Of all the topics in political science that are accessible to high school students (which is many of them), why gerrymandering? I really like teaching gerrymandering because it’s something that by high school (and certainly by college or beyond), it’s something that a lot of people know a little bit about, but which has a lot of interesting complexity and subtlety that most people haven’t thought about. News reports often make it seem like gerrymandering, and redistricting in general, as being a simple matter of politicians being evil to a greater or lesser extent, when it’s actually much more interesting that. Similarly, it’s something that mathematicians and computer scientists often see and think is trivial – and there are actually a lot of interesting problems in gerrymandering to which math and CS can be applied that definitely aren’t trivial, which I’m always excited to share. And, of course, it has some other convenient properties – it can be made quite hands-on, and it’s something I know a decent bit about (mostly from various political science classes).