I’m proud of my former classmate Chris Eisgruber, currently president of Princeton University. In a recent article in the Atlantic, he argued forcefully against the Trump adminstration’s attack on Coumbia University, in which it threatened to withhold all research funds unless Columbia made changes unrelated to the specific government complaint of antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration’s demands included changes to school admisssions criteria and the removal of several academic departments (How’s that for Cancel Culture?).
Soon after the Atlantic article, the Trump adminstration predictably targetted Princeton as well, threatening witholding of funds unless the university accepted the demands to which Columbia had already capitulated. Here’s the part I admire: Eisgruber has stood his ground in spite of the risk that the university now takes. And he has inspired other universities to build a more united, effective resistance.
Kiss what?
The only way that the Trump administration is able to exert power beyond its constitutional limits is by inspiring fear. He needs his victims to freeze or panic and then he can pick them off one by one. But if the intended victims coordinate, reject fear, and maintain their dignity, the predator is defanged. A similar approach would counter the Trump tariffs. To a laughing crowd at a fundraising dinner, as a run on American assets intensified following tariff implementation, Trump bragged, “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.” But what if nobody outside of Washington DC actually kissed his ass? This administration’s power to wreak havoc would collapse under the weight of its own lies, incompetence, and cruelty.
Resisting intelligently
Back to our Universities: While aplauding their increasing courage, i’d like to hear Chris Eisgruber and other academic leaders take more responsiblity for their part in empowering Trumpism, and make counterbalancing changes. I understand, for example, why overzealous University Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs have lost the American center. Several years ago I experienced an awkward mandatory day-long DEI training in which, as a white person, I was instructed to “check my privilege” at the door, by writing “privilege” on a notecard and pinning it to a corkboard. Such trainings are divisive in their insistence on defining humans by their most superficial characterisics and in their subtle attribution of intergenerational guilt to the “oppressor class”. (More on this in a prior post.) Further, conservative critics are right that higher education lacks political diversity. Universities should do much more to recruit conservative scholars to their history, politics, and economics departments. These will be the academics who could engage with right wing media to effectively counter charges like those made by JD Vance, that “professors are the enemy.”
Don’t let him smell fear
There will be many more opportunities for Americans stand up to the predator. Foundational attitudes in this drama should be:
- A commitment to not live our lives based on fear. (Note that Mr. Trump could seek real control over you, through laws – but that requires Congress and is too much work. Generating fear is his only tool).
- Curiosity about how Trumpism attracted so many Americans.
- Honesty about the policy changes needed to reduce that attraction, to prevent similar demagogues from exploiting popular discontent in the future.
We are lucky that this administration’s twisted program is being rolled out so cartoonishly, giving us an early opening to deflate the predator and banish his anti-American ideology to the sidelines where it has always lurked.
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