Tag: Alexander

PKM Embodied By Bryan Alexander – Teaching in Higher Ed

I’m in San Diego at the POD Network conference this week, which means I get to observe myself in action as I attempt to moderate all the wonderful nuggets of potential learning coming my way, while recognizing that I need to keep some type of self restraint, lest I get too overwhelmed with all that is coming at me at one time. This conference brings together people in the field of educational development, who work closely with faculty to heighten teaching effectiveness in a higher education context.

This topic from Harold Jarche’s PKM workshop focuses on adding value. Jarche shares 14 ways to acquire knowledge from the quintessential PKM practicer, Maria Popova at The Marginalian, and her review _You Can Do Anything_ by James Mangan, written in 1936. He then categorizes the methods in terms of how they align with PKM in this graphic from Jarche:
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Much of what I have thought of as the seek part of my PKM practice has to do with receiving (which may be classified here as reading and listening). What I realize I have been doing for more than a decade through podcasting also fits well here: asking. Had you asked me to map out my podcasting adventures on top of the seek-sense-share model, I certainly could have given you a rudimentary framework with examples, but I’m enjoying this far more expansive way of thinking about those practices specific to the work I do for the podcast. The PKM I do more as a solo endeavor (reading RSS feeds and bookmarking a bunch of items each day) compliments the more regular, public sharing I do through the podcast.

Since I’m at the POD Conference this week, trying to balance out the desire to capitalize on the many opportunities to connect with a need for alone time, as well, I accepted a dinner invitation that I knew would go past my normal bedtime. I tend to wake up super early and therefore head to bed far earlier than most people. However, I had a sense that this dinner would be worth it and it was.

One of the people I got to sit and talk a long while with was Bryan Alexander. I know him from having interviewed him twice, now, for Teaching in Higher Ed. He brilliantly exemplifies what a long-term PKM habit looks like through his hosting of The Future Trends Forum, the Future Trends in Technology and Education Report (FTTE Report), and his blog. At the dinner, I witnessed Bryan’s voracious curiosity and his embodiment of what it looks like to ask, as part of one’s PKM pursuits.

Popova writes about asking:

Every person possessing knowledge is more than willing to communicate what he knows to any serious, sincere person who asks. The question never makes the asker seem foolish or childish — rather, to ask is to command the respect of the other person who in the act of helping you is drawn closer to you, _likes you better_ and will go out of his way on any future occasion to share his knowledge with you.

Bryan asked questions throughout dinner and peaked my curiosity about the others’ video watching, podcast listening, tv/movie watching, and book reading habits, among other things. I enjoyed adding a couple of items to my Sequel App queue. I wish the app had a listing of items I have added, presented chronologically, as unless I add a note to an item, I don’t wind up remembering who suggested something to me. I’m pretty sure Bryan suggested Pluribus to us, though it also easily could have been Tom Tobin, from earlier in the evening. Actually, now that I think about it, whatever Tom had suggested did get a note added to it, at the time, so I’ve added a h/t note re: Bryan Alexander for Pluribus (h/t = tip of the hat, on internet parlance, as in who do you want to give credit to for suggesting something to you, as you share it).

It may seem strange that I like remembering who recommended things to me, after the fact. To me, that’s part of my sensemaking and ongoing relationship deepening habits. In this case, Pluribus is a scifi show, which is a genre I used to think that I didn’t like, which I’m quickly realizing was probably never the case, I just didn’t explore it much in the past. Since Bryan is a futurist, I’m intrigued by the sorts of fictional works that shape his thinking on an ongoing basis. Now I’m wondering if it was Tom Tobin who recommended the show, or maybe both of them did. Hmmm…

As I review all of the ways Mangan articulated for acquiring knowledge, I’m realizing the extent to which Bryan Alexander embodies all of those in his practice. It was such a delight to get to talk to him for an extended period of time, without the normal nerves of getting ready to press record for a podcast interview, or to have just finished talking with him for an episode and then needing to quickly close down the conversation at the end of our scheduled time together (I could talk with him for hours, which was proven this week!). I’m excited to talk to him at the beginning of December for an episode that will air in January about his forthcoming book:

Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis, by Bryan Alexander

He gave a keynote here at POD25 about the book’s themes, as well, so between reading it in the coming ten days and having heard him share via his address, I feel that much more excited about our upcoming conversation.

One might think that someone who knows as much as Bryan does would be the person doing the most talking at the dinner table. However, close observation of Bryan’s conversational habits would quickly reveal his heightened curiosity in settings like that, taking in what’s being shared, and setting up even more possibilities for each person to engage in the conversation.

I’m going to look forward to returning to these 14 ways to acquire knowledge and considering even more the ways in which I get to witness them in practice during events like the one I’m at this week.

PS. My deep gratitude to Olivia from OneHE who extended the invitation for the wonderful dinner with such curious, interesting people, including Bryan.

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November 22, 2025
“Peak Higher Education” Book Debuts January 6, 2026 (Bryan Alexander)

Peak Higher Ed: How to Survive the Looming Academic Crisis by Bryan Alexander debuts January 6, 2026. Here’s a synopsis.

Over the past decade, American colleges and universities have seen enrollment decline, campuses close, programs cut, faculty and staff laid off, and public confidence erode. In Peak Higher Ed, futurist Bryan Alexander forecasts what the next decade might hold if we continue down this path. He argues that the United States has passed its high-water mark for postsecondary education and now faces a critical turning point. How will higher ed institutions respond to this wave of change and crisis?

Combining data-driven research with scenario modeling, Alexander outlines a powerful framework for understanding what led to this moment: declining birthrates, surging student debt, rising tuition, shifting political winds, and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree. He maps out how these forces, if left unchecked, could continue to reshape academia by shrinking its footprint, narrowing its mission, and jeopardizing its role in addressing the planet’s most pressing challenges, from climate change to artificial intelligence. Alexander explores how institutions might adapt or recover, presenting two possible futures: a path of managed descent and a more hopeful course of reinvention.

Peak Higher Ed examines the fraying of the “college for all” consensus, the long shadow of pandemic-era disruptions, and the political polarization that has placed universities in the crosshairs. Written for educators, policymakers, students, and anyone invested in the future of higher learning, this book offers a deeply informed, unflinching look at the road ahead and the choices that will determine whether colleges and universities retreat from their peak or rise to a new one.

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November 3, 2025
When climate change dries out cloud computing (Bryan Alexander)

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared at BryanAlexander.org.]

Greetings from a northeastern Virginia where the heat has been brutal. For several weeks we lived under temperatures reaching 100 ° F, while humidity sopped everything badly enough that the “feels like” reading hit 110. (And the Trump administration decided to federalize and militarize DC – that’s for another post.)

North of us, epic wildfires burned swathes of Canada. “‘It’s the size of New Brunswick, to put it into context,’ Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University, told CBC News.” This is apparently the second worst fire year on record. Climate change has not only increased temperatures in that nation but dried out regions, making them tinder.

Parts of Europe are also suffering under horrendous heat waves. As a result the region is experiencing upticks in fires, heat exhaustion, and deaths. Temperatures are hitting the 30s and even 40s (centigrade; for Americans, this means upper 90s and over 100 F).

I’d like to explain about how these are predictable outcomes of the worsening climate crisis, how global warming is doing precisely what we thought it would do, but I’d also like to get in the habit of issuing shorter blog posts. Besides, I suspect my readers either get the point or have turned away by now.

What I wanted to focus on today was a recent connection made between Europe’s fierce summar, the climate crisis… and digital technology. Britain is suffering under drought conditions exacerbated by global warming, a drought so harsh that the government has assembled a National Drought Group to organize responses. (One of my shorthand expressions for thinking of climate change is that regions with too much water will receive more, while those with less, less. A kind of climate Matthew Effect. The UK drought is an exception for now.)

Yesterday the drought team issued a report on the crisis, summing up steps various local authorities are taking along with series of recommendations for Britons wanting to take actions against the drought. I’d like to draw your attention to one of them:

Fiery red box not in the original.

“Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.”

There’s much we can say or ask about that single line. Just how much of an impact does cloud computing hosting have on British water use? If this is aimed at residents, are businesses or the government taking similar measures? Should one use cloud services not colocated in drought-stricken areas?

At a broader level I wonder about the possibility that the growing anti-digital movement, which some call the techlash, might finally become focused on climate implications. Do we decide that advanced computing (think generative AI or bitcoin mining) has too large a footprint and must be curtailed? Or do we instead assess its climate benefits – crunching vast arrays of data, running simulations, generating new research – as outweighing these costs?

For years I’ve been asking audiences about the climate-digital connection. I’ve asked people to imagine individual and group choices they might have to make in the future as the crisis worsens and electricity becomes more fragile, more restricted. These are provocative, clarifying questions. Think of choosing between WiFi and air conditioning, or cloud computing versus refrigeration. And now we have a first glimpse of that future with the British government requesting Britons to cut back their digital memories. We can imagine new questions in that light. How would you choose between streaming video and potable water, or Zoom versus crop irrigation?

The Higher Education Inquirer reminds us of the higher education implications.

For colleges and universities, the connection between digital behavior and resource conservation is an opportunity to model sustainability. Digital housekeeping campaigns could encourage staff and students to purge outdated files, trim redundant email chains, and archive with intent. Institutions can audit cloud storage use, revisit data retention policies, and prioritize providers that invest in energy- and water-efficient infrastructure. These choices can be paired with curriculum initiatives that make students aware of the climate–digital nexus, grounding sustainability not just in labs and gardens, but in inboxes and servers.

Indeed. These actions are available to us, should we choose to take them.

Yet this is a difficult conversation to have now, at least in the United States, as the Trump administration attacks climate science even to the point of hurling a satellite out of Earth orbit. Businesses are walking back climate commitments. Journalists don’t mention the crisis very often. Democrats are falling silent. Yet, strangely enough, climate change continues, ratcheting up steadily. We must think and act in response. That means, among other things, rethinking our digital infrastructure and practices.

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August 13, 2025
Trump Versus Academia Update (Bryan Alexander)

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July 12, 2025
a summer 2025 update (Bryan Alexander)

Greetings from early July. I’m back home in northern Virginia where the heat is blazing and the humidity sopping. Weather.com thinks it “feels like 102° F” and I agree. The cats also agree, because they retreated elegantly inside to air conditioning after a brief outside stroll.

I wrote “back home” because my wife and I spent last week celebrating our 32nd anniversary in Canada (here’s one snapshot). Afterwards I was hoping to get back into the swing of things, blogging, Substacking, vlogging various topics already under way, but things have been advancing at such a manic pace that I have to leap in in a hurry.

Case in point: after blogging about campus closures, cuts, and mergers last month more closures and cuts (albeit no mergers) have appeared in just the past few weeks. In this post you’ll see a list of these, with links to supporting news stories and official documents. Alas, this has become a tradition on this site. (From last year: March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July, September, November. From this year: February, June.) My book on peak higher education is now in the editing process; hopefully by the time it appears the topic won’t be simply historical.

Today we’ll touch on one closure, then focus on cuts, with a few reflections at the end.

1. Closing colleges and universities

In Michigan Siena Heights University (Catholic) will close after the upcoming academic year. The reasons: “the financial situation, operational challenges, and long-term sustainability,” according to the official statement. A local account concurs, “citing rising costs and stiffer competition for new students.”

The official website doesn’t reflect this on its front page.

2. Program and staffing cuts

Also in Michigan, Concordia University (Lutheran) is shutting down most of its Ann Arbor campus programs. A much smaller set of offerings is what’s next:

Starting June 2025, the private Lutheran institution will offer just nine programs — all in medical-related fields — on its physical campus. That’s down from 53 campus programs the university currently lists on its website. It will offer another seven online programs, mostly in education fields, which is down from more than 60 currently.

Also nearby, Michigan State University (public, research) announced its intention to cut faculty and staff positions this year. The drivers: inflation boosting costs, especially in health care; Trump administration research funding cuts; possible state support cuts; potential international student reduction.

Brown University (research; Rhode Island) is planning to cut an unspecified number of staff this summer. Furthermore, “[a]dditional measures include scaling back capital spending and adjusting graduate admissions levels after limiting budget growth for doctoral programs earlier this year.” The reasons here are financial, but based on the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research funding, not enrollment problems.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education announced shutting down a huge sweep of academic programs across that state’s public universities. More than 400 degrees will end, with 75 ended outright and 333 “merged or consolidated” with other programs. The whole list is staggering. There’s a lot of detail in that Indiana plan, from defining student minima to establishing various options for campuses, appealing closures to timelines for revving up new degrees. It’s unclear how many faculty and/or staff cuts will follow.

Columbia College Chicago (private, arts focused) laid off twenty full-time professors. The school is facing enrollment declines and financial problems. Nearly all of these faculty member are – were – tenure track, which makes this another example of the queen sacrifice.

University of California-Santa Cruz (public, research) is terminating its German and Persian language programs, laying off their instructors. This sounds part of a broader effort to cut costs against a deficit, a deficit caused by “rising labor costs and constrained student enrollment growth,” according to officials.

Boston University (private, research) announced it would lay off 120 staff members as part of a budget-cutting strategy. BU will also close 120 open staff positions and “around 20 positions will undergo a change in schedule” (I’m not sure what that means – shift from full time to part?). The reasons: Trump administration cuts and uncertainty, plus the longstanding issues of “rising inflation, changing demographics, declining graduate enrollment, and the need to adapt to new technologies.”

The president of Temple University (public, research, Pennsylvania) discussed job cuts as part of a 5% budget cut. Reasons include lower enrollment which led to “a structural deficit [for which] university reserves were used to cover expenses.”

Champlain College (Vermont) is closing some low-enrolling majors. The avowed goal is to
“design a new ‘career-focused’ curriculum for the fall of 2026 ‘that is focused on and driven by employer needs and student interests.’”

The accounting program, for instance, saw its enrollment decline from 60 students in 2015 to 20 in February 2024, according to documents from the school’s Academic Affairs Committee. The law program, similarly, had little student interest, Hernandez said, and had only three students apply in the fall of 2023, while the data analytics program had only two applications.

At the same time the school is facing serious challenges. Enrollment has sunk from 4,778 students in 2016 to 3,200 last year. The college ran deficits in some reason years and a federal audit criticized the amount of debt it carries. This year “the college’s bond rating was lowered, and its outlook downgraded to ‘negative’ by S&P Global Ratings.”

Looking across the lake from Burlington, near Champlain’s campus back in 2017: a cheery image to balance sad stories.

A small but symbolic cut is under way at Albright College (private, liberal arts, Pennsylvania), whose president decided to sell their art college at auction. “It includes pieces by Karel Appel, Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott, Bridget Riley, Leon Golub, Jasper Johns, Jacob Lawrence, Marisol, Gordon Parks, Jesús Rafael Soto and Frederick Eversley, among others.”

Why do this? according to the administration, it was a question of relative value:

“We needed to stop the bleeding,” says James Gaddy, vice-president for administration at Albright, noting that over the past two years the college has experienced shortfalls of $20m. Calling himself and the college’s president Debra Townsley, both of whom were hired last year, “turn-around specialists”, Gaddy claimed that Albright’s 2,300-object art collection was “not core to our mission” as an educational institution and was costing the college more than the art is worth.

“The value of the artworks is not extraordinary,” he says, estimating the total value of the pieces consigned to Pook & Pook at $200,000, but claimed that the cost of maintaining the collection was high and that the cost of staffing the art gallery where the objects were displayed and (mostly) stored was “more than half a million dollars” a year.

A screenshot of some of the auction lots.

3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

Cornell University is preparing staff cuts in the wake of Trump administration research funding reductions.

The University of Minnesota’s administration agreed to a 7.5% cut across its units, along with a tuition increase. The president cited frozen state support and rising costs.

New York University (NYU) announced a 3% budget cut. So far this is about “emphasizing cuts to such functions as travel, events, meals, and additional other-than-personal-service (OTPS) items.” NYU will keep on not hiring new administrators and is encouraging some administrators and tenured professors to retire.

Yale University paused ten ongoing construction projects because of concerns about cuts to federal monies.

Reflections

Many of these stories reflect trends I’ve been observing for a while. Declining enrollment is a major problem for most institutions. The strategy of cutting jobs to balance a budget remains one at least some leaders find useful. The humanities tend to suffer more cuts than others (scroll down the Indiana pdf for a sample). Depending on the state, state governments can increase budget problems or alter academic program offerings.

The second Trump administration’s campaign against higher education is drawing blood, as we can see from universities citing the federal research cuts in their budgets and personnel decisions. Note that this is before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s provisions take hold, from capping student aid to increasing endowment taxes. And this is also before whatever decrease will appear with international student enrollment this fall. (Here’s my video series on Trump vs higher ed; new episode is in the pipeline.)

Note the number of elite institutions in today’s post. In the past I’ve been told that the closures, mergers, and cuts primarily hit low-ranked and marginal institutions, which was sometimes true. But now we’re seeing top tier universities enacting budget cuts, thanks to the Trump administration.

Let me close by reminding everyone that these are human stories. Program cuts hurt students’ course of student. Budget cuts impact instructors and staff of all kinds. When we see the statistics pile up we can lose sight of the personal reality. My heart goes out to everyone injured by these institutional moves.

Finally, I’d like to invite anyone with information on a college or university’s plans to close, merge, or cut to share them with me, either as comments on this post, as notes on social media, or by contacting me privately here. I write these posts based largely on public, open intelligence (news reports, investigations, roundups) but also through tips, since higher education sometimes has issues with transparency. We need better information on these events.

(thanks to Will Emerson, Karl Hakkarainen, Kristen Nyht, Cristián Opazo, Peter Shea, Jason Siko, George Station, Nancy Smyth, Ed Webb, and Andrew Zubiri for supplying links and feedback)

This article first appeared at bryanalexander.org

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July 10, 2025
Does higher ed still make sense for students, financially? (Bryan Alexander)

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared at BryanAlexander.org.]

Is a college degree still worth it?

The radio program/podcast Marketplace hosted me as a guest last week to speak to the question. You can listen to it* or read my notes below, or both. I have one reflection at the end of this post building on one interview question.

One caveat or clarification before I get hate mail: the focus of the show was entirely on higher education’s economics. We didn’t discuss the non-financial functions of post-secondary schooling because that’s not what the show (called “Marketplace”) is about, nor did we talk about justifying academic study for reasons of personal development, family formation, the public good, etc. The conversation was devoted strictly to the economic proposition.

The hosts, Kimberly Adams and Reema Khrais, began by asking if higher ed still made financial sense. Yes, I answered, for a good number of people – but not everyone. Much depends on your degree and your institution’s reputation. And I hammered home the problem of some college but no degree. The hosts asked if that value proposition was declining. My response: the perception of that value is dropping. Here I emphasized the reality, and the specter, of student debt, along with anxieties about AI and politics. Then I added my hypothesis that the “college for all” consensus is breaking up.

Next the hosts asked me what changing (declining) attitudes about higher education mean for campuses. I responded by outlining the many problems, centered around the financial pressures many schools are under. I noted Trump’s damages then cited my peak higher education model. Marketplace asked me to explain the appeal of alternatives to college (the skilled trades, certificates, boot camps, etc), which I did, and then we turned to automation, which I broke up into AI vs robotics, before noting gender differences.

Back to college for all: which narrative succeeds it? I didn’t have a good, single answer right away. We touched on a resurgence of vocational technology, then I sang the praises of liberal education. We also talked about the changing value of different degrees – is the BA the new high school diploma? Is a master’s degree still a good idea? I cited the move to reduce degree demands from certain fields, as well as the decline of the humanities, the crisis of computer science, and the growing importance of allied health.

After my part ended, Adams and Khrais pondered the role of higher education as a culture war battlefield. Different populations might respond in varied ways – perhaps adults are more into the culture war issues, and maybe women (already the majority of students) are at greater risk of automation.

So what follows the end of college for all?

If the American consensus that K-12 should prepare every student for college breaks down, if we no longer have a rough agreement that the more post-secondary experience people get, the better, the next phase seems to be… mixed. Perhaps we’re entering an intermediary phase before a new settlement becomes clear.

One component seems to be a resurgence in the skilled trades, requiring either apprenticeship, a short community college course of study, or on the job training. Demand is still solid, at least until robotics become reliable and cost-effective in these fields, which doesn’t seem to be happening in at least the short term. This needs preparation in K-12, and we’re already seeing the most prominent voices calling for a return to secondary school trades training. There’s a retro dimension to this which might appeal to older folks. (I’ve experienced this in conversations with Boomers and my fellow Gen Xers, as people reminisce about shop class and home ec.)

A second piece of the puzzle would be businesses and the public sector expanding their education functions. There is already an ecosystem of corporate campuses, online training, chief learning officers, and more; that could simply grow as employers seek to wean employees away from college.

A third might be a greater focus on skills across the board. Employers demand certain skills to a higher degree of clarity, perhaps including measurements for soft skills. K-12 schools better articulate student skill achievement, possibly through microcredentials and/or expanded (portfolio) certification. Higher education expands its use of prior learning assessment for adult learners and transfer students, while also following or paralleling K-12 in more clearly identifying skills within the curriculum and through outcomes.

A fourth would be greater politicization of higher education. If America pulls back from college for all, college for some arrives and the question of who gets to go to campus becomes a culture war battlefield. Already a solid majority of students are women, so we might expect gender politics to intensify, with Republicans and men’s rights activists increasingly calling on male teenagers to skip college while young women view university as an even more appropriate stage of their lives. Academics might buck 2025’s trends and more clearly proclaim the progressive aims they see postsecondary education fulfilling, joined by progressive politicians and cultural figures. Popular culture might echo this, with movies/TV shows/songs/bestsellers depicting the academy as either a grim ideological factory turning students into fiery liberals or as a safe place for the flowering of justice and identity.

Connecting these elements makes me recall and imagine stories. I can envision two teenagers, male and female, talking through their expectations of college. One sees it as mandatory “pink collar” preparation while the other dreads it for that reason. The former was tracked into academic classes while the latter appreciated maker space time and field trips to work sites. Or we might follow a young man as he enters woodworking and succeeds in that field for years, feeling himself supported in his masculinity and also avoiding student debt, until he decides to return to school after health problems limit his professional abilities. Perhaps one business sets up a campus and an apprenticeship system which it codes politically, such as claiming a focus on merit and not DEI, on manly virtues and traditional culture. In contrast another firm does the same but without any political coding, instead carefully anchoring everything in measured and certified skill development.

Over all of these options looms the specter of AI, and here the picture is more muddy. Do “pink collar” jobs persist as alternatives to the experience of chatbots, or do we automate those functions? Does post-secondary education become mandatory for jobs handling AIs, which I’ve been calling “AI wranglers”? If automation depresses the labor force, do we come to see college as a gamble on scoring a rare, well paying job?

I’ll stop here. My thanks to Marketplace for the kind interview on a vital topic.

*My audio quality isn’t the best because I fumbled the recording. Sigh.

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June 26, 2025

This Thursday on the Future Trends Forum: an international enrollment scenario (Bryan Alexander)

How might international student enrollment changes impact colleges and universities? This Thursday, on June 5th, from 2-3 pm ET, the Future Trends Forum is holding an interactive exercise to work through an evidence-based scenario wherein fall 2025 numbers crash. Everyone will participate by representing themselves in the roles they currently have or would like to take up, and in those positions explore the scenario.

We will develop responses to the situation in real time, which may help us think ahead for whatever form the crisis eventually takes. In this exercise, everyone gets to collaboratively explore how they might respond.

As with our first election simulation, not to mention our solarpunk, generative AI, black swan, and digital twin workshops, this one will involve participants as cocreators and investigators, exploring and determining what might come next. Consider it a trial run for a potential future.

To RSVP ahead of time, or to jump straight in at 2 pm ET this Thursday, click here:

https://georgetown.zoom.us/meeting/register/iHJBlk7_QAGzfC2JEfEbZQ

To find more information about the Future Trends Forum, including notes and recordings of all previous sessions, click here: http://forum.futureofeducation.us/.

(chart from Statista)

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June 4, 2025

Trump vs academia as of May 14 2025 (Bryan Alexander)

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May 16, 2025
Trump Versus Academia, April 25, 2025 (Bryan Alexander)

Here’s my latest Trump and academia vlog report. If you’re new to this series, these videos are where I summarize what the Trump administration has been doing to higher education, and how colleges and universities have responded. Here are the latest developments since the last video, as of today, April 25, 2025.

Previous episodes here:

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April 26, 2025
Joining two anti-Trump events this month (Bryan Alexander)
Over the past two weeks I carved out time to participate in two
anti-Trump in-person events. In this post I wanted to share some notes
on the experiences, along with photos.
Last Thursday, after the regular Future Trends Forum session, my son
Owain and I went to a local town hall led by our federal representative,
Democrat Suhas Subramanyam.
It took place in a community center and was very crowded, packed with
people. Before it began I didn’t hear much discussion, but did see some
folks with anti-Trump and -Musk signs. I found some seats for Owain
and I and we each opened up a Google Doc on our phones to take notes.

Subramanyam took the stage and began with some brief remarks,
starting with citing the dangers of DOGE. He mentioned working in the United States Digital Service
during the Obama administration, the unit which DOGE took over as its
institutional base. Subramanyam described why he voted against the
continuing resolution to keep the government running and also spoke to
the humanitarian and governmental problems of firing so many federal
workers.

Then it was over to questions. Folks lined up before two (somewhat
functional) microphones. They told personal stories: of being lifelong
federal workers, or having family members in those positions, and now
facing their work being undone or their jobs ruined. Some spoke of
depending on federal programs (SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid, Social
Security) and fearing cuts to them. Several had military experience,
which won applause from the room. Above all was this seething sense that
Trump was a brutal and extraordinary threat, that Democrats weren’t
taking it seriously, and the question: what can we do to fight back?
Subramanyam listened hard to each one and answered thoughtfully,
respectfully, often pointing to resources or actions we could take.

Ever the extrovert, I joined the microphone line right away. I was going
to ask about threats to higher education, but happily someone else beat
me to it. The representative offered a positive response, praising the
work of researchers and teachers, urging us to fight for educators. So,
standing in line, I came up with another question. When my turn came I
began by thanking the representative for actually doing a real town
hall meeting, not a scripted thing. I compared this meeting favorably to
Vermont’s town hall tradition, and mentioned Bernie Sanders as a
comparable example of someone who also knows how to do a community
meeting well, and the room erupted in applause.

So I asked about climate change, how we – academics and everyone –
can do climate work in this situation. I noted how the crisis was
worsening, and how Trump was going to make things even more difficult. I
was impressed to have Subramanyam’s full attention while I spoke. I
was equally impressed that he replied by supporting my remarks and work,
then called for more climate action in the face of Trump’s actions.

Nobody
got a photo of me that I know of, so here’s a shot of the
representative (on right) paying close attention to one resident
(standing on left).

(A sign of climate in culture today: people applauded my question.
After I left the mic, several folks reached out to me – literally – to
thank me for raising the topic.)

Returning to that question of what can be done to oppose Trump, Subramanyam and questioners listed these actions:
- Legal action: filing lawsuits and supporting other people’s. Getting Democratic politicians to do the same.
  
  Congressional investigations into Trump: the Congressman pointed out
  that these can expose administrative malfeasance and build resistance.
  
  Flat out resistance to Trump actions. Subramanyam argued that when
  people refuse to comply, the admin sometimes backs down, saying they
  made a mistake.
  
  Doing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
  requests to get the feds to cough up documentation. They can slow-walk
  queries or outright refuse, of course, but FOIA can produce results.
  
  Phone calls to people in red counties. (I think this was aimed at calling GOP officials, but am not sure.
  
  People telling stories of Trump harms in whatever setting works. At
  one point Subramanyam said if the GOP wants to “flood the zone” with
  bogus content we should flood it right back with true, personal stories.
There were no calls for property damage or violence against people.
Nor did anybody used the phrase “civil disobedience” or called for such
actions.

The hour grew late and people started to drift out. Owain and I had to get home and we filed out as well.

Two weeks ago I joined a different event, a rally for science in Washington, DC.
It took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Several thousand people were
there, all ages, races, genders. The mood was upbeat despite the chill
and strong winds.

A podium rested on the steps and from there spoke quite the program of luminaries, including Bill Nye (I missed him), Francis Collins (just stepped down as NIH head), Atul Gawande (excellent medical writer, also surgeon), Phil Plait (astronomer, science communicator), and some other people I didn’t recognize. There was some singing, too.

Dr. Gawande

The overall theme was that Trump’s science cuts were awful. Speakers
hit on points under this header, such as that RFK was a dangerous idiot
and that research reductions meant that human lives would be harmed and
lost. Diversity along race and gender lines was vital. All kinds of
science were mentioned, with medicine and public health leading the
charge.

The consensus was on returning science funding to what it was under
Biden, not in expanding it. There were no claims for adding scientific
overviews to policy – it was a defensive, not offensive program.

There were plenty of signs. Some had a fine satirical edge:

Off to one side – well, down along the reflecting pool – there was an
Extinction Rebellion performance or group appearance, but I didn’t get
to see if they staged anything besides looking awesome and grim.

During the time I was there no police appeared. There weren’t any counterprotesters.

Eventually I had to start the trip home. As I walked along the
reflecting pool towards the Metro station I heard speakers continuing
and the roar of the appreciative crowd.

What can we take away from these two events?

There is a fierce opposition to Trump and it occurs across various
sectors of society, from scientists to everyday folks (with some
overlap!). Pro-Trump people didn’t appear, so I didn’t see arguments or
worse between groups. I don’t know if this means that the president’s
supporters are just confident or prefer to work online.

The Democratic party is not in a leadership role. Outrage precedes
and exceeds its actions so far. The town hall liked Subramanyam, but it
was clear they were bringing demands to him, and that he did not back
the party leadership.

Both events had a strong positive feel, even though each was based on
outrage. There was a sense of energy to be exerted, action to be had.

Many people visibly recorded each event, primarily through phones. I
didn’t see anyone object to this. (I tried to get people’s permission
to photograph them, when they were clearly identifiable individuals.)

My feel is that climate interest is waning among people who oppose
Trump. They aren’t denying it and will support those who speak and act
on it, but it’s no longer a leading concern.

Yet these were just two events, a very small sample size, and both in
roughly the same geographic area, about 50 miles apart. We can’t
seriously generalize from this evidence, but hopefully it’s a useful
snapshot and sample.

Personally, I found both to be rewarding and supportive. It was good
to be with people who were similarly outraged and willing to be so in
public.

American readers, are you seeing anything similar in your areas? Non-Americans, what do you think of this glimpse?

[Editors note: This article first appeared at BryanAlexander.org.]
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March 25, 2025

Tag: Alexander

1. Closing colleges and universities

2. Program and staffing cuts

3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

Reflections