“Political science is basically politics and history. You know, you have to have both to understand the political world,” said David Griggs, who teaches Government at Dallas College Brookhaven. This year marks Griggs’ significant milestone of 30 years teaching at Brookhaven.
Before Griggs started working at Dallas College Brookhaven, he studied at the University of Tennessee at Martin where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science, University of Tennessee Winston College of Law where he received a J.D, in Law and Southern Methodist University where he obtained a masters degree in liberal arts.
Griggs’ relationship with political science and adjacent avenues was birthed as a young man in Tennessee, where he grew up idolizing the attorneys in his town. “I was able to idolize them somewhat because they were all involved in politics,” Griggs said. His appreciation for political science developed further in high school where he started to follow politics and became much more opinionated on his political views. “Our local university in Tennessee offered classes for high school seniors… and so I took the course, made an A and I really loved the teacher. This person really inspired all of us to become involved in the political world, to register to vote, to get involved in their communities.”
“My love is political science. That’s my personal interest and hobby,” Griggs said. His dedication towards political science fueled his career path of being a lawyer due to his own personal political aspirations. “I thought I would run for office someday… I wanted to get involved in Tennessee politics and so doing my political science degree in my home state was what I knew at the time.”
Utilizing his law degree, he became a lawyer and worked for 22 years as a civil prosecutor of business fraud for the Federal Trade Commission. “Basically a scam buster,” Griggs said when talking about his past profession.
“After I graduated from law school, I was a judicial clerk for the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Nashville, at the Supreme Court building… And I got three offers in three states to go to regional offices of the FTC. I chose Texas… Dallas was kind of the place. It was a booming part of the country and I thought, ‘well you know, it’s probably a place to start anew.’ I didn’t expect I’d stay here for the rest of my life,” Griggs said.
Following his move to Texas for his job with the FTC, he decided that he wanted to branch out and “Do something other than my legal career with the FTC and so for a few years I taught business law at the University of Dallas in Irving… I want to give back some of the excitement and enthusiasm of my interest in this career back to students who may not have had the inspiration as a teenager about their government and about representation and getting involved in the political process.”
Griggs wanted to continue teaching to share that passion for political science with the youth, so he took a job at Brookhaven. “My passion, as I said, was political science and politics and I knew that I had the ability to teach that… I didn’t have to worry about the details or study the book, I just knew it.”
The drive to instill the same passions for political science into his students fuels his curriculum in an incredibly meaningful way. “What’s happening today is generally always related to something that’s happened in the past and to make that comparison and to understand it is so important, so critical,” Griggs said. “We have to learn the material that’s supposed to be covered in class, but to me, it’s important to make the class come alive with relevance to what’s going on in the day. We spend the first 10 minutes or so of most classes just talking about the news… I encourage people to come to class prepared with some news items that they’ve heard about over the last day or two and then we talk about it… It gets you started in paying attention to what’s going on in the world. And people who pay attention to the news are generally those who vote.”
That fundamental drive to spread awareness and appreciation for the political world touches the students in Griggs’ classes. In class he will ask students the question, “What did you enjoy most about the course?” “90% of the time, the students will respond ‘I really enjoyed hearing about the news,’” Griggs continued, “Maybe they’ll say, ‘I never really paid attention to it before, but now I understand why news is so important.’”
In addition to being an adjunct professor at Brookhaven, he is also a co-advisor to the Criminal Justice Pre-law Club and the co-leader of the London trip that the criminal justice government class takes every year in May. He works with criminal justice Professor Michael Freeman to take a group of students to London to learn about how the British government operates in comparison to the United States government.
In his spare time, Griggs likes to get involved in politics and serves in a variety of roles across different organizations and community efforts. He is also a man of faith and dedicates time to go to church with his family. He and his wife also enjoy backpacking and other outdoor recreational activities. His interests, however, always come back around to politics.
“Part of the reason why I enjoy teaching these subjects is that that is my passion for my life… I’m a lawyer and I am involved in politics just in general and my additional involvement that I’ve had because of my life passion allows me to share things that a professor who just knows the material from the academic world may not have had the personal experience in,” Griggs said. The experience that he has had in the fields that he teaches, in addition to the immense amount of passion he has for the subject, makes Griggs a one of a kind teacher that has made a significant mark on his students. “That is the beauty of being an adjunct, is you can bring your real-world experiences to the classroom.”
Despite having 30 years of teaching experience at Brookhaven under his belt, Griggs has no intention of retiring anytime soon. His passion for his craft and his students see no end in sight. “You guys [students] need to pick up the mantle from us and continue to fight for true democracy,” said Griggs. “That’s what I look forward to, is continuing to share what I know with students to help them become more inspired, as I am, to fight for the future of democracy in the United States.”
