Earlier this week, University of North Carolina professor and New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom remarked on BlueSky, “It’s so weird that we’re all working like this is just a normal country.”
Indeed, I have recently been struck repeatedly by the immediate juxtaposition of the banal, logistical work of being a freelance writer and speaker and the fact that the stuff I write and speak about—teaching, academia, et al.—are under concerted attack as part of a larger assault on democratic institutions, to the point where one wonders if they’re going to collapse entirely.
I’ve accepted speaking invites for six months from now wondering if we will still have operating higher education institutions six months from now. I mean, I think we will, but at this moment I wouldn’t 100 percent guarantee it, which is a strange thing to even consider given that some of these places are literally hundreds of years old.
I even just accepted an invitation to speak at a teachers’ conference in Alberta, Canada, in April 2026, and even as I signed the contract I wondered if we will still be able to travel freely between the U.S. and Canada by then.
It strikes me that part of the strategy of those currently committing these assaults on democracy is to create this kind of cognitive dissonance. Every day brings a new example of something we didn’t think could happen: disappearing people to foreign countries without even a semblance of due process, dismantling the federal infrastructure around cancer research, a president speculating about a third term and it being taken seriously as a question of legality.
That’s just this week, by the way.
The discordancy is probably greater for those working in or adjacent to higher ed, as the sector finds itself so directly in the Trump administration crosshairs. There is more not-normal in education than elsewhere right now, though the recently announced tariffs suggest that not normal is now going to be extended worldwide.
It strikes me that we are on one of two possible trajectories. One is essentially a slide into what scholars call competitive authoritarianism, where there are some external trappings of democratic society like courts and elections still existing, but where the fix is largely in as to who and what maintains power. Hungary and Turkey are the two most obvious examples that experts cite, but we’re seeing plenty of evidence for joining them right here at home.
The so-called Big Law firms that have capitulated to Trump and pledged to do hundreds of millions of dollars of legal work in exchange for being removed from the target list seem like examples of organizations that are making their bet that they can survive in a nondemocracy provided they’re willing to curry favor with power. Republican office holders seeking to carve out exceptions from Trump tariffs for their state’s industries are another example.
So too are the higher ed institutions, such as Columbia, bending the knee to Trump. They apparently view their continued existence—be that in a democratic society or something else—as more important than protecting values like academic freedom or the First Amendment. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor who apparently is an expert on First Amendment law, sees these responses (as characterized by The New York Times) as “rational,” saying, “Sometimes people who are eager for the university to get up and make big statements have a slightly unrealistic conception of what the real-world effect of those statements would be.”
One of the upsides of the present turmoil—and it is a very small upside, I admit—is that folks are showing their true stances when it comes to the occasional fraught intersection of their purported values and material reality. Here is an esteemed First Amendment lawyer who is willing to countenance an unprecedented assault on academic freedom because the “real-world” consequences are apparently too great.
I have often lamented in this space how there has appeared to be a significant disconnect between the lofty ideals attached to higher education and how many higher education institutions act when they have a choice between living their mission or funding their operations. Feldman makes it clear which side of the divide he sits on, and he is not alone.
The other possible trajectory is that the sheer incompetence and erratic nature of Trump and those who surround him will lead to an unraveling of the assault as it implodes under the weight of public disapproval. The recent election results in Wisconsin and Florida, which showed a significant swing toward Democrats, suggest that if the public is activated and motivated, there is sufficient sentiment to defeat Trump and Republicans at the ballot box—provided we still have elections, that is.
Personally, I keep returning to the question I asked back in February: “What’s next for higher ed?” My argument that one era was over and another is to come has only been made stronger over the last month and a half. There is no going back for Columbia University. They have chosen to be something other than what they previously claimed to be. I’m certain Columbia will survive in some form, but we should not be asked to pretend that they are an example of the values we’d like to claim for higher education institutions.
Most days, I am both freaked out and hopeful, which is maybe my answer to Cottom’s musing about how we’re able to act like we’re living in a normal country. Part of the time I’m freaked out, certain that we are decidedly not a normal country and we are hurtling toward disaster.
But other times I am doing work that I think advances the values of free inquiry and personal freedom and development. I imagine going to some college or university six months from now, where we will talk about the importance of human expression through the act of writing, and then after that maybe I sit down to write a blog post, forcing myself to grapple with the world in front of me and make sense of it, even when, or especially when, it appears senseless.
Next thing you know, some thoughts have been gathered and you share them with the world.
When I first read the BlueSky post, I imagined that Cottom was thinking that we’re experiencing a disconnect or disassociation that allows us to deny the weirdness and even terror happening around us, but I think it’s the opposite.
I think it’s a sign that the work matters and that we must throw our continued support behind the leaders and institutions who are pledging to make the work that remains consistent with educational values possible. I don’t know how Feldman’s soft capitulation gets us there.
Bring me the fighters.
