Just in recent days, he has been compelled to step back from his brazenly, jaw-droppingly corrupt “anti-weaponization” slush fund; taxpayer funding for his anti-American and narcissistic ballroom has been effectively scuttled; and the House just voted to curtail his war of aggression in Iran. The courts have also applied the brakes to much of his lawlessness.

All of this reflects the political reality that Trump is a historically unpopular President (and Presidential popularity, in general, only tends to decline with time, so there is no reason to believe this will change, especially with Trump…see below).

There are other, more subtle signs too that institutional leaders are reading these tea leaves and responding. Consider what Harvard’s President Alan Garber said at Harvard’s Commencement at the end of May:

Now, as ever, the flame burns brightly at Harvard. Free and open inquiry must be protected and nurtured. The unfettered pursuit of knowledge—of VERITAS—must be protected and nurtured. Because truth without liberty is a fire without air.

Our cause is just. Our principles are worthy. And our contributions to the common good are vital. This moment demands of us ongoing vigilance and unyielding effort as we continue to defend the university and its ideals. I have no doubt that we who are duty bound to our alma mater and to her motto will rise to meet our day, as the good people of Harvard have done for generations.

Recall that this comes in response to Trump’s unprecedented authoritarian attack on Harvard and higher education more generally, in response to which many institutions choose to capitulate to Trump. Harvard, after tremendous pressure from faculty, students, and alumni, chose a path of resistance. But many observers were predicting this resistance was temporary. Harvard was actively “negotiating” with the regime, not in defense of principle, but in cowardly defense of its bottom line. Such remarks from Garber are a remarkable shift in tone that doubtless reflect Trump’s weakened political position.

So, yes, Trump is failing on multiple fronts, and the midterm in November, given the historical relationship between presidential popularity and opposition seat gain, will, in all likelihood, result in a bloodbath for Republican held seats.

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All of this has made me feel a lot better about the short-term future of American democracy. And given this backdrop, the purpose of this post is to remind us of two things: First, that the restoration of democracy is not inevitable. An authoritarian will surely push back, and if Trump has already been willing to make these authoritarian moves, imagine what he might do to hold on to his power in the face of an angry public or a Congressional majority. Second is to remind us, for the purpose of posterity, that Trump, regardless of his increasingly likely political demise, is and has been a grave threat to democracy, and anybody in the future who claims otherwise is wrong.

Nobody knows what the future holds for American democracy. It could be that when the acute threat of Trump is gone sometime between now and January 2029, America will return to something that looks more like a pre-Trump status quo. But keep in mind that the structural features of inequality and disillusionment that brought us Trump will not have gone away. And recent moves by Trump’s Supreme Court to restrict democracy in the name of right-wing policy preferences will exacerbate the anti-democratic features of the American system. As I have argued before, populism is primed for ascendance in both parties, and it is really only a question of whether it is harnessed for good or evil.

Furthermore, the Republican Party has been remade in Trump’s image of right-wing populism and chauvinistic corruption, sacrificing any pretense of conservatism and teetering at times into an outright rejection of democracy and an embrace of the darkest bigotries. With this having taken root, Republicans may remain a threat to American democracy even after Trump leaves the scene. In many ways, the future of American democracy relies more on the choices of the next standard-bearer of the Republican Party than on those of the current one.

And in the short- to medium-run, Trump may double down on his authoritarianism. As civil society, judges, and a possible Democratic majority in both houses look to constrain him, he may simply choose to ignore the law more than he already has. The dangerous circular logic of self-preservation among authoritarians means that fear of losing office, eventual criminal punishment for him and his family, and the personalistic ruling style that cannot separate himself from the government mean that his likelihood of breaking the law only increases with increasing threats to his power. He may openly ignore court rulings. He may use his paramilitary forces to violently repress opposition. He may try to subvert the will of the people in the November midterm election. How likely is any of this? I don’t know. Probably unlikely? But the fact that we even have to talk about it means that we are in a dangerous place. Recall that before Trump, nobody thought that a President would so brazenly break the law and get away with it. All bets on Constitutional constraint are out the window.

Now the following statement is for posterity: assuming Trump is defeated, his defeat was certainly not inevitable, and his fall from power will not mean that he wasn’t a threat to democracy.

I say this because after Trump tried to violently and extra-legally retain power after his defeat in 2020, some observers, incredibly, argued that his eventual leaving office showed that concerns for democracy were overblown. Remarkably, some observers have said similar things in his second term. When he leaves office, someone will surely say the same thing again, either simply to be contrarian or to reconcile what happened with their belief in the strength of the American system. And of course, some will do it to resolve dissonance for their own purported support for democracy and for the Republican Party (a Republican colleague made this case to me just last week).

There is no doubt that all such claims are wrong now and let it be said for posterity that anybody who says we’re in the future will be wrong then too.

Since his reelection, a partial list of his grave threats to American democracy has included: attempting to jail and harass political opponents, including opposition politicians; punishing private persons, media companies, and universities for their speech; using the power of the state to install loyalists at top media companies; trying to control the ideology of universities; politicizing scientific funding; punishing law firms for doing their democratic and constitutional duty of protecting citizens’ constitutional rights; purging federal employees using loyalty tests; sending paramilitary units to terrorize disloyal cities; circumventing the law to unilaterally shut down federal agencies created by Congress; raiding the Federal Treasury for his own gain and brazenly enriching himself in public office in a sign that he doesn’t worry about being held electorally accountable; arranging for his loyalists in government to declare him above the law when it comes to matters such as paying his taxes; withholding money from states he deems disloyal; corrupting the pardon power to enrich himself and to reward loyalists, including those who violently tried to overthrow an election; purging the military of officers he considered disloyal and of lawyers charged with upholding military law and the Constitution and since unleashing the military for extrajudicial killings in violation of international law and musing about using it domestically; calling for the punishment, including the possible execution, of opposition politicians who declared that the military should not follow his illegal orders; ignoring the courts in the service of kidnapping people off the street; and undermining the core democratic principle of equality before the law and by using the state to elevate some citizens above others based on race and ethnicity.

Despite all of this, if the Trump regime loses its grip, claims will surely be made that Trump leaving power shows that democracy was never really threatened. Such claims are like those of somebody who survives a deadly disease – a disease from which the United States is clearly showing all the symptoms – and claims it was never really a threat because they survived. This works until you realize so many people made different choices or were less fortunate and didn’t survive.

Trump was and is a threat to democracy. He has already severely damaged it. The only question is how much we will recover. And recovering is far from inevitable. To get there, we must first stop the ongoing threat to democracy and recognize that both stopping it and recovering will require a conscious choice by political actors to rehabilitate our democracy in the future.

Some have called Trump’s decline in power and popularity “political gravity,” and there is truth to the idea that Trump’s decline in popularity follows a pattern that bedevils incumbent parties in power. But the metaphor is misplaced when it comes to threats to democracy. Gravity is an elemental force that works outside of human control. There is nothing in politics that works outside of human control. Economic forces and institutional design can weaken authoritarians, and authoritarians can weaken themselves, but ultimately only if people have the courage to put these forces in motion. Institutions are not self-executing.

To be sure, much of Trump’s undoing has been self-inflicted. Social science has shown that authoritarians tend to weaken themselves by surrounding themselves with loyalists who are bad at their jobs. Trump is the poster boy for this tendency. Surrounded by sycophants, his popularity has been sucked dry by, among other things, tariff-imposed inflation, an unpopular war contributing to this inflation, and his blatant corruption. In Trump’s case, the authoritarian tendency toward bad decisions is exacerbated by his incompetence stemming from a narcissistic personality and a lack of interest in policy, governance, or anything that conflicts with his worldview. This has been further on display when, despite the pleading of his own party, Trump has used his power over loyalists to install candidates who risk his majority in both houses of Congress.

But all these gravitational forces don’t work if an authoritarian doesn’t fear the public and feel he may face electoral and legal consequences. The authoritarian can do whatever he wants if he is not called out on it. So, we must remember it is the members of the public who have stood up to him and called out his threats to democracy that have made him vulnerable to the corrective forces of democracy. The people who have been crucial in this are those who have taken the lead in resisting him when institutional leaders have shown themselves to be cowardly: the people willing to take to the literal or figurative streets to rally their fellow citizens.

Americans reject authoritarianism; we can see it in the poll numbers, but for the mass public to reach that point of rejection, they need signals from their fellow citizens about what is going on. This is just how public opinion works: people follow cues from other influential people, especially on complex topics. In certain respects, it’s remarkable that tens of millions of people have recognized that we face a threat to democracy. After all, doing so involves questions of political philosophy and interpretation of law that you couldn’t expect an everyday citizen to engage with (and the press has rarely been forthcoming about the threat Trump poses).

So, it takes people willing to stand up first and educate their fellow citizens about what we are facing. To be the first movers in protest. To declare Trump a threat, even if they risk being called hysterical. That’s not gravity; it’s human action. And the humans who have taken action have done so at a time when the regime is trying to criminalize speech and institutions, including universities that are usually hotbeds of political speech, have thrown up roadblocks to discourage speech. In the face of this, those willing to speak out have had to be extra courageous.

If Trump falls, we will never know with any clarity whether he was brought down by the robustness of American civil society, the constitutional design that, although exploitable, was robust enough to allow an opening for opposition, or by his own failings. Surely, it will be a combination of all of these things.

But one thing that’s clear is that all of these features of American democracy are made possible by conscious choices of individuals, not by self-executing laws of institutional design. We know this because there are so many individuals who chose paths other than protecting democracy: Members of Congress who went along rather than risk their jobs, judges who allowed this to happen in service of their own ideological agenda, and members of civil societies, such as university leaders or law firm partners, who chose self-preservation. Yet others chose a different path, and that’s why we have hope.

None of this is intended to say we are out of the woods. It is important to emphasize that what has allowed us to see light in the darkness is the choices individuals have made. Such choices become easier now that Trump is electorally weak. But we may face a time when, fearing his loss of power, he becomes even more authoritarian. Once again, it will be up to individuals to stand up.

This must be the path because a liberal democracy requires more than one functioning party, and, at least in the foreseeable future, the Republican Party will be one of them. Our plan for sustaining that liberal society can’t be shutting the GOP out of power, but rather must include shaping the Republican Party, the party that will represent the approximately half of society that inevitably holds right-wing beliefs, into a party that upholds liberalism (small l) and democracy.

The alternative is to hope that Democrats win all elections moving forward. But if this is our plan for sustaining democracy, we are cooked. First, it will not happen: voters will eventually turn away from the incumbent party, no matter how bad the alternative. You don’t need a long memory to see this. After 2020, the Republican Party seemed dead—their leader disgraced, defeated at the polls, holding onto a dying vision of America—but it was back four years later. Even more dramatically, after the Civil War, in which Americans in Northern states had, essentially, gone to war against the Democratic Party, a majority of voters in many of those states voted for the Democratic Party again within 10 years. And, within a generation, the Democrats were back in power. Republicans right now are rejected by a majority of voters, but the incredible thermostatic nature of public opinion means that won’t last forever. And second, one party winning all the time isn’t really a functioning democracy. Any conditions that ensure one party wins all the time will also ensure that the party will not be responsive and accountable to voters.

The Republican Party is going to remain, and it’s going to remain conservative. If you’re a liberal, you’re not going to like that. But not having a competitive conservative party isn’t realistic (and maybe not healthy for democracy). The question is not whether the Republican Party remains electorally viable, because it will. Politics is simply too calcified for Republican voters to move beyond the Republican Party in the foreseeable future. The real question is whether the Republican Party will remain a partner for liberal democracy. This is the struggle currently happening within conservative ranks in this country, and the one democrats (small d) must be concerned about.1

Let me make the case by way of anecdote.

A small matter in the grand scheme of the current assault on democracy and decency in the United States, but there was a story in the Harvard Crimson before the holidays last year recounting how students writing for a conservative campus publication, the Harvard Salient, had, among other awful content, attempted to publish articles with Nazi propaganda and a defense of the Spanish Inquisition. Some of this material was actually published. Shortly thereafter, the publication’s board of directors, acting as the “adults in the room,” intervened, suspended publication, and removed the publication’s student leadership. Good for them. I suspect that I don’t agree with the Salient board members on many issues, but I applaud their standing up for the basic principles of liberalism that define a decent society.

The fact that students at Harvard had thought it okay to put such things in print shows just how far norms have eroded on the political right in this country. Once upon a time, the idea that anybody—left, right, or center—would quote Hitler, even in passing, would have been enough to get them in trouble. So, people, appropriately, self-censored. This is the way norms work. But, in this case, these students didn’t just quote Hitler in passing—they sat at their computer, wrote down these words, sent them up the editorial chain, had other people look at them, and still put some of them in print for other people to see. Apparently, they didn’t anticipate that others would see a problem with what they were doing.

Unfortunately, though, the Salient incident is not an outlier. News reports during the second Trump administration have been full of stories of Republicans flirting with fascism.

But notice that many such stories also include pushback from fellow Republicans, such as when Young Republican groups, in several states, were shut down after the surfacing of their antisemitic and racist group chats. And the recent Turning Point USA conference, which one would think would be inclined toward unity after the killing of Charlie Kirk, was dominated by infighting over how much xenophobia and antisemitism is acceptable.

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Social norms are shaped by such within-group fights. People take cues on what is acceptable to say by whether they are condemned for saying it. Vicente Valentim has a fantastic book showing how social acceptance of radical behavior can be characterized by a model of supply and demand: He traces the growth of support for radical right (e.g., neo-Nazi) parties in Europe, whereby people privately supported these parties but were afraid to do so publicly because doing so was socially unacceptable. But, over time, these people have been encouraged in their support by opportunistic politicians, and so they have gone public with their beliefs. The supply of radical-right views has always been there, but the shift in demand among politicians has made them acceptable.

Now, we are already far down a dangerous road in the United States where the supply and demand for open xenophobia and bigotry are converging. Prominent officials in the Trump regime act like fascists. Trump himself embraces gutter racism. Whether the erosion of the norms of liberalism started because of Trump or Trump is merely riding a wave, there is no doubt that the most famous person in America being a racist makes other people think it is acceptable. I have heard people say that blatant bigotry is “escaping containment” among certain cliques—I think this is right.

But here’s the important thing. The battle over decency and the support for a liberal society isn’t over, even on the political right. As evidenced by the Harvard Salient, people still intervene and push back against the forces of illiberalism. The battles in places like the Salient, the Young Republicans, and even Turning Point USA are battles over what is socially acceptable—about whether the supply and demand for such illiberalism is allowed to grow.

There are conservatives in this country who have a long enough view of history to understand the danger in the demonization of minority groups. Of course, there are elements of conservatism that rest on maintaining group-based hierarchies; some may even say such maintenance is central to conservative worldviews. But this creates a tension in American conservatism because an element of nationalism, also prominent among conservatives, sees America’s proudest moment as the defeat of fascism and its illiberal, racist ideology. The reverence of the founding principles of equality in the United States and the birth of the Republican Party as America’s liberal party, committed to the end of slavery, further creates tensions for the fascist-friendly conservatives.

Right now, the Republican Party has both elements: those who reject racist ideology and those who embrace it. It’s an unstable coalition—they can’t exist together forever, and we have to hope that the side that is uncomfortable with fascism wins.

So, what does this mean for democracy? Small-l liberalism is one side of the coin of liberal democracy, and a similar battle over the normalization of anti-democratic forces is happening in the wake of Trump’s assault on the rule of law. Yes, the elements of the Republican coalition that are willing to throw the rule of law overboard in subservience to Trump are winning, but the other side still exists. People have their limits, for some it is the Epstein files, for others it is the unconstitutional use of military force. All of these things expose cracks in the Republican coalition.

The upshot of all this is that political liberals have to do what we can to ensure that those who believe in democracy and liberalism win this internal battle. Liberals need to find common cause with those fighting for the norms of liberal democracy, even if we disagree with them on policy.

The looming collapse of Trump’s support, already seen in polls or Republicans in Congress heading for the exits, gives democracy a chance—but people who want to jump off the Trump train for instrumental reasons have to be convinced that there is a comfortable place for them to land. If the water is full of sharks, why not just go down with the ship? In practice, this means we have to welcome people abandoning Trumpism. Not scold them on the way in or, worse, think we have to exclude them altogether. For example, don’t mock them on social media. And, if colleagues do the right thing, (again, thinking about the Salient board) offer your support.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, it is the breadth of civil society, not the height, that will maintain American democracy. So, we need to be willing to broaden that base. It must include political conservatives in the coalition—it is their actions, not those of liberals, who will determine the future of democracy in the United States.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know this isn’t so simple: there are people who reject Trump who also strain the limits of decency. Marjorie Taylor Greene comes to mind. Despite her recent break with Trump, are her other views enough that we should say that decency demands that she not be allowed into a coalition of those defending democracy? Perhaps. And when somebody has expressed racist or antisemitic views like Greene, her views can rightly be seen as dangerous. But my point is that the times demand that we are expansive in our democracy-defending coalition, in who we put in our coalition to broaden civil society. It must include people with whom we disagree on policy.

I understand why not everyone will agree with this. Trump is selling a poisoned vision of America: one based on xenophobia and cruelty. Many of his supporters either embraced or tolerated these things, and we risk normalizing these sins if we look past them too readily. The balance is tricky. But, as the experience with the Harvard Salient shows, many people are still uncomfortable with racism and fascism. They are our allies in this fight.

These are the immediate stakes. Building a coalition that will weaken Trump politically. Taking a longer view, what will be left of the Republican Party after Trump? Will it be a partner in a liberal democracy or an anti-democratic force that tries to find the next Trump? Thinking about the world after the Trump regime, when we look toward healing America, we must accept that political diversity is the nature of a liberal society: it will be diverse, and it will include people we don’t agree with, but the key is that we share principles, which include democracy and the defense of human rights and dignity. The task is to ensure that those who do not share these principles are marginalized and those who do, liberals and conservatives, compete for power in a functioning democracy.

I’m a scholar of political science, but when discussing the state of democracy in Trump’s America, I can draw from personal experience because one of the primary targets of Trump’s attack on democracy has been Harvard University, where I am a professor.

Now…being the target of an authoritarian attack and working to fend it off teaches you things. And today, I will share some of what I’ve learned about the defense of academic freedom and democracy. These lessons come in the form of three paradoxes.

The paradoxes speak to why our elite institutions, such as Harvard, are both especially well-positioned and especially challenged in the fight against authoritarianism. And why we should, perhaps, look beyond these elite institutions for the successful defense of democracy.

First, let me give you some brief background on what happened at Harvard.

Following the authoritarian playbook, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the state to punish Harvard because he considers it to be a political opponent. If you have only casually been paying attention, you may not realize the extent of this attack. Not only did Trump unilaterally cancel payments for federal contracts previously awarded to Harvard, but Harvard is subject to, by my count, at least 10 investigations from four government agencies and the United States Congress.

An administrator recently claimed to me that Harvard was the most investigated institution in American history. To which I pointed out that the mafia might also have a claim to that title.

Nevertheless, the damage has reached nearly every corner of our campus, from science labs to cafes. Trump has even called cabinet meetings with the purpose of brainstorming creative ways to punish Harvard.

Months ago, as Harvard faced the question of whether it should capitulate to these authoritarian attacks or stand firm in resistance, my colleagues and I organized: we wrote OpEds, circulated petitions, and even held rallies in support of resistance. I even spoke at rallies. And if you know me, this gives you a sense of just how desperate we were to urge Harvard to stand up to Trump. Professors like to talk. But we don’t like to talk at rallies.

And as we all know, something worked because Harvard took a stand against Trump. It famously rejected his demands and filed a lawsuit.

For political scientists like me, this was awesome: it was what Alexis de Tocqueville, the chronicler of American democracy, said would happen: our civil society would stand up and stop the tyrant.

And apparently, everyone else thought it was awesome, too. When Harvard stood up to the Trump administration, the reaction from civil society was tremendous. Everyone from former US Presidents to NBA coaches jumped on the Harvard resistance train.

Usually, it is exceedingly uncool to like Harvard. The students think they aren’t even supposed to say they go to school there. But we ran some surveys, and, by some measures, Harvard suddenly became one of the most well-liked institutions in the United States. This reaction, I think, is among the many signs that Americans reject authoritarianism and reward resistance.

So, when I wasn’t writing OpEds, I was doing a lot of interviews – so many so that it just became a routine: wake up, shave, go on TV. I’d walk to lunch and there’d be TV cameras circling Harvard Yard, looking for a stray student or faculty member to interview. Often, there were news helicopters.

Now, there is reason to roll your eyes at all of this. Obviously, much of it comes from disproportionate interest in Harvard as a socio-cultural phenomenon. But I am not sure the media interest is entirely a bad thing because it indicates that we haven’t yet normalized these authoritarian attacks. When the government silences critics in a fully authoritarian country, there probably isn’t as much coverage. Here we still care.

But this intense attention on places like Harvard comes with a cost. This cost brings me to my first paradox, which I will call the paradox of attention.

The paradox is that the intense attention on Harvard and other elite institutions raises awareness of authoritarianism—which is a good thing—but it comes with the opportunity cost of ignoring or overlooking less high-profile places facing similar threats. Threats that may ultimately be more damaging.

To see this, recognize that the assault on democracy via the curtailment of academic freedom in the United States is much broader than Harvard.

I have colleagues in Florida who must post their daily hour-by-hour activities on their office door. This is amusing, in a certain respect, because you can imagine all the funny ways that, say, a philosophy professor might fill that time sheet, but the idea that somebody is monitoring every move of an academic is chilling to a free society.

The chill is so widespread that it seeps down to our small interactions, including the way we communicate and teach. Professors now speak over encrypted apps because they are worried about government monitoring. I am not alone in wondering if what I say in the classroom will land me before Congress.

I could go on. Professors in so many states have lost their jobs over their speech. Professors have been denied tenure over speech. Student protestors have been silenced.

This all chills the expression that is a vital part of scholarship in a free society, and it receives disproportionately less attention, perhaps partially because Harvard sucks all the air out of the room. But when these events go unnoticed, when there is no opportunity for a public outcry, this serves to normalize the slow smothering of freedom.

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Let me talk about the second paradox: the paradox of success.

Even with this intense media interest, people like me on TV all day, it has become obvious that we still don’t know how to talk about this moment, so we tend to meet it in an entirely inappropriate way. We talk about the authoritarian moves of the Trump administration using whatever language he has offered us.

Recently, when CNN asked me for the umpteenth time whether Harvard had an antisemitism problem, I told them to stop asking because they were doing the authoritarian’s bidding. They didn’t air the interview. Similarly, here we are in the nation’s capital, under military occupation, and some people still entertain the farcical pretext of fighting crime.

I think we do this because in this country we have a long history of taking our leaders’ actions in good faith. We are accustomed to doing so because, in theory, our representatives will be punished by the press and by voters for lying. And because of this democratic accountability, we assume that our leaders have actual policy goals they want to achieve, not mere pretexts for authoritarianism.

And this is the paradox of success: our previous success as a democratic country causes our democratic defenses to be weak in the moment we need them most.

When Trump erodes our democracy through quasi-legal moves, we don’t recognize this for what it is. I remember hearing from a relative who happened to see me on TV and was confused about why I used the word “dictator”. “Donald Trump isn’t a dictator,” she said, “he was elected. A dictator can’t be elected.”

This, of course, is wrong: many authoritarians have, at first, been popularly elected. But such misconceptions are understandable when you consider that not only has America functioned as a democracy for a quarter of a millennium, but those of us alive today have lived in the most fully democratic period of its history.

Not only that, but America’s entire self-image is caught up in being a democracy. All of this makes it hard for us to recognize what’s happening, even when it is right before us in broad daylight.

Similarly, the people in leadership positions—those positioned to oppose authoritarianism—became leaders because they were successful under the rules of a game that is no longer being played.

Harvard’s leadership, for example, many of them accomplished players in Washington and on Wall Street, assume that they can just use the skills that once made them successful to bargain their way out of authoritarianism, like one would strike a deal for legislation or business. They fail to recognize that a contract from an extortionist is fundamentally not enforceable.

And I worry that this is the mindset that ultimately plagues so many Democratic leaders in Congress as well. Indeed, much of our future as a democracy might depend on our leaders overcoming this mindset and realizing that the days of dealing with a president who respects the rule of law are over.

The final paradox is a related theme: it is what I’ll call the paradox of prosperity. The paradox is that the people most able to resist authoritarianism are also those perhaps most vulnerable and least willing to resist it.

One reason there was so much hope generated by Harvard’s struggle against the Trump administration is that Harvard, with its vast resources and prestige, is seen as uniquely well-positioned for this fight. This is true, of course, as is often pointed out: Harvard has a 50-some-billion-dollar endowment.

In theory, these resources mean that Harvard can withstand Trump’s authoritarian attacks. But, of course, this wealth and privilege also make Harvard particularly vulnerable to extortion because it simply has so much to extort.

Not only is wealth vulnerable, but prestige is vulnerable. This means that, despite the threats we face to the core of the American system, there is an urge at elite institutions, like Harvard, to think that what is most important is maintaining their place in the current hierarchy.

Look, we all know that Donald Trump is no true populist. As long as he is on top, he is not interested in disrupting the pillars of wealth and power in this country. And this works fine because many people at places like Harvard, or at elite law firms and media companies, are willing to make a Faustian bargain: to trade democracy if they too can remain in a position of power and status.

I think, sadly, what this reveals is how many of us are simply motivated to protect our own positions—that freedom is, indeed, just another word for nothing left to lose.

Those are my paradoxes.

In closing, I’d like to offer some thoughts on the question I have been asked perhaps more often than any other in the past year: what will happen to Harvard? Will it capitulate or stand firm? When people ask about this, they are asking about whether Harvard will stand firm for democracy, as Tocqueville said our civil institutions would.

Now, if I had to guess, I think the answer is that, unfortunately, Harvard will ultimately capitulate to the authoritarian. It will join the ranks of other elite institutions that have failed us. Institutions that are simply too vulnerable to extortion.

Having talked to people at institutions that have caved to Trump, I know that it is easy for them to tell themselves that their capitulation isn’t so bad and may even be good. I have heard people at Harvard say this too, finding a way to rationalize negotiating away their own rights in a way that is an affront to democracy and to human dignity.

If things go this way, some may say that Harvard will show Tocqueville to be wrong: that civil society is not the bulwark of democracy. And that if our most famous institutions can’t save our democracy, then our democracy will surely crumble.

But I think this isn’t quite right.

Tocqueville admired the breadth, not the height, of American civil society.

We should not look to the institutions that are caught in the paradox of prosperity and lament their lack of resolve. Rather, we should look to the countless other institutions that have not capitulated and will not capitulate.

If Trump wants to control civil society in the United States, he will ultimately have to control not just Harvard but thousands of other universities. Some of these universities are recently showing resolve by rejecting the authoritarian “compact” Trump has proposed.

Trump would also have to control, not just universities, but hundreds of thousands of other civil institutions. This is a nearly impossible task for any dictator and one that I think will prove Tocqueville’s vision to be correct.

To see this, look to the institutions motivated by principle, rather than by self-preservation. Look, for example, at the AAUP at Harvard. It was the AAUP, not the Harvard administration, that initially sued Trump and won. There are many such institutions that have been set up with the express purpose of preserving our freedoms, rather than preserving themselves. It is to these that we should look for the power in American civil society.

And here, finally, I want to make a broader point.

Yes, people will keep looking to Harvard, and I get it: they are concerned about what will happen to our larger civil society.

But ultimately, what happens to Harvard is part of the larger question of what will happen to our democracy. We can fight off the authoritarian attack at Harvard, but what ultimately matters is that we fight it off everywhere. That the rule of law is preserved everywhere. What matters is the rule-bound certainty that the government cannot arbitrarily punish you. No matter who you are. That is what we are fighting for. Not just at universities, but everywhere.

And my charge to you is that we are all in it together.

The answer to this question is more important for what it reveals about the future of the Democratic Party broadly than for what it tells us about Mamdani in particular. Like any politician, Mamdani’s future is uncertain: With some exceptions, big city mayors seem to have trouble moving to higher office. Of course, this might not be anything about big-city mayors: most politicians don’t move to higher office, and as one moves up, the number of higher offices available becomes increasingly small. Maybe Mamdani’s ability to overcome the powerful forces arrayed against him in his recent election shows a unique ability to overcome whatever structural forces will stand in his way, but let’s just say that chances are that Mayor of New York is the highest office he personally will achieve.

But his significance lies more in the fact that there was enough enthusiasm for change rooted in dissatisfaction with the status quo and anger at those who perpetuate it, that voters in a major election were willing to elect a true outsider candidate and to work hard enough to do so in the face of enormous establishment resistance. Mamdani’s true influence may be that he will finally prompt some in the Democratic Party establishment to wake up and realize that this desire for change is real and can’t be avoided.

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Democrats must do this for their own good and for the good of the country. A country in which they are the only viable alternative to a party currently captured by an authoritarian.

The forces that were arrayed against Mamdani, the populist outsider in New York City, are also at play on the national stage, and these forces—not wokism—are dragging the Democratic Party down. An overlooked fact about the “toxicity” of the Democratic brand is not that it is particularly toxic with the median voter, but that it is surprisingly toxic with would-be Democrats, people who would normally favor left-wing Democratic policies but who have given up on a party that seems captured by an out-of-touch oligarchic gerontocracy. Over the course of a decade and then accelerating after 2016, Democrats lost a large portion of their natural constituency to the Republican Party in the form of working-class white voters who felt the party had failed them, while the Republican Party, for better or worse, offered something meaningfully different from the status quo. In 2024, Democrats lost voters, including many young voters, to indifference because they thought the party didn’t offer a meaningful alternative to Republicans.

We are left with many voters, including registered Democrats, supporting the party, not out of enthusiasm, but rather because the opposing side is so unappealing. In a certain respect, the only thing keeping the party propped up is anger toward the authoritarian Trump regime that Democrats naturally harness because the two-party system offers no other alternative. A party that wins elections by people holding their nose when voting for it is no way to build a sustainable electoral force.

We can see in Mamdani that when a viable alternative to the Democratic “we’re asking you to hold your nose because were not Trump” Party emerges, voters are likely to opt for it. When the alternative carries Mamdani’s political talent, people may be especially enthusiastic about it.

And here’s the thing: in a country of 300+ million people, as talented as Mamdani may be, there are many more people out there with similar talents and who are, like Mamdani, outsiders to the party establishment or will be willing to run as outsiders if this is the path to electoral success. Given the national mood and the fact that virtually nobody really likes the Democratic Party, we can anticipate that these politicians will emerge as contenders for various levels of office, perhaps even as the next Democratic Presidential nominee. And many, as with Mamdani, will likely be able to overcome establishment forces and gain power.

Simply put, the Democratic Party is primed for a hostile takeover. This has been the case for both parties for some time (which says something about the state of representative democracy in the United States). The populist resentment against a system seen as not representing a large portion of the population is too great to hold these forces back forever, and in 2016, a hostile takeover happened in the Republican Party, and that gave us Donald Trump.

It didn’t happen to Democrats in 2016 because the party was more “disciplined” and closed ranks against the populist Bernie Sanders. In a broad sense, the same forces that propped up Hilary Clinton (and, likely, thus gave us Donald Trump) tried to stop Mamdani—and couldn’t. This might be because New York politics differ from national politics, or because Mamdani is a unique talent, but it may also be because the populist dissatisfaction is too large and the oligarchic gerontocracy is running out of steam.

If populism seizes the reins of the Democratic Party, then the question will be what will become of this populism. Will it be used for forces of good in the way that populism can be used: delivering reform to a country suffering from gross income inequality and structural power differentials? Or will it be a destructive force in the manner of Trump’s faux populism that is merely a gateway for authoritarianism?

At the very least, there is a good chance that if a true leftist politician seizes control of the Democratic Party, they will pull the party to the left with it. In fact, the leader who grabs this mantle of populism might not even be an outsider like Mamdani but rather somebody who rides the wave created by popular pressure. Politicians are good at survival and will move where the wind is blowing. Indeed, much of such opportunism is why the Republican Party moved toward authoritarianism to accommodate Trump—one can only hope it pulls another direction for Democrats.

Taking a step back and looking broadly, when one asks why there is a resurgence of right-wing populism in the Western world, one can point to structural explanations, such as increasing diversity, that will fuel backlash and resentment politics. However, don’t overlook the broader failure of center-left parties, both in Europe and the United States, to offer voters anything of substance, as they demand meaningful change from their governments. In the United States, outside of Obamacare, which was a relatively minor band-aid given the enormity of the problem of healthcare access, Democrats since Jimmy Carter have mostly acted like a party scared of—and even retreating from—structural reform. Bill Clinton defined his presidency by this. Barack Obama failed to deliver the change people hoped for. Even Joe Biden’s signature legislative program in the IRA was dressed up in the guise of preserving the existing economic system, rather than a way to reform the US energy sector away from fossil fuels.

Indeed, much of the grousing about Democrats’ supposed lack of moderation around social issues was not because these social issues are inherently losing issues electorally, but because they are losing issues when nothing else is offered.1 Not only because of the psychological relationship between economic insecurity and intolerance, but because claims of caring about social justice ring hollow when not accompanied by concrete steps to actually improve lives. This is not hard to see. Consider that Democrats of the 1960s and 70s, at a time when the party was relatively far more “woke” than it is today, still commanded overwhelming support among working-class white voters because it was a party that also delivered progressive economic policies.

All of this has contributed to a deep cynicism toward establishment institutions and paved the way for populism. The conditions were present for this to happen on the political right first. However, we can see, in the election of Mamdani, that it can also happen on the political left. The real question is whether the Democratic Party establishment will continue to resist these forces—even if it means shamefully debasing itself, as seen in the manner of Andrew Cuomo—or if it will constructively harness these forces to turn them toward success for its party and the good of the country.

I am here to congratulate you for taking a stand and to tell you to keep going.

Let me tell you, as a professor, the thing you want more than anything is to be able to say that you are proud of your students. And I am so proud of all of you.

I am proud of you for standing up for democracy.

And as a professor, you want your students to learn the lessons of history. And you’ve learned that when an authoritarian attacks, you don’t put your head down and cower. Because that is how you lose your freedom. That is how we will all lose our freedom.

But even more, as a professor, you want your students to be ethical citizens. To be leaders. To think beyond themselves and to stand for the greater good.

You know, I heard yesterday that word “defense” is now woke and for losers. But, look, Harvard showed—you all showed—that defending what is right—being a leader and defending the greater good—leads to success.

And you showed Harvard the way to that success.

You chose to stand up.

And because of you and people like you, Harvard won a resounding victory in court.

Let’s not fool ourselves though, Harvard’s leadership had a lot of reasons to say Harvard should only think about itself. They had a lot of reason to capitulate to Donald Trump’s extortion. Those reasons might still be here.

But if we think bigger than ourselves, if we understand that we are in a fight, not only for Harvard, but for democracy. Then we know that capitulation is not an option.

And we know that capitulation is not an option when we understand that this is not only a fight for right now but a fight for our future.

I’m not only a professor, I’m a father, and so I’m thinking about that too. My daughters are here with me today, and I will not let them grow up in a country where the rule of law is not respected. Where their rights can be taken away for what they believe or what they say.

So, you sure as hell better believe that I am going to oppose Donald Trump’s authoritarianism with everything I’ve got.

Look. This is a struggle. And struggles can be ugly and divisive. But let me tell you what else I see as a professor: there is also something really beautiful on campus right now. Something that your professors are talking about.

I have been here for 15 years, and I have never experienced Harvard like this. There is an amazing spirit here. I could feel that spirit on my first day of class this week.

It’s the spirit of unity. It is the spirit of being united in something bigger than ourselves.

In your unity and your leadership, you are the manifestation of the Harvard graduate John F. Kennedy’s call to action when he said that to “those to whom much is given, much is required.”

When Kennedy was leaving Massachusetts to become President of the United States, he looked to the future and said in a famous speech that we will all one day be remembered, not for whether we preserved ourselves, but for whether we were people of courage, judgment, integrity, and dedication.

We won a resounding victory in court. But we all know this isn’t over. This struggle is going to be long. Trump is going to keep coming after us because he is an authoritarian, and that’s what authoritarians do. The New York Times is going to keep writing about how Harvard is just about to capitulate.

And we are going to have to stand strong.

But I believe in your courage. I believe in your judgment. I believe in your integrity. And I believe in your dedication.

And so…

I believe in you. And I believe that *together* we will win this.

With Colombia’s (not unexpected) capitulation to the Trump regime, this question has become more urgent.

I hope I am wrong, but if I had to guess, Harvard will cave too.

Harvard will cave for the same reasons that authoritarians and extortionists win everywhere: they can inflict pain on individuals and individual institutions, and it is individually rational for each of us to pay the extortionist to end our pain. It is a classic collective action problem and faced with this problem, our freedom dies.

Of course, rich and powerful institutions like Harvard are in the best position to resist such attacks, but they are also the places where the government can inflict the most pain. In the words of Vonnegut, “so it goes.”

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Of course, we’d like these institutions to think long-term, not just consider the pain they are experiencing right now. But, perversely, this kind of thinking can also lead to capitulation because it can be rational to preserve the system: when you are on top and the extortionist says they will leave you on top if you just pay a relatively small bribe, you are willing to pay the bribe. And the institutional momentum of wealth and prestige is hard to overcome, leading to the same perverse rational logic: yes, kids will still go to Columbia even with its stain of capitulation because their degree will still be worth something and they will still meet other soon-to-be-important people. And kids will probably still go to Harvard when it caves. The leaders of these prestigious institutions are aware of this.

And we can convince ourselves we are doing the right thing, even being selfless, when we focus on our own institutions: leaders at Harvard have told me that they have a duty to preserve the institution. This duty surely feels more important when an institution has survived for centuries.

There is also a human aspect that contributes to capitulation. The people inside the institution, not the institution itself, are experiencing the pain. So, the people want the extortion to end. And, of course, if Harvard capitulates, life becomes a lot easier for those of us who work there, and we still get to go on calling ourselves Harvard professors and enjoying the prestige. Once again, the momentum of prestige is hard to overcome.

Talking to my colleagues, an increasing number seem to be accepting of a “negotiation” to end their pain. Many, of course, can find reason to believe they are doing the right thing. Some seem to think it is the mature thing to do, failing to recognize the situation we are in as a society.

Others have used the analogy of a lawsuit, saying that “negotiation” is often how lawsuits are resolved, but failing to recognize that, because lawsuits are the means at our disposal to challenge the government, we are then accepting that we must negotiate for our rights when the government attacks them—something we would never accept in the abstract. Some have claimed that a negotiation can be painted as a “win” for Harvard, therefore not seeming like capitulation, but failing to recognize that once you negotiate for your rights, you have already lost your fundamental dignity and are likely opening up a Pandora’s box of authoritarian abuse from which there may be no return.

Others simply accept that we are in a bad situation and just think this is the only way out, somehow convincing themselves that such a position can be compatible with academic freedom.

There are others who, rightly, point out that the pain of this extortion is born unevenly—that due to the unevenness of who relies on federal grants, some faculty are hurt more by a standoff with the government than others. Medical faculty, for example, who rely heavily on grants for their research, feel extreme pain, while the humanities have the luxury of standing on principle. But this, once again, is the inescapable rational logic of authoritarian extortion that allows it to kill our freedom. There is always somebody for whom the pain is greater and, therefore, for whom the need for the pain to end will also be greater. This is the same reason that the wealthiest and most powerful institutions are the ones most likely to capitulate. This illustrates the perverse way in which an authoritarian can pit us against one another, where some of us resent others for causing them to experience the pain of resistance. Talking with Harvard faculty, I already get the sense that this resentment is present.

And there are, of course, some people who are in ideological agreement with Trump. Who believe, for example, that Trump’s illegal actions are necessary steps to end anti-Semitism on university campuses. Putting aside the merit of this view (which I emphatically reject), you don’t impose your policy views by breaking the law. That’s not how democracy works.

In response to all these individual logics of capitulation, we must recognize that the externalities imposed by capitulation are undeniable: yes, it may help you find a way out of this extortion, but it legitimizes an attack on the rule of law and hastens the end of our freedom. Therefore, you have to ask yourself what you think is more important: your bottom line or what is right for society? I believe that we all know the answer to this: we teach our children not to think only about themselves, and we hold up as heroes those who put others before self. But when push comes to shove, we often fail to live up to this ideal. So it goes.

The logic of all of this is tragically difficult to overcome. Is there anything we can do? We can, of course, shame those who fail to stand up for our civil society. We can ridicule them. We can shun them. This is what I understand many people to be calling for, and I have said as much myself. But we will, of course, be reluctant to do so when the time comes. And our reluctance is understandable. Once again, the authoritarian puts us in the awful situation of having to choose between turning on our fellow citizens or standing up for democracy. In a free society, these are not the choices that our government should be forcing on us.

Ultimately, I think it is only honor that will save us. It is honor that causes people to do the irrational things that are good—that separates the fighters from those who flee in the face of danger.1 Unfortunately, this sort of honor is not something on which we select for our institutional leaders.

I hope I am wrong. Sometimes there are variables—honor, for example—that will overcome the powerful logic that points to capitulation. We have to hope that Harvard and our other institutions have some of this. And it will be up to the rest of us to continue the fight, with or without them.

But stop looking for these “red lines”. Red lines may be helpful in negotiating or in deterrence, but they are not useful here because knowing that our democracy is breaking down is not a neat process of categorization. Humans want to categorize things because it's the way our minds work; it helps us to make sense of the world to know that we are in one state and not another. But nature and social processes are usually on a continuum.

Democracy, too, is on a continuum. Some countries have things that seem democratic, like legislatures, and elections, and opposition parties. Iran has these. Russia has these. But these things do not make these countries democracies in any practical sense; nobody would mistake them for full democracies just because they have these elements. Authoritarians often claim to be in a democracy because it is rhetorically useful for them to do so. As democracies die, nobody tells you that you are no longer in a democracy. Nobody comes and declares it dead. When Putin killed Russia’s nascent democracy, it’s not like he one day said, “we are no longer a democracy”. He still calls himself the President and is reelected every once in a while.

People want some dramatic event to know a democracy is dead and to be able to categorize it as such: some crossing of the Rubicon or crowning of the emperor. But you don’t need to wait for such an event: in the United States, we no longer live in a full democracy.

This is not a question about the future. Our rights are being violated right now. You are less free than you were five months ago. Dramatically so.

Speech has been coercively punished. The regime is lying to you on a daily basis and strong-arming the press into credulously reporting those lies. Law firms are being punished for protecting your constitutional rights. A secret police is disappearing legal residents off the streets. There are reports that they are beating them. Legal residents are being arrested for their speech. Congress is on the brink of passing laws to give more money to Trump’s secret police. Under blatantly false pretenses, the military has been deployed to stop peaceful protestors.

The Constitutional order, created to constrain the executive and empower the representatives of the people, has stopped working. Congress has abdicated all responsibility. Impeachment is the ultimate Congressional check on the executive, and that is 100% off the table because of partisan loyalty.

If there was any chance of Congress being a constraint through less dramatic means, it is being taken away by state violence and state-sanctioned threats of violence. Democratic members of Congress have been violently handcuffed and charged with crimes. Republicans are reportedly scared to oppose Trump because of threats from his violent supporters. This means that people elected to represent you are no longer doing their jobs in your interest, but under threat of coercion by a violent executive. This means the wheels of representative democracy are breaking down. Right now, at the federal level, I’d say these wheels are barely turning.

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Constraints on Trump’s authoritarianism won’t come from within the executive branch. The reason cabinet secretaries are constitutionally required to have congressional approval is that the founders intended for these secretaries to constrain the president through their control over the executive bureaucracy. But the Senate confirmed cabinet secretaries and law enforcement officials with no other qualifications than loyalty to Trump. The secretaries, people who command armies and paramilitary units, are not constraining Trump; they are only eager to please him, acting and sounding like sycophants.

Non-partisan watchdogs and bureaucrats like the FTC have been illegally removed. These systems, created by law to be free from pressure from the President and to guard the well-being of American citizens, are not constraining Trump.

We are now looking to other institutions to protect us. Americans are having conversations about whether the military would stop Trump by disobeying his illegal orders. But now we even worry about the professionalization of the military breaking down as Trump has started to treat it like a personalistic political force.

But take a step back now. We are having conversations about whether the military will save us from the actions of a dictator, for God’s sake. Just like the conversations we are having about whether the courts will save us, this is a sign that our constitutional order has broken down. At this point, when serious people are having these discussions, it is because we are already past the stage of a properly functioning democracy.

It is not clear that anything is currently constitutionally or legally constraining Trump, and, to the extent that you are comforted because you think checks like the judiciary (or the military) are still in place, there are very serious questions about whether they will remain independent in the future. They are already under attack now—lawyers are being punished, judges are living in a state of fear, generals are being removed and replaced to maximize loyalty to the regime—and so we must assume this is already limiting their effectiveness.

If you were hoping things would be stopped before it was too late, know that it is already too late. We are no longer operating by the rules we once took for granted. We no longer live in the democracy we once enjoyed.

The only thing currently constraining Trump’s attack on our liberties, and the thing with the most possibility of constraining Trump in the future, is American civil society, which draws on the traditions of American history and culture. It is Trump against 250 years of America. Some Americans have already shown what side they are on: willing to, for reasons of ideology or, more likely, comfort and ambition, to go along with this grotesque attack on our democracy. The rest of us must decide what we will do.

If you ever wondered what you would do if something awful happened to other people in your country, how you would behave when that historical moment came, when your country needed you, stop wondering. It is happening now. What you are doing is what you are doing. You are living in that moment.

The means of resistance are still present. Trump and the way he rules are very, very unpopular. Americans like American democracy and don’t want somebody destroying it. Yes, we elected him, but I can tell you, as a student of voting behavior, that there are all kinds of perfectly reasonable reasons that people didn’t understand what they were getting into. Did those who voted for him make a bad choice? Yes, of course. But now many of them are going to change their minds. Many have already changed their minds.

Now that the band-aid has been ripped off, his authoritarianism nakedly present, Trump will likely become even more unpopular. The only silver lining of where we find ourselves now, with the active duty military on the streets and the head of the secret police talking about “liberating” a city from their democratically elected leaders, is that we now have a focusing event to help people understand what is happening. Trump has been operating as an authoritarian virtually from the time he took the oath of office, but his coercive attacks on universities, the media, and law firms were relatively hard for the public to see as authoritarian. Now he is arresting politicians and putting the military on our streets, and there is no ambiguity about these actions.

Why does this matter? Because unpopular regimes are more likely to fail. When leaders are unpopular, when people protest and show their resistance, it gives strength to leaders who may oppose the regime. For America, those who will need this strength include politicians, the military personnel who will likely be asked to carry out illegal orders, and judges who will be under tremendous pressure, including threats of violence, not to constrain Trump. It is up to all of us to show these people that civil society is behind them.

So, what can we do? What can you do as one person? If you have a platform, now is the time to use it. When you built that platform, you probably thought it was because you wanted to make the world a better place. Use it now.

For those thinking that they don’t have a platform and wondering what can be done besides rage posting: first, remember that you do have a platform, however small, and you should use it whenever you can, and second, don’t forget the power of your body and your presence. The power of one body is amplified when it is combined with thousands and millions of others. Don’t forget the power of non-violence and the moral agency it provides.

Here is what Mario Savio said in 1964 at Berkeley as the Free Speech Movement changed our college campuses across the country:

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!

That doesn't mean that you have to break anything. One thousand people sitting down some place, not letting anybody by, not [letting] anything happen, can stop any machine, including this machine! And it will stop!!

Be part of stopping the machine of authoritarianism in the United States. You can start with the No Kings protest tomorrow.

Hello.

There is nowhere I’d rather be right now than here with you: with international students and their supporters. We need you here—all of you—because we are now part of a struggle that is bigger than ourselves.

It may not have been a fight you asked for, but let me tell you, I know that you are all up for it because I know you. I have worked here for 15 years, and the international students at Harvard are the finest people I know. There is no Harvard without them. And because of that, we stand united. We will fight with all we have to keep you here in our community.

Each and every one of you is worth fighting for. You have earned your place at Harvard. But we also must understand that this is not just a fight for international students. It is not just a fight for Harvard. And it is certainly not a fight over politics or Democrats versus Republicans.

This is a fight for democracy and the rule of law. These are the principles that unite us.

We are not here to protect our diplomas or to protect Harvard’s endowment. We are here because there is an idea in America, represented by all of you, that is worth fighting for.

It tells you a lot about an institution and a country if people come from across the world to be there. It also tells you a lot about a country when it sends its people across the world to help others.

I know this because, in a certain way, I started my life as an international student. I was born as an American citizen, but not in this country; rather, I was born in what was then West Germany. My very earliest perspectives were as a visitor, learning and being nurtured in another country.

But the important part is why my family was in Germany. At the height of the Cold War—the struggle between tyranny and freedom, between dictatorship and democracy—my father was stationed in Germany as part of the American military.

He was one of millions. When America was taking a stand for democracy and for a way of life, millions of men and women from the United States uprooted their lives—and American taxpayers paid with their dollars—to be the frontline of freedom.

It was America that took on that duty. We didn’t leave it to somebody else to protect freedom.

Look, I am not naïve. I understand history. So, I know that America was not perfect in its history. I am not asking you to believe America is perfect now. But I am asking you to believe in an idea.

The idea that America can stand for something great. When my family was overseas, it was standing for something remarkable: a country that used its wealth and power to try to make the world a better place.

For many of you, it was this idea of freedom and democracy and the blessings that flow from these that brought you to America.

This is the noble ideal of America. An America that brings in, teaches and nurtures the best and brightest from around the globe and gives so much back to the world. An America that sends our citizens and our science and our ideas around the world to better humankind.

An America that stands for democracy, for the idea that a government is for the people and by the people. And the idea that people, all people, have certain inalienable rights.

But let’s be clear. All of that is now under threat. The attack on Harvard and the attack on you are at the center of an attack on democracy. An attack on the rule of law.

There is a reason that Donald Trump’s attempt to keep international students out of Harvard was blocked by a judge in less than 24 hours: because it is blatantly illegal. It not only violates statutory law, but it violates the American constitutional protections of freedom of speech and due process.

Freedom of speech and due process. These are the foundations of the American system.

These are the foundations of a free society. But Donald Trump is attacking these freedoms because they get in the way of his authoritarian takeover.

This is what authoritarians do.

You know, it may surprise you, because he seems so obsessed with us, but Donald Trump doesn’t actually care about Harvard. He just wants to take Harvard down because universities stand for free ideas and for free speech. Free ideas and free speech get in the way of authoritarians. And so, like authoritarians before him, in places like Russia, and Turkey, and Hungary, Donald Trump is attacking universities.

And like other authoritarians, Donald Trump is targeting the most vulnerable members of our society, including immigrants.

But let me tell you, he underestimated Harvard, and he underestimated all of you. Harvard stood up and said no. You stood up and said no.

Well, guess what? We are going to keep saying no because we understand what is at stake here.

This rally shows that you are a powerful voice. Together, we are a powerful voice. We are here to stand up for the Harvard and for the America that we believe in.

I often tell my students that you came to Harvard because you wanted to do big things. To make a difference in the world. Right now, you are doing that.

The world is watching as we speak up. As we speak up for the ideal of America. This is what we are fighting for. And it is a fight that I know we can win.

“NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation today—one of over 20 school graduation ceremonies across our campus—to misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views.

He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules. The University is withholding his diploma while we pursue disciplinary actions.

NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.”

What an awful thing for a university to say. A graduation speaker isn’t supposed to express their personal political views? Does anyone who has ever attended a graduation ceremony actually believe this? Looking at a list of recent NYU graduation speakers, we see (among others): Bill Clinton, Sonia Sotomayor, Sherrilyn Ifill, and Justin Trudeau. Do we think that they just delivered jokes and Latin oratory for their entire speeches? Moreover, are universities places where people should be afraid to be “subject” to ideas they may find challenging or even upsetting?1[1]

There is little doubt that this double standard on speech comes from the fact that the student’s “one-sided political views” were about Palestine. We can add NYU to the list of universities that, when faced with pressure to restrict speech recognizing the humanity of Palestinians, have forgotten their own policies. In this case, a “bedrock principle” of NYU is that the university “upholds and encourages the freedom of students to express their views.”

I could go on about this, and one should definitely point out this double standard whenever it arises. But I also think there has been enough evidence for a double standard around pro-Palestinian speech that you either believe that exists or you don’t. There is also something, perhaps deeper here, which is the erosion of free speech at universities, while universities are constantly repeating that they are renewing efforts to promote “free speech”, “civil discourse”, and “ideological diversity”.2 How can universities be promoting free speech and ideological diversity while restricting certain speech, curtailing protest, and, in the case of my employer, removing ideologically inconvenient scholars?

Such actions reflect a larger phenomenon in American politics, falling under a class of rhetoric that I have noticed in recent years: the dressing of restrictive actions in universalistic American values: Donald Trump talks constantly about liberty (even naming his cryptocurrency project after the concept) when his administration has done more to curtail liberty than anyone in modern American history. Further, his allies have talked about free speech while attacking the media, the right to protest, and academic freedom.

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This habit of saying one thing while doing the opposite goes beyond Trump, though: I wrote about how faculty at Harvard put themselves under the guise of defending free speech while publicly arguing for its restriction. And NIMBYs in liberal places like Cambridge, who argue for, in practice, racially restrictive and environmentally damaging projects, wrap themselves in the logic of promoting racial equality and environmental protection.

I know we don’t love hypocrisy, but, in a certain respect, all of this seeming double-speak is a good thing: it shows the power of liberal (small l) principles: they are so ingrained into the American ethos that we frame all of our actions around them. In a classic work of political science, Herbert McClosky and John Zaller argued that American conflict all happens within the framework of liberty and equality because we all believe in these things. One might even believe that such principles constrain and guide action positively: would the universities restrict speech even further if they didn’t have to keep free speech in mind? I think they probably would.

However, there is also an interesting twist that when such principles are invoked, they seem to provide justification for damaging behavior. As such, we don’t recognize such behavior for what it is because it comes from sources that profess the opposite. It changes our interpretation of what is happening: For those of us on the left, when people on the right try to enact book bans, we recognize them for what they are, and we condemn them. However, when a university, which always professes a belief in free speech, cancels student speech, we struggle to recognize the action for what it is. In fact, the people at the university probably don’t recognize their hypocrisy either because they believe that they believe in free speech and will interpret their own actions within that framework. I’ve had these conversations with administrators who are actively suppressing free speech: they always say they are just trying to protect it. My NIMBY friends surely really believe that they are promoting racial equality. I know this because I have spoken to them and they have cited obscure data to try to validate the claim. People on the right, similarly, probably really believe that Donald Trump is defending liberty.

Further, we see a weaponization of the American abhorrence of racism and its nearly universal embrace of equality in order to restrict free speech in the name of combating “antisemitism”. America doesn’t do equality perfectly, I know this, but equality is certainly part of the American ethos, and America’s self-image is of a place that has overcome its racial demons. This makes any action undertaken in the name of promoting these values difficult to challenge or criticize. So, when people say they are combating antisemitism, it also makes them difficult to challenge.3

The always insightful Michelle Goldberg wrote recently about the consequences of such rhetoric when she talked about right-wing projects, mostly led by Christians, to shut down speech on college campuses and in government, even by Jews, in the name of combating “antisemitism”. She wrote that, “ultra-Zionist gentiles get to lecture Jews about antisemitism even as they lay waste to the liberal culture that has allowed American Jews to thrive.” Here in lies the danger: America’s liberal institutions defend marginalized groups and, yet, are under attack, using their own principles, in the name of supposedly defending marginalized groups. In the long run, such institutions and principles are threatened.

All of this brings to mind the late social psychologist James Sidanius’ concept of “Legitimizing Myths”. Sidanius wrote about this in his magnum opus, Social Dominance.4 According to Sidanius and his coauthor Felicia Pratto, Legitimizing Myths are ideas that maintain the hierarchical status quo in a society and that people will endorse to justify that status quo. They had in mind concepts that were clearly hierarchical, like scientific racism. But I think we can see how putatively anti-hierarchical ideas, like “free speech,” can be used to legitimize certain illiberal actions.

This is a problem without an easy solution. Legitimizing myths don’t die easily. However, I think that, especially for institutions like universities, the solution must be, in part, a commitment to a critical examination of what we actually mean when we state principles and whether our actions actually conform to those principles. When somebody talks about combating antisemitism or promoting free speech, we need to ask them what they mean by those concepts and how what they are doing is actually consistent with the principle. The danger is, of course, that somebody may then cynically accuse one of antisemitism or suppressing speech to shut them up, again weaponizing the American value. But we have to be willing to take this risk in the name of upholding the true value of concepts like equality and free speech. Otherwise, we risk losing these principles—and their blessings—altogether.

It makes am so happy to see the faces of friends, students, and colleagues here today. You are the best of this place. The best of Harvard.

Those of you who have received emails from me recently or know me from rabble rousing in newspapers and faculty meetings may not believe this, but until last Saturday, I had never once spoken at a rally in my life. In fact, it makes me pretty nervous to do so.

So why am I here? I am here because I admire you. And I want to tell you all how much I admire you.

I admire you because you moved Harvard to do the right thing. I’ve spent a lot of time recently over in Mass Hall with Harvard leadership: pushing on them, talking to them, cajoling them. And, I have to admit, I was mostly pretty pessimistic.

But let me tell you something, and this is a true story – I sat down with a friend for lunch on Monday and I said “the community at Harvard has stood up and told Harvard to do the right thing: faculty, students, staff, alumni, and members of the Cambridge community. And it would be extraordinary if Harvard ignored them.” Two hours later, we heard that Harvard was taking a stand.

Harvard did this because of you. You showed the power of our community.

So I want to ask you to use that power for two things:

First, we have to use our power to support each other. What is coming is going to be painful. And it has already been painful for many on this campus. The Trump administration, just in the last 48 hours has announced new attacks on our most vulnerable community members.

A lot of people have real fears. There are people on this campus who are going to lose jobs. There are people who are worried about losing their immigration status. We need to be here for those of us that are vulnerable. The most vulnerable people in our community have way more courage than me or most of the rest of us. But courageous people need our love and support too. Use our power to give that to them.

We also have to use our power to keep insisting that Harvard do better. The administration did the right thing by standing up to external attacks on academic freedom. But we must remember that academic freedom at Harvard has also come under attack from within. We have had center directors dismissed, programs paused, and partnerships canceled. These are threats to academic freedom. If we sacrifice our soul in this fight against authoritarianism, we have done the bidding of the authoritarians for them. We all must hold each other and our leadership accountable to not let that happen.

Now, I am going to tell you something that may shock you…but professors sometimes say things that they aren’t sure about.

My coauthor Steve Levitsky and I wrote something about a month ago. We said:

“If Harvard and other universities make a vigorous defense of higher education and principles of free speech and democracy, much of the public will rally to its side.”

So, this was a prediction and, to be honest, we weren’t quite sure about it. But, hey, turns out, we were right. Look, Barack Obama is loving Harvard now. Fans of the NBA will see Steve Kerr was wearing a Harvard jersey and talking about academic freedom. Heck, the Wall Street Journal is on the Harvard train.

Many people suddenly admire Harvard. Let’s stand together, stand tall, protect our most vulnerable, and prove worthy of their admiration.

And, you know, Harvard has been admired before. Before the American Civil War, there were thinkers here who said Harvard must stand on the side of abolitionism. And you know what? There were people who said that that position was wrong and we had to stay out of politics. And it took time but eventually Harvard stood for what was right. And before World War 2, there were people who said Harvard had to stay neutral in the face of fascism. But instead Harvard chose to take a stand. We see now that Harvard was on the right side of history and we can be proud.

And in this moment too, we are on the right side of history. But there is going to be tremendous pressure not to be – both internally and externally. So, we must be in this struggle together. We must support each other. And if we can do that, then we will look back on what we did with pride.

Now, in closing, let me ask you. Have you been here in this place before? In this inspiring space on the steps of this beautiful church dedicated to members of the Harvard community who sacrificed for a greater cause? I come to these steps every year for Commencement. If you’ve ever done that, you’ll know that each year we sing the song Fair Harvard. Have you ever listened to the lyrics? Listen to them now (don’t worry, I’m not going to sing). They say:

With freedom to think, and with patience to bear,

And for right ever bravely to live.

All of you have worked so hard so that we can continue our freedom to think. To bravely live. Let’s stand together to keep it that way.

First, this is great news. As many of us have argued repeatedly, the symbolic value of Harvard standing up to these authoritarian demands is immense, and it gives cover for other less well-resourced institutions to do the same. The last few weeks felt like working with a sword hanging over our heads, and I don’t ever remember a time on campus where so many people have been waiting anxiously for some kind of word on what Harvard’s leadership would do. It’s a tremendous relief (for now…see below).

Second, this news could have far-reaching implications. This problem goes far beyond Harvard and far beyond higher education because Trump is attacking the pillars of a free society: the press, the independence of law, and free thought in the form of universities. For better or worse, Harvard has an outsized prominence in American society and is, arguably, the most prominent institution to clearly push back on Trump (no offense to Princeton, which deserves great respect for leading the way on this among Ivies). In these sorts of collective action problems, individuals and institutions are more likely to resist if they think that they are not alone and are even more likely to resist if they have strong allies. Harvard, given its wealth and prominent alumni, is a very strong ally.

Third, this isn’t over. Who knows where the Trump administration will go from here, but the future might be very costly for Harvard. Because Harvard has clearly taken a stand in which they state that these demands go beyond the pre-textual reasons of “combatting antisemitism” and are, instead, an attack on basic principles of free speech and academic freedom, it makes it harder for Harvard to capitulate to the Trump administration in the future. If Trump keeps coming after Harvard with more investigations and funding cuts, Harvard is going to have to dig in for a long and costly fight. In this sense, Harvard has to also keep pursuing this in the court of public opinion (Harvard’s letter was a good first step) and make it politically costly for the Trump administration to continue this. Some people may have noticed that Harvard changed the content on its website to argue for its value, so apparently, it is thinking about this too.

Fourth, Harvard must continue to do the right thing internally. Harvard has already taken unfortunate moves to appease critics at the expense of academic freedom, including the recent dismantling of much of the local scholarship on Palestine. One worries that they may keep making such moves to deflect further criticism while putting on a brave external face. If Harvard internally ends academic freedom, even while resisting the Trump administration, its resistance will be a hollow victory.

Fifth, good job to everyone making it hard for Harvard to say “yes”. Many, many people at Harvard: faculty, students, staff, alumni, Cambridge community members, and others have publicly lobbied Harvard really hard to do the right thing. For many faculty members, this became more or less a full-time job in the last several weeks. It would have been very costly for the Harvard leadership to capitulate, given this internal pressure. I will write more on those efforts soon, but it’s notable that this kind of counterbalancing pressure was not present for Columbia because they were attacked first. I encourage other institutions to keep building that internal counter-pressure. Here’s one effort we have undertaken asking faculty to sign on to letters asking their institutions to resist these attacks.

Sixth and finally, the Trump administration made it easier for Harvard to say no. In case you missed them, I encourage you to read the full demands from the Trump administration. They are bananas—giving off a strong resonance of a Maoist Cultural Revolution. They included audits of “viewpoint diversity” among students, faculty, and staff. Given the premium this regime puts on loyalty to Trump, it is obvious what that means. If academic units do not meet their ideological criteria, the unit is to be folded into other departments. It also calls for “reporting” of “non-compliance” with the regime, setting up a totalitarian system of ratting on those not in line with the regime. In the past, the Trump administration has been fairly effective in making its calls for ending academic freedom seem somewhat reasonable to those not paying attention, but I think it got out over its skis on this in a way that probably made it easier for Harvard to say no.

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It is amazing to see everyone out here standing up for Harvard and standing up for our community.

I am here with you standing up because I understand that what Donald Trump is trying to do to our community is an attack on free speech and an attack on democracy.

When authoritarians attack democracy, they attack universities. Because universities are places of free thought. Vladimir Putin attacked universities in Russia. Victor Orban attacked universities in Hungary. But we aren’t going to let that happen here. We are going to stand up.

Let me tell you something. My colleagues and I organized a letter asking Harvard professors to sign their names telling Harvard to stand up to these attacks on higher education. Over 800 faculty signed.

But you know who couldn’t sign their name? I heard from dozens of professors, people who aren’t citizens, who said they wanted to sign but they were afraid of retribution. Nobody in the United States should have to be afraid to speak their mind. Nobody should have to be afraid to criticize their own government. So, we need to stand up for those people who can’t be heard right now.

And let me tell you, when I have called on Harvard to speak up in defense of higher education, I have heard from people across the country who have said “Yes, we are waiting on you Harvard. When will you speak up? If you don’t speak up, who will?” We need to stand up for the people who are asking us to stand up.

And I want to tell you about my hometown. I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California, in a poor agricultural community. When I was a kid, my hometown was on hard times. But you know what we heard? We heard that the University of California was going to open a new campus somewhere in the San Joaquin Valley to bring education to the region. And people dreamed that the new university would be in my town. So, people organized and they lobbied and they worked for it. And that university did open, and it transformed my community. It brought jobs, it brought new knowledge, and it brought pride. This is what universities can do for a community. Donald Trump wants to take all of that away. But we are going to stand up and stop him.

And let me tell you about another place that was once dreaming of a university. When the Pilgrims came to Boston, looking for religious freedom, they knew that free people needed education, so one of the first things they did was go across the Charles River and founded a new town and a new college. They had big aspirations for that little town, so they named it Cambridge after the famous university in England. That new little town grew into this wonderful, thriving, diverse community we stand in today. A community and a university admired across the world. Donald Trump is trying to take it away. But we are going to stand up and stop him.

And when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set up a Constitution for their new free people, they wrote in that Constitution that “Wisdom, and knowledge…[are] necessary for the preservation of…rights and liberties…[so] this commonwealth [will] CHERISH the university at Cambridge.” That’s actually the word they used “CHERISH”.

And after the birth of the United States, the Harvard graduate John Adams said that higher education was necessary for the preservation of the free people in the new republic. He said that “no expense . . . would be too extravagant” to support education. Donald Trump is trying to take away what we cherish. But we are not going to let that happen because no expense is too great to keep us from standing up for education.

Donald Trump is trying to take away higher education. He is trying to take away free speech. He is trying to take away democracy. He is trying to take away our community. But we are going to stand up and stop him.

So, let me ask you:

Will you stand up for the people who need us to stand up for them?

Will you stand for our democracy?

Will you stand up for our universities?

Will you stand up for our community?

You may be familiar with the last of these problems, but if you are not a college campus, let me assure you that the first two of these phenomena are real: people at universities are getting very little done because they are too busy worrying about Trump and his ongoing or potential attacks on universities and their students. This kind of damage doesn’t show up immediately in our ledgers but is immensely costly, nevertheless. Ever hear those stories about the massive downturn in productivity because everyone is watching the NCAA Tournament on streaming services? It’s like that, but this time, it is because of fear. No, really, people on college campuses are afraid and uncertain.

This is one of the many consequences of the weakening of the rule of law: it takes away the certainty we have. When the rule and stability of law provides reassurance, freedom of thought flourishes. When the rule of law goes away or is uncertain, freedom of thought is curtailed, too. Under the rule of law, when Congress allocates money for scientific funding, you can be sure it will be there next year, and you can plan your research. But that is no more. Most of us will not be subject to the arbitrary arrest that Trump has extended to our most vulnerable students, but our concern about it saps our energy.

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In a sense, such uncertainty, the guessing about what comes next, hurts our minds—it dumbs us down. A famous demonstration of this comes from a study of how much of the variance in IQ explained by the environment varies across socio-economic status.[1] The study asked how much of IQ is genetic and how much is caused by the environment in which a person lives[2]. In genetics, sometimes to the surprise of people not familiar with the literature, heritability, that is the amount of a trait that is determined by genetics, varies across contexts. So, in one setting, something like IQ might be highly determined by genetics, but not in another setting. This makes sense when you think about it: imagine an extreme circumstance where nobody received any schooling whatsoever. In this case, almost all variation in IQ would be explained by genetics because there would be no variation in the environment. The study about IQ and socio-economic status showed that among those with low socio-economic status, variation in the environment can greatly influence IQ. You can see how this can be a function of uncertainty: the worry about food or violence, or other such matters that come with poverty, might make it hard for some people to express their intelligence and flourish. In contrast, at the highest ends of socio-economic status, when the environment is often stable, the environment has almost no effect on IQ, and rather, it seems to all be affected almost entirely by genetics. There is no variation in hunger or violence or anything else, and so all that is left is one’s natural intelligence.

This contrast—the destabilizing effect of poverty and the leveling effect of affluence—is reflected in my experience, moving from teaching in a poverty-stricken urban neighborhood when I taught high school in Englewood on the Southside of Chicago to teaching at the richest university in the world. The natural intelligence of students in Englewood showed brilliantly when they were well-fed and not worried about what would happen next. When anxiety entered the neighborhood, when fear of crime or something else grabbed their attention, they were distracted, and it was hard for them to learn. The sociologist Patrick Sharkey showed this when he demonstrated that for high school students in Chicago, academic performance dropped when fatal shootings occurred in the neighborhood in close proximity to the time they took the test.[3] Contrast this with Harvard at normal times, where students, more or less, never worry about what will happen next and, if they choose, their genius shines through.

In a certain respect, authoritarianism takes this impoverishing effect and extends it to us all. Harvard professors will be okay, of course. But there is a loss when scientists can’t concentrate on what they are supposed to concentrate on. Take this and extend it to other people: the immigrants, lawyers, and reporters targeted by Trump, and you can start to understand the creative productivity a society can suffer under authoritarianism.

In addition to the loss from the uncertainty created by authoritarianism arbitrariness, authoritarianism also hurts our expression because of fear. It makes us think about what we can and cannot say. It lays a chill over our statements. Students are worried that their social media will be used to test their immigration status. Faculty worried that their scholarship may be turned against them. Creativity and expression die when you have to stop and ask if there might be damage from what you are about to print. Solzhenitsyn, who had been a writer in the USSR and spent years in the Gulag, wrote about how the scientists spent their energy trying to avoid the wrath of the regime. There is a reason that we thought of the autocratic countries behind the Iron Curtain as so gray and bleak—it’s because censorship can kill the creative spirit. Authoritarianism has the potential the sucking of our national soul.

Nearly every conversation I’ve had with other professors—and students—in the last several weeks has been about Trump’s anticipated extortion of Harvard and what Harvard should do in response. Trump is demanding that Harvard relinquish control of its governance, much like he did to Columbia, or lose billions of dollars in federal funding. These demands are unlawful, as my colleagues in the law school have pointed out, and are formed on the pretext of Harvard not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus. At some point, I’ll write more about the wildly overblown claims of antisemitism on America’s college campuses but, for now, I think it should be plainly obvious that the Trump administration, home of people who think Nazi salutes are funny, does not care about antisemitism. Harvard has a choice about whether to resist these demands and possibly face a costly showdown with the federal government or capitulate like Columbia and lose its academic freedom.

This situation, of course, is felt by many institutions across the country, both the other universities attacked by Trump and also the other segments of civil society. Authoritarians are like bullies, menacing the schoolyard and casting a shadow over the playground of our civil society. Some other elite institutions, like white-shoe law firms and large news agencies, have capitulated, casting a further shadow over society.

Many of us fear that Harvard is already capitulating too: they fired the directors of Center for Middle Eastern Studies, ended public health partnerships with universities in the occupied West Bank, and suspended programs focused around Middle Eastern Peace in the Divinity School. They have already restricted speech. Presumably, all these actions are not a cosmic coincidence, but rather attempts to mollify Trump and his allies.

The loss of concentration comes as we look at the uncertainty of not knowing what the university will ultimately do in response to these attacks and not knowing the consequences if we fight back or if they capitulate. If they fight back, will Trump try to come down harder in his vindictive way? If we capitulate, we will be on edge, always wondering if he will come back demanding more. And anxiety also comes from knowing that what Harvard does will leave a mark on it: we anticipate the shame of living with this capitulation. This is authoritarianism sucking our soul, leaving a shame of complicity on Harvard that many are already feeling. We go to work every day and teach, talk to students, carry on our research, knowing in the background that our institution is caving on the values it claims to hold dear.

So, where does that leave us on what to do? Should Harvard push back? My coauthor, Steve Levitsky, and I have laid out the case that Harvard must resist the actions of the Trump administration in two op eds, and we circulated a letter saying so that over 800 faculty have signed. Doing so will, at least, eliminate some uncertainty. And it will eliminate the possibility of having to live with the shame of complicity.

I also think fighting back is the right strategy both if Harvard simply wants to protect its money and, more importantly, if it wants to do the right thing. This is to say that both strategic and ethical incentives align. In many cases in the public sphere, including in politics, we face tough decisions about doing what is right for our own narrow interest and doing what will allow us to sleep well at night. The most classic example of this is the single-shot prisoner’s dilemma where two prisoners are given the option of ratting on their fellow inmate and receiving a lighter sentence. The short-term strategic incentive is for the prisoner to rat on his fellow prisoner and reduce his punishment, even if it is the unethical thing to do. This sort of unalignment between strategy and ethics also happens with, say, a whistleblower, putting his own future at risk to point out when somebody is doing something wrong. The ethical thing is to blow the whistle, but it might not be individually strategic.

But in some cases, the strategic and ethical incentives do align: for example, if a Prisoner’s Dilemma is played over and over again, the prisoners are better off cooperating with each other in the long run, both treating each other well and defending each other’s interests. For universities, too, because their showdown with Trump will not only happen once, the strategic imperative is obvious: Trump operates as a mob boss, and we all know that protection money is not paid just once. Trump will keep coming back to bend universities to his will because the point is about power, not policy. The strategic incentive is not to give in: it just can’t possibly be in the long-term health of the university to do so. The moral incentive is also obvious because these leaders will have to ask themselves what decision will help them to sleep well at night: one that protects the university in the short term and sells its soul or one that aligns its long-term moral and strategic incentives.

So, what is holding the leaders of elite institutions, like Harvard, back? Why aren’t they doing the right thing if the incentives are so aligned? One answer is fear or cowardice or, perhaps, more generously, risk aversion: not wanting to cause an even bigger problem for the university. Many colleagues have suggested to me that it might be because the leadership at many universities also are not entirely opposed to what the Trump administration wants to do. Many college leadership boards are not made of professors, but rather rich people who don’t care that much about academic freedom and might not care that much about losing the Center for Middle Eastern Studies or free speech for college sophomores. That is a sad situation, but it seems very plausible to me.

I think it’s also the case that many elite institutions are hamstrung by their eliteness. That they feel like the institution itself becomes all that is worth protecting—that Harvard, because it is Harvard, has to be protected. They don’t want to be responsible for causing damage to an institution that is older than the country itself.

Other institutions are less constrained by this self-regard. At the massive Hands Off protests in Boston last Saturday, many institutions, other than universities, were fighting back against Trump in a way that gave me much hope for American civil society. Not only did the feeling of fighting back, rather than sitting on our hands and worrying, feel like it cast off the oppressive shadow of the Trump administration, but it showed how many institutions are not constrained by a paralyzing self-importance of the type that seems to afflict Harvard and other elite institutions. Organizations like the AFL-CIO and the teachers’ unions sponsored these protests and proudly stood up to Trump. To be sure, this is easier for them because they are political in nature. But taking a step back from the Hands Off protest itself, we see that these organizations also have some freedom to do the right thing because they are interested, not in protecting the organization qua the organization, but in standing up for what they were formed to stand up for. Their members and leaders certainly will be able to sleep well at night knowing that they did the right thing. I hope those of us at places like Harvard will, too.

[1] Turkheimer E, Haley A, Waldron M, D'Onofrio B, Gottesman II. Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychol Sci. 2003 Nov;14(6):623-8. doi: 10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1475.x. PMID: 14629696.

[2] This was a twin study, for those who care.

[3] Patrick T. Sharkey, Nicole Tirado-Strayer, Andrew V. Papachristos, and C. Cybele Raver: The Effect of Local Violence on Children’s Attention and Impulse Control. American Journal of Public Health 102, 2287_2293, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300789

We examined this using questions from a recent nationally representative survey from Verasight of 1,000 Americans fielded from 2/28 to 3/6/251. This survey asked, “Elon Musk leads the new Department of Government Efficiency, tasked with reviewing and recommending cuts to congressionally approved funds, including those for national and local projects. How much do you trust or distrust him to make these decisions?” The answers were on a five-point scale from “strongly trust” to “strongly distrust,” and given our interest in whether Americans trust Elon and DOGE at all—a rock-bottom standard for someone entrusted with so much arbitrary power—we recode the responses to “trust” and “no trust” (full distributions are below for interested readers).

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Additionally, we also use data from the February Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll (the same as our last post) that asked: “Do you think that DOGE employees should have access to all information on government expenditures, including sensitive information on Americans who benefit from such programs—including names, Social Security Numbers, addresses, and incomes—or should it not have access to this information?” We view supporting or opposing access to this info as a direct implication of trust/distrust in Elon Musk, so it’s particularly relevant to our question.

So, do Americans trust Elon? Overwhelmingly no. Only 28.5% of respondents trust him at all, while 40.6% strongly distrust him.

As expected, when we look at partisanship, we see a divide between Democrats and Republicans. Essentially, all Democrats lack trust in him, unsurprising given his (megadonor) association with Trump and the Republican Party. However, the lack of trust among both Independents and Republicans is much more surprising. Independents overwhelmingly lack trust in Elon, and levels for Republicans are in stark contrast to their attitudes towards other Republican figures (89% of Republican respondents had a favorable opinion of Trump and 87% of J.D. Vance in the Feb. CAPS/Harris poll). Given how much faith Donald Trump has put in Musk (see his ad for Tesla on the White House Lawn) and Trump’s nearly complete control over his party, this lack of faith from the Republican base is quite remarkable. The view is much the same when we look at giving DOGE access to sensitive information:

While the levels of support for restricting DOGE’s access are significantly higher among Democrats and Independents (there was no option for “don’t know” or “neutral”), the level of support among Republicans is remarkably similar (57 versus 58%). Overall, support for DOGE’s access to sensitive information is very low (~37%).2

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how you slice the data: essentially, no one trusts Musk. Education, gender, and income don’t appear to matter much at all:

Education has essentially no effect on trust, neither men nor women trust Musk either (women, really don’t trust him), and it doesn’t even matter much what your income level is.3 People just don’t trust Musk. This pattern also looks similar for DOGE’s information access:

We did find one group that trusts Musk (at least a little):

If you ask people about their own perceived social status, it turns out people who put themselves at the top of the status hierarchy seem to trust Musk. Those who are “on top” are likely not as threatened by Musk’s actions or perhaps even view themselves similarly to the world’s richest man.

As we pointed out in our last post, there is a lot of debate about how Democrats should respond to Trump’s attacks on the foundations of our government. Some seem cowed by misperceptions of Trump and Musk’s popularity. Trump may even be misperceiving his own popularity and, as such, has been willing to put people, such as Musk, front and center in his administration. The data above shows just what a mistake this may be.

The First Amendment was written precisely for this purpose. If we can be arrested for assembling to speak on political causes or for telling the government that we disagree with their action, then we no longer live in a free country. As with other rights enumerated in the Constitution, this right is not restricted to citizens of the United States. Unless the courts are willing to abdicate their duty completely, Khalil will be set free.

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But, in the long run, as unjust as this action may be, the freedom of one person or even the rights of non-citizens is not what is at stake. Khalil was not imprisoned because Trump wanted to take away his freedom. He was imprisoned in order to take away freedom from all of us by causing us to question whether we should speak out. Trump is warning critics to be quiet. In the same way he singled out Columbia University for attack by stripping it of federal funding and then releasing a list of other universities in his sights with the intention of silencing them, he is singling out a former Columbia student, not because he cares about this student in particular, but because of the cascade of compliance he hopes will begin.

There is no doubt that such fascist tactics will be partially successful in stifling dissent. Indeed, I have first-hand evidence that they already have been. Friends and colleagues are scrubbing their social media accounts out of fear of retribution. Conversations have gone to Signal, rather than email, for the same reason. It’s been reported to me directly that the Harvard Gazette, the official mouthpiece of Harvard, has intentionally changed its coverage in order to signal a campus climate relatively friendly to Trump and his allies in Congress. Think about this: a newspaper and a university, institutions which are supposed to represent the essence of independent thought that characterizes a free society, are changing their speech to please the ruling regime.

But Trump isn’t just silencing individuals or institutions, he is silencing entire classes of people by raising the stakes for speaking out. If you were in the United States on a visa or a green card, why would you risk speaking out now? As I mentioned, there is little doubt that Khalil will be set free, but he will pay a tremendous cost while the courts decide his fate: He may spend months in prison. He will likely miss the birth of his child by his 8-month pregnant wife. His family will suffer. The logic of repression is not that a tyrant uses violence to silence everyone directly. It is that they use violence to make examples of a few, with the others knowing that they may be next, and then choosing to self-censor. This is exactly what the White House is signaling with their disgusting Tweets.

And, as repressive regimes do, they are strategically choosing the targets of their example-making. They know that campus protests are mostly unpopular. They are exploiting the American abhorrence of bigotry by wrapping their actions in protection against anti-Semitism. They are associating Khalil’s actions with terrorism so that people will be reluctant to defend him. Authoritarian regimes strategically pick off those around whom there is a stigma—in 1930s Germany it was Communists and Jews, in 2000s Russia, it was Muslims—because they know it will make us less likely to come to their defense. In a sense, Trump is hoping we will all be partners in his repression by making the decision to not come to the defense of those with whom we may disagree.

There is no ambiguity in what is happening. These are the actions of a repressive fascist regime, and they are happening right now in the United States. As an American, if you have ever looked out across the world to places like Russia and China and wondered what it might be like to be afraid to speak your mind, you can stop imagining because you are now experiencing the machinery of censorship firsthand.

So, now we have a choice to make. If you are a citizen of the United States, the time to speak up is now. Donald Trump is trying to silence you. He is trying to take away your liberty. When some people in this country are already afraid to speak, which is now the case, he has already taken part of that liberty away.

Call your Representative. Call your Senator. Organize a protest. Most importantly, speak up publicly so everyone can hear it. This is the only way to counter the attempt to silence you. If you have a megaphone so that other people can hear—perhaps because you are a CEO, a college President, a professor, a principal, a leader of a local club, somebody with a significant social media presence or even a small one, or even if you will just be joining friends at your local book club this week—speak up now and tell them that you will not be silenced.

This isn’t true. It's been shown over and over again that Trump is historically unpopular (bested in unpopularity only by himself in his first term). People don’t like the job he’s doing.

But what is at stake with Trump goes far beyond just the unpopularity of his policies: the core foundations of American democracy are at risk. Trump’s term—only 44 days-long at the time of this writing—is already unprecedented in its attempts to expand executive power to new, authoritarian heights. Trump’s acts, although too numerous to list here, have primarily consisted of executive orders that recklessly disregard constitutional limits. This lawless arrogation of power has continued mostly unabated, enabled by a Republican Congress unwilling to defend the constitution and undeterred by numerous court orders. This is all on top of the administration’s open, wanton corruption.

A question we’ve heard a lot lately, in some form or another, is essentially: “why aren’t Americans taking to the streets in resistance to Trump?” This question seems particularly relevant given that there were widespread protests in Trump’s first administration both before and after he took office, even though Trump 1.0 was a relatively tame affair compared to what we are experiencing now. Is it because Americans do not recognize just how bad things have gotten or do they not care that Trump’s actions are taking us down the path to authoritarianism?

Perhaps. In political science, there is a common assumption that people don’t know or don’t care about the finer points of politics. This is likely especially true when it comes to issues or actions that have trouble staying at the top of the news cycle—Trump’s “shock and awe” or “flood the zone” strategy ensures that each illiberal action is bumped aside and overshadowed by the next. For example, his blatant corruption in pressuring the Justice Department to drop its case against Eric Adams quickly lost prominence because J.D. Vance went to Munich and lobbied on the behalf of the neo-nazi AfD.

We also assume that people are even less likely to engage with issues when they involve complicated matters of policy and law or abstract matters like liberal norms (e.g., is an action authoritarian). And, perhaps frustratingly, Trump’s movement towards authoritarianism falls squarely in this space: somewhat abstract and intangible to most Americans: does a typical person care if Trump illegally fires an inspector general or a career prosecutor?

In the face of such complicated matters, people often revert to partisanship—so if a Democrat does something, Democrats like it. If Republicans do something, Republicans like it. Even in the context of relatively simple issues, the behavior of and endorsements from politicians is highly influential. For example, previous research has found that Republicans are more likely to support a minimum-wage increase and Democrats funding for Border Patrol if endorsed by their own party. So in the face of complicated issues of democratic norms, people might be especially likely to rely on their partisanship to determine what they support.

This tendency to be “rationally ignorant” about politics and to instead rely on their partisanship and “partisan cues” isn’t anything special about Americans’ lack of attention, instead it is a result of people being busy with other aspects of life and using psychological short cuts: “If I agree with my political party on issues that are important to me, then I probably agree with them on issues I don’t know much about.” Such tendencies have been documented over and over again.

Trump’s illiberalism benefits from these psychological tendencies because he, probably correctly according to political science research, assumes that people don’t care enough about what he’s doing to stop him. Modern authoritarians intimidate the opposition, choke off the civil service, flaunt the finer points of the law—Trump’s actions to a T—but they try to avoid revolt in response to these actions because such actions are not something the typical citizen cares about. They assume that people more likely care about the bread and butter of a strong economy or that they can distract the average person by demonizing groups like immigrants or a racial or religious minority.

Trump’s purges of the civil service and abuse of the justice system are not related to one’s pocketbook nor are they highly salient moral issues, like immigration or trans rights. Understanding the repercussions of his actions on democracy requires knowledge of abstract notions relating to liberal democracy and the rule of law or, at a minimum, a rudimentary ability to identify authoritarianism. Simply put, you have to know something about civics to understand that a budding authoritarian is dangerous for democracy. This is an exceptionally tall order for most voters and, in many respects, is an even taller order for a democratic system.

But here’s the thing, despite these powerful forces, Trump’s actions, matters of complex questions relating to civic and constitutional norms, are incredibly unpopular: they are not supported by an overwhelming majority of Democrats (unsurprising), a significant majority of Independents (more surprising), and nearly half(!) of Republicans (extremely surprising). And, particularly among Republicans, if you cut through the partisan blinders and remind people these actions are illegal and unconstitutional, people are even more likely to disapprove of his actions.

We see this in data that comes from questions we asked about Trump’s actions on the most recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.1 In particular, we asked people how much they support the following authoritarian actions (full questions can be seen at the end of the post):

1. Working with Elon Musk to purge the government of disloyal civil servants.2

2. The closing of USAID without Congressional approval.3

3. The firing of FBI agents and DOJ attorneys who had investigated the January 6^th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.4

4. The proposal to close the Department of Education by executive order.5

5. The firing of 18 Inspectors General without cause.6

Responses were on a five-point scale from “strongly support” to “strongly oppose”. For ease, we’ll bin those into “support” and “no support” where we put the people in “neither support nor oppose” in the “no support” category. Thus we are isolating levels of support (full response distributions are at the end of this post). For each of these questions, we also included an experiment where about half of our respondents were asked the question with additional text reminding them that these actions are illegal and/or unconstitutional. For example, the question: “President Trump’s [unlawful] firing of FBI agents and Department of Justice Attorneys who had investigated and tried cases involving the January 6th, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol” for some respondents included the treatment of “unlawful” and for some it did not.

Let’s start with overall support:

Clearly, these moves are wildly unpopular: across all five questions, the average level of support is only 31%. People don’t support authoritarian moves that purge the civil service or end programs without constitutional authority. While relatively small, reminders of these moves’ illegality make them even less popular, particularly for the civil service purges conducted by Elon Musk and Trump (DOGE) (the large effect for this question might be due to the strongly worded treatment: “even if these firings are found to be unlawful or unconstitutional”).

Keep in mind that the low levels of support for Trump’s policies are more remarkable given that this poll historically runs a bit conservative. In fact, Trump's net approval rating in this very same poll was +9, which was in the upper-middle of the distribution of approval ratings from polls at the time, so the lack of support we identify here may be even more meaningful than what we conclude from our top line results.

This finding is not driven by Democrats alone, look at Independents:

Their overall support for these actions is still only 21%. And here’s something notable: when we remind Independents that these actions are illegal, their lack of support doesn’t substantially move (with a slight exception for the civil service purges, which again is our strongest treatment). Apparently, you don’t have to remind them, they already see these actions for what they are: illegal and unconstitutional.

Democrats and Independents both already know what’s going on. But what about the other side of the aisle?

Even Republicans don’t love these. Considering that these actions come from a President with overwhelming personalistic control over the party, Republicans are downright wishy-washy about these actions. And, importantly, they respond pretty strongly to being told these are illegal. For the purging of the civil service, this information shifts support by 10 percentage points and for the firing of the inspectors general, it shifts a lack of support all the way to 50%.

These findings among Republicans show that the reliance on partisanship to decide what’s right can be blunted: in the absence of a reminder, people who support Trump probably assume what he’s doing is legal. But if you inform them that it’s not, this support drops significantly. While support doesn’t fall to zero, like some of us might like to see, it clearly makes a difference.

So what does all of this data mean? Americans broadly oppose authoritarian actions and they clearly don’t like the flouting of the rule of law. This is heartening, particularly given the difficulty of understanding these issues for the average voter. And this lack of support matters. Popularity is important, even for established autocrats. But is it important for aspiring autocrats? Yes, popularity is a necessity for growing their power and Trump’s control of his party relies on his perceived popularity. Political scientists have long recognized that education is something dictators should fear. Perhaps America’s strong tradition of civic education has paid off in enabling us to recognize, even in the face of polarized politics, that what Trump is doing is wrong (and pollsters might overstate Trump’s levels of support when focusing on support for his policies, rather than his authoritarianism).

A lot of discontent and criticism has been directed at Democrats who seemed cowed by Trump’s popularity and thus unable to lead a resistance. However, we know that resistance builds unpopularity, so there can be a vicious cycle of inaction where discontent never reaches a level that spurs risk-averse politicians into action.

So what should Democrats do? Should they talk about egg prices and wait for the next election and the inevitable thermostatic swing in opinion that will hand them back the House? There is a danger in this strategy. In addition to the fact that you shouldn’t assume— given current and past behavior—that Trump is committed to free and fair elections, we must also be concerned about the danger of normalizing Trump’s autocratic actions. Fortunately, the American people see these actions for what they are: illegal and dangerous. Democrats should seize on this recognition and lean into it. Call Trump out for what he is and what he is establishing: authoritarianism. Remind people that Trump is doing things that they don’t like and are illegal. It can help save our democracy (and will probably lead to electoral benefits too).

Special thanks to Jack Rametta for his input on question design.

Appendix:

Question Wordings

1. Do you support President Donald Trump and Elon Musk firing civil servants throughout the government who are deemed ''insubordinate'' and ''disloyal'' [treatment: even if these firings are found to be unlawful or unconstitutional]?

2. President Trump’s [treatment: unlawful] firing of FBI agents and Department of Justice Attorneys who had investigated and tried cases involving the January 6th, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.

3. [treatment: By not notifying Congress 30 days in advance], President Trump’s [treatment: unlawful] firing of 18 inspectors general–independent watchdogs that oversee executive actions with agencies.

4. President Trump’s recent suspension of the acting administrator and other top officials of the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) and his [treatment: unlawful] closing of USAID’s offices and operations [treatment: without Congressional approval].

5. President Trump’s proposed, [treatment: unlawful] executive order to abolish the Department of Education [treatment: without Congressional approval].

Donald Trump’s Justice Department told Eric Adams that they wouldn’t prosecute his charges of criminal corruption if he did their bidding. Corruption to forgive corruption. If you do what we say, you won’t go to jail.

It’s important to understand just how dangerous this sort of action is: if a criminal prosecution is weaponized, it can be used against anyone. To the Democratic Governor: oh, you’re running against me for President; it’d be a shame if somebody started looking through your tax returns for some very small violation that would typically be ignored. To the Republican Congressman who breaks ranks on a piece of legislation: it’d be a shame if the Justice Department had to start looking into your past actions.

Needless to say, the number one reason that Trump should be called out on in this grotesque action is that it dangerously perverts our system of justice. But Democrats also need to understand that this is an opportunity. The Democrats have two jobs right now: 1) to protect our political norms by standing against the violations of the Trump administration and 2) to make Trump weaker by making him unpopular. You can’t ask for a better scandal to accomplish this second task.

For the public to pay attention to political events, for a scandal to rise above the fray and capture people’s attention, politicians need to make it an issue, they need to keep it on the front burner, and they need to clarify for the public why this is a scandal. This one is easy.

Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s actions are now on the front page (where they deserve to be) because the Federal prosecutors charged with dismissing Adams’ case resigned rather than doing so. This has almost exact parallels to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of the Nixon Administration that is largely credited as the undoing of his Presidency. In 1973, the most senior lawyers in the Justice Department refused to carry out Nixon’s bidding to fire a prosecutor investigating him, and they resigned in protest. Because times were different, Nixon’s actions led to bipartisan condemnation and his eventual resignation as the House prepared to impeach him. Trump’s not going to be impeached because partisan ties have made Congress dysfunctional, but still, practically nobody remembers Nixon fondly, and nobody is going to defend his legacy. Doing something so similar to the most infamous scandal in modern Presidential history can help the public to see this for what it is.

Furthermore, the identity politics on this issue lines up conveniently. I’m sure Trump will claim differently, but it’s not a “partisan witch hunt”—Adams is a Democrat. Danielle Sassoon, the prosecutor, has impeccable conservative credentials: she clerked for Anton Scalia, is a member of the Federalist Society, and, apparently, once received scorn from Harvard undergraduates for arguing against affirmative action in my colleague Michael Sandel’s famous Justice course.

I also think it helps that it is New York City in the spotlight. This is not a scandal involving a foreign country, like Trump’s first impeachment (well, not directly; Adams was receiving foreign bribes), but rather America’s most important city. The press cares about it because it’s in their backyard, so it will stay on top of their heads and their feeds. Americans can imagine corruption in New York City, and the idea of the mayor of New York being in cahoots with the President just seems icky in a way that’s easy to understand.

Look, our first-order assumption should be that no scandal is going to bring Trump down. I’m a realist about that. Scandals are not what they once were in American politics. Trump will not be impeached or resign. Our political system has devolved to the point where all actions are seen through a lens of partisan competition, and so Republicans will not do what is right to hold him accountable for this. But popularity matters, even for somebody trying to be a dictator. It gives him power and makes people afraid to stand up to him.

Trump’s scandals in his first term made him unpopular. He remains unpopular. It is Democrats’ job to keep making him more unpopular. A colleague hopefully proposed to me last week that the one thing that Americans can agree they dislike is corruption and that Trump’s blatant corruption (which is far more on display this term than even his first one) will be a uniting force for the American public. There perhaps will never be a better opportunity to put this hopeful claim to the test.

"That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common."

Aristotle, Politics

There is little potential for hyperbole right now. We are on the precipice, not just of losing our constitutional order, but of losing the blessings of liberal democracy.

Trump is ignoring the constraints of the law. Presidents have broken the law before, but we had mechanisms to constrain them. Congress was seen as a co-equal branch of government, able to pass laws to prevent law-breaking or to impeach if necessary. Now Congress sits as a hollow shell of a lawmaking body, unwilling and unable to constrain the man making himself a dictator right in front of our eyes.

Things look like they might get worse. Despite some hope that the bulwark of the federal courts will defend us, the administration and its allies are using language to justify ignoring the courts’ rulings against their illegal actions. If this comes to pass, Trump’s power will be unchecked, and our form of government will be constitutional in name only.

However, what concerns me most about Trump right now is not his illegal actions that are laying waste to our constitutional order. As bad as illegal impoundment is, even with a feckless Congress, voters can, in theory, punish Trump and his allies at the ballot box for these actions. Instead, what keeps me up at night is his legal actions that are laying the groundwork for the dissolution of the liberal democracy we have enjoyed and taken for granted.

Sometimes lost in the haze of his flurry of actions are moves by Trump that, despite being clearly unethical, are not against the law or are in a legal gray area. These include the imposition of loyalty tests on security services, which should be a wake-up call to us all about the gravity of the threat we face, attempts to silence the critical press, and the overt politicization of the justice department.

Even if these actions are not against the law, they may come to severely undermine, if not destroy, the rule of law in the long run by effectively dismantling democratic competition in the United States and replacing it with a system of competitive authoritarianism, a system in which the trappings of electoral democracy exist but the incumbent party maintains their grip on power through illiberal means.

These competitive authoritarian systems are what is left in many of the putatively constitutional republics (sometimes modeled after the United States) in Latin America and elsewhere after a democratically elected leader has smothered democratic opposition.

Trump’s legal actions are taking us down this path; potentially very quickly. Consider how hard it is to unseat a ruling regime without a free press. Even more so, consider what it can do to fair elections if the commitment of security services is to the power of the ruler, as Trump is now asking of FBI and CIA agents, and not the rule of law. I am sure it goes without saying that men with guns, loyal to the ruler, can make elections very unfair, even if those elections nominally still exist. On top of all of this, Trump has wielded his lawful power to pardon, to signal that violence and other lawbreaking in his name will go unpunished, thus hanging the specter of violence over all of our politics.

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Trump remains unpopular, and his illegal actions remain very unpopular, but it is his legal actions that are setting the groundwork for this unpopularity not to matter because the public will, as expressed in elections, the one final sovereign in a democracy, may be rendered powerless in the coming illiberal regime. And unfortunately, an authoritarian’s incentive for illiberalism and oppression increases as his popularity decreases.

Which leads me to resistance.

The issue with resisting is that it presents a type of collective action problem where we would all be better off if we resisted these incursions on our freedom, but we are disincentivized to pay the individual costs of doing so. Rather than fighting for our freedom, we each would prefer to freeride on the struggle of others for the freedoms we enjoy. The stakes for this were elegantly explained by M. Gessen, recalling how, as Russia’s short-lived democracy slipped away, individuals were unwilling to pay the costs of opposing or may have even benefited from going along with the authoritarian.

Put another way, I think we can consider the protection of freedom to be a sort of “commons problem,” captured in the Aristotle quote above. The most famous example of this class of problems came in the description of the English common pastures that benefited all members of a community but the maintenance of which no one person was responsible for. Each individual exploited these commons for their own small gain until, one day, the common pastures were gone. This has been described as the “Tragedy of the Commons.” The freedom we enjoy is a common resource that we all must be committed to protecting, but no single one of us is responsible for it. In our everyday life, it just exists and each of us is better off for it. But when it is threatened, each of us individually will let it erode ever so slightly…until it is gone. The tragedy of freedom.

This is how democracy dies. It is not by a dramatic coup of jackboots marching down Pennsylvania Avenue but by the dismissal of an independent bureaucrat here, another there. The silencing of a journalist here and another there. And by the silence of each potential critic as they remain quiet, waiting for the other person to say something.

So, what can we do? The problem is hard because we are all individually incentivized to let the common blessing of freedom dwindle and eventually die, even though we would all prefer to keep it alive. To change this calculation, we need to change the payoff structure: we need to make each individual act of resistance worthwhile. Here are a few ideas.

1. Increase the reward for resisting. First and foremost, we need to celebrate the hell out of resisters. Did they refuse to resign their post during a political purge? We need to give them all the possible kudos and the resulting psychological benefits of those kudos. We need to make them the most celebrated people in America. They should receive medals from every blue state governor. Put them on every morning show. We should have them each seeing seven-figure book contracts in the future.

Even better is if we can materially commit to resistance. Pro bono legal representation has never been more critical. Taking it further (and this may sound farfetched, I know) it would be great if well-resourced institutions and individuals could commit to financially supporting people who fall under Trump’s purges. It’s not much, but I can say that if somebody loses their job resisting Trump, I’ll do everything in my power to get them to Harvard.

2. Create a costly commitment to resisting. In other words, make it costly for somebody not to resist. I know this may sound coercive, so let me explain. I am saying that people should publicly commit themselves to stand up to Trump’s illiberalism now before it targets them or somebody close to them. Think about the signers of the Declaration of Independence signaling that they would not back down from their commitment to free themselves of the tyrant by publicly pledging their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

How does this change the incentives for resisting? For one, it creates a reputational cost for breaking commitments. Individual media executives must hate Trump’s lawsuits. However, each individual company attacked by Trump is incentivized to settle with him and keep quiet to avoid further attacks. Consider, though, if media executives publicly say that they will never, ever, under any circumstances, settle one of Trump’s frivolous free-press-killing lawsuits. Then, at least, if they do settle, they pay reputational and psychological costs for reneging on that commitment. Better yet would be if media executives do this collectively. Get together with other media executives, decide on your lines in the sand, and then announce those to the world.

If you think that you may be asked to carry out Trump’s illiberalism or are a target of one of his purges, write your letter of refusal now. Post it publicly. If you can’t post it publicly now, you and your colleague can each write a letter and entrust it to the other to be released when an agreed-upon line is crossed.

If your reputation is not enough of a motivation, put money in a shared pool and entrust a third party to hold that money with the promise of keeping it from you if you break ranks (perhaps by spending it on something you really don’t like).

Most of us won’t be asked to carry out Trump’s illiberalism directly, but we have a responsibility to resist it. Publicly commit with your friends to go to protests as they start to appear. Create a credible commitment to lose something if you break your promise.

3. Finally, we need to diffuse the costs by not relying on individuals to carry the burden of resistance. We can’t rely on brave individual bureaucrats to hold out against Trump’s purges. Institutions with inherent collective action potential, such as unions, need to be prepared to use this potential. This is especially true of institutions that can provide some counter-leverage against Trump’s illiberalism. Unions can hit Trump where it hurts with work stoppages. Trump is trying to purge the federal government workforce, but he still needs part of this workforce to carry out the essential tasks of the American government. A beautiful thing would be for these workers to stop work in protest and for Trump to pay the political cost of the resulting disruption to American life. An even more beautiful thing would be for other unions to be prepared to stop work in support of federal workers. It’s not much, but I would love to see the American Association of University Professors join such an effort.

I know these are not adequate ideas for the enormity of the problem at hand. I also know that urging resistance is easy for me to say. Right now, I am not facing the costs of resistance. But consider this my pre-registered commitment not to comply.

I am here trying to create strategies to make it easier for others to endure these costs. Finding these strategies is crucial because the dilemma of collective action is real, and the consequences of this dilemma are severe: when we don’t find ways to resist these attacks, working together as best we can, our common pool of freedom will evaporate until bearing the costs of resistance, hard as it may be for some, but relatively minor for most of us, will simply become overwhelming for us all.

Without a doubt, this same question could be asked at other universities and institutions across the country. What are we doing while our democracy is under attack?

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I rise today to ask what Harvard leadership and, more specifically, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will do to protect Harvard and higher education against an unprecedented assault on higher education and democracy.

I do not intend to sound alarmist and, indeed, as an academic it is not in my nature to do so. I also don’t raise this as a partisan issue. Rather, it is important to understand that, in the last two weeks, political scientists like me, people who study democracy and study when it ends, are using words like “authoritarian” to describe what is happening in the United States. Sober-minded scholars are saying that we are facing a potentially existential crisis for American democracy with strong parallels to the end of liberal democracy in other countries, such as Hungary. We could be wrong, and if our democracy doesn’t fail, we won’t know whether it is because we were wrong in raising the alarm or because we raised the alarm and pushed back and saved our system of government. But I don’t want to look back years from now and ask why we didn’t speak up.

What does this have to do with Harvard? In countries across the world that have experienced democratic backsliding, higher education has been a target. And, predictably, in the past two weeks, we have seen an onslaught of actions targeting science and learning, many of which impact the FAS directly. These include suspensions of scientific funding, including at the NIH and NSF. The CDC recently announced intentions to censor scientific papers that have forbidden language, including words such as “gender”. NSF proposals now have a list of words that will flag them for potential violation of executive orders. These include words such as “historically”. Scientific data is disappearing from government websites. The administration has promised to revoke the visas of foreign students who are practicing the First Amendment rights guaranteed to every person in this country and are part of our core university values. I could go on with this list, but there isn’t enough time.

What has Harvard’s response to this been? Harvard has attempted to placate these illiberal forces. It has hired a lobbying firm and the personal services of one of Donald Trump’s primary fundraisers. It has adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, a dangerous limitation on free expression, in an apparent attempt to head off further criticism. More generally, it has looked for ways, from banning expression in the library to the use of chalk on sidewalks, to stifle dissent when dissent is probably what we need most in this country right now. Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times called Harvard’s acts “capitulation” saying it has “fall[en] in line” with schools bowing to Trump’s attacks on the academy. And right now, I must say that this capitulation seems to be coming from the Office of the General Counsel while faculty in the FAS, perhaps those most likely to be targeted by these attacks and best positioned to defend against them, have been sidelined.

Indeed, Harvard’s strategy seems to be to keep its head down for the next four years and convince critics that we really aren’t that woke. But I hope we can see what a foolish strategy this is. The graveyard of regret is filled with people and institutions who kept their heads down until it was too late. And I must emphasize that this isn’t just about Harvard, it is about Harvard’s place as a leader in civil society. If civil society does not push back against attacks on democracy, democracy will crumble.

So, my question is what will Harvard and, more specifically, the FAS do to ensure the survival of our institution in its current form and to protect our scholars and students and to do our duty as a leading American institution to protect higher education and its place in democracy?

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This sort of argument is exemplified by a recent piece from my colleague at Harvard Law School, Noah Feldman, arguing that we’ll be fine because Trump’s actions are clearly unconstitutional or against statutory law and, as such, lawyers will sue, and judges will rule against the administration. That will be that. Of course, Trump has done a flurry of illegal actions, but Feldman believes this will be okay because the legal “whack-a-mole” will continue until Trump runs out of energy, which he believes is bound to happen sooner or later.

I hope he is right, but I fear that he is not.

The problem with relying on judges to save us is threefold:

1. Much of what Trump is doing is not against the law, yet the actions still can degrade the norms by which our system operates. Scholars of democracy recognize that it is not necessarily the letter of the law that makes things work, but the tacit norm or agreement by political actors not to do certain things. For example, there is nothing illegal about Trump demanding payment from media companies asking for his favor. Yes, it seems like it should be illegal for the President of the United States to sue the media, but it is not. A judge can’t stop Trump from doing this, and already his actions are dangerously encroaching on the freedom of the press.

As another example, Trump can’t legally just wholesale fire civil servants without cause, but he can certainly make it uncomfortable for many of them, and this can reshape the civil service to his liking very quickly. People don’t want to work in a hostile workplace, or a place they feel is without purpose. They don’t want to be an ideological minority. They may leave for attractive jobs elsewhere. When processes like this start, they tend to accelerate.

When these legal purges include civil servants at places like the Department of Justice, it can become quite dangerous for us all, not just the civil servants, because law enforcement and prosecutors can make life really uncomfortable for citizens even without convicting them of a crime. Who wants to be investigated for criticizing the President? United States Attorneys are already threatening to do so. Yes, a judge might ultimately interfere with this abuse, but your average citizen doesn’t want to face such investigations, so critical mouths may just remain shut. For the adult lives of most Americans, we haven’t worried about such things because we thought of law enforcement as apolitical. But that the Justice Department is apolitical is just a norm. That’s it. It isn’t written into law anywhere. It has survived as a norm because the people in charge kept it that way, and that norm appears to be quickly going away.

2. Unfortunately, judges are ideological creatures too. The political science on this is clear. Yes, judges are bound by precedent, but this is clearly balanced along with ideological interpretations of that precedent. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see things like forum shopping by plaintiffs and different judges ruling differently on the same case. Feldman confidently states that Trump’s assault on birthright citizenship will fail because “the high court is not going to announce a brand-new, made-up interpretation of the 14th Amendment”. But, of course, the very meaning of the 14^th Amendment as we understand it today was shaped by earlier court interpretations and political battles. And to be frank, I can’t understand how anybody could look at the court’s recent decisions, including most glaringly, the new-found right of Presidents to be immune from prosecution for actions taken in office, and not think that this court is capable of a wild abandonment of our previous understanding of the constitutional order. And, of course, the President can continue to stack the judiciary in his favor with only Congress standing in his way…which leads me to my next point.

3. Congress is currently very weak, and the law can change. There is nothing in the Constitution about civil service protection. There is nothing about USAID. There is nothing about Inspector Generals. These are the creations of previous Congresses. With Republican majorities in both houses, they could change these laws. The only thing standing in their way is the Senate Filibuster, but even that could change. Right now, Republican majorities are thin enough that any legislation may be hard to pass. However, our baseline assumption should be that Members of Congress will do Trump’s bidding, so even a thin majority can legislate if bullied enough by the President. This has only become truer over time. If Trump continues to bully the press and opposition, to make life tough on his opponents, then it will become even more true. More darkly, in places like Hungry, illiberalism, much like what Trump is now practicing, preceded the eventual reforming of the constitution that entrenched further illiberalism.

As much as we may wish that the Constitution and the capable lawyers will defend us from assaults on democracy, this is simply not enough. I admire and value the lawyers on the frontline of this test of our democracy, but we can’t turn things over to them and assume everything will be okay. Our civil society (and elected officials) is a crucial actor in this fight, and if we don’t do our part, it might not ultimately matter what the lawyers or judges have to say.

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