migration, they all agree U.S. political instability is a more concerning issue – how ironic is that.

Emma Miller is a senior Politics and Public Affairs major with a concentration in International Affairs and a minor in Data for Political Research.