BY HANK REICHMAN

I subscribe to Don Moynihan’s substack, “Can We Still Govern.”  Moynihan is Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan.  His posts are a terrific guide to how best to understand the administrative impact of the Musk-Trump assault on governance, as well as other related topics in public administration.  His latest post, “Real Chilling Effects,” begins with this paragraph:

Normally I record the classes I teach.  It gives students who miss class a chance to catch up.  I also make space in my classes to talk about what is happening in government right now.  A couple of weeks ago, students asked we keep the discussions, but stop recording the class.  They worried about any record of their words that might be viewed as criticism of the current administration, and somehow weaponized against them.

Reading these words I was taken aback.  I taught my last class some ten years ago.  In four decades of teaching I never encountered anything like this.  The notion that students in a college class fear that their words in class could be “weaponized against them” by their own government would have been inconceivable to me in the past.  The recognition that this is now the daily reality on many college campuses across the country gave me literal chills.  It was, perhaps, the scariest paragraph I’ve ever read.

Moynihan goes on to provide a bullet list of developments that illustrate how far in just weeks we’ve come from the country we have imagined and, at least to some degree, have lived in most of our lives to the reality that is the Musk-Trump regime:

• The President has politicized the Department of Justice and threatens to unleash the power of the federal government on his political enemies.  For example, he has promised to punish law firms that provide legal support for his opponents, Now, many are no longer willing to do so.
• Critics who once held security clearances or security details have them removed.
• Organizations fearful of threats from the President preemptively erase ideas, or silence dissenting voices.
• The President has suggested that critics are supporters of terrorism, using vague language that allows him to threaten nonprofits, or promise to deport protest leaders.
• Words and ideas are banned.  Censors rifle their way through government documents and websites to remove them.  Federal spaces, like schools on military bases, are purged of books that even mildly hint at the idea that diversity is a good thing.  Executive orders that purge these ideas tend to be ambiguous, leading organizations to respond broadly and to self-censor.
• Funding of research ideas is being taken away from research experts and handed to political appointees who are defunding the ideas they dislike.  Campus officials are trying to decide how to respond to government orders to remove ideas.
• The President has pardoned militant supporters who engaged in violence to try to reverse the outcome of a previous election, and demoted officials who investigated those supporters.
• The President and the richest man in the world routinely make wildly dishonest claims about the government they are running.  Critics of the employees of the richest man in the world can expect to be threatened with prosecution from the federal government.  The richest man in the world purges ideas or even methods of disseminating ideas from the platform he owns.  Qualified and credible voices who know the inner workings of [government] are afraid to publicly expose his failures.  They are threatened with firing if they explain to the public about the damage being done, or fired even when it’s their job to do so.
• Elected officials are not exempt from such threats.  The President’s opponents face threat of investigation, while even his supporters fear to disagree with him.  They also fear criticizing the richest man in the world, even though his actions in destroying much of the government are widely unpopular.
• The work of the richest man in the world is exempted from open records laws.  We really don’t know what he is doing, and members of Congress refuse to ask him in public.  And the employees charged with responding to open records requests are being fired in some agencies.
• Public employees are illegally purged if they are viewed as disloyal to the new regime.  This includes top-ranking officers in the military, and the lawyers in government who set the boundaries for what a President can do.  Within a few weeks, this has started to seem normal, and inevitable.  The media coverage often fails to mention how the President is acting illegally.
• Some of those are purged because of their gender identity, or because they are associated with ideas now deemed unfashionable, or even for going to a meeting where those ideas are discussed.  The government has created tip lines to help identify the disfavored.
• Individual journalists whose job it is to hold the President accountable know that they will face a torrent of abuse if they are critical.  The richest man in the world might call for a journalist to be fired, falsely accuse media organizations of secretly being paid by shadowy pro-government forces, or sue them to drain resources.  Their organization may be banned from press events if it is deemed insufficiently supportive of the President, replaced by partisan outlets who only provide uncritical propaganda.
• Some media companies find excuses to bribe the President on the flimsiest of pretexts, humoring his demands for massive financial compensation when faced with normal journalistic practice, because their corporate owners fear the President’s retribution.  Corporations have become accustomed to making multi-million contributions to the President as a form of protection money for their businesses.
• The judges who provide the last, best hope of constraining the President and the richest man in the world face a historic wave of threats.  Judges in the DC area had pizzas mailed anonymously to their homes, to communicate that their address is known to potential attackers.
• More and more people are turning to secure private apps to communicate, reflecting worries about state surveillance.

Feel free to click on the links above to see the gory details if you are not yet aware of them.

“It’s hard to read that list, isn’t it?” Moynihan asks.  But he goes on at some length to conclude, “The America you thought you knew is gone, its undoing germinating for years, and culminating in a matter of weeks.”

Can it be restored?  We can’t yet say.  But I thought about Moynihan’s post in light of the chilling assault on research at Columbia University — and the university’s own actions in seeking to suppress the critical expression that had provoked the attack in the first place — about which I wrote over the weekend.  It is now clear that the Trump administration’s withdrawal of some $400 million in research funding from Columbia is likely but the first salvo in a much broader effort, part of an ongoing and chilling war on higher education itself.

But if Moynihan’s opening paragraph struck fear, his closing words are encouraging:

Defending democracy against a coercive government poses a collective action problem: we are all better off when people are willing to publicly defend basic freedoms, but few want to be the guy standing alone in front of the tank.

So many institutions and individuals see what is going on and don’t want to say anything.  To do so would threaten their livelihood or organization, or employees, or the personal safety of themselves or their families.  It is understandable at an individual level, but collectively disastrous.

Courage is contagious.  As people offer examples of a willingness to publicly push back, more will stand up.  For example, climate scientists and misinformation researchers have fought for years against efforts to silence them.  CBS apparently changed its mind about settling a frivolous lawsuit with Trump, and now promises to fight back.  Some politicians are courageous despite the vitriol they have always faced.  For example, AOC mocked threats by homeland security czar Tom Holman to investigate her.

Individual actions and collective organizing help to remind others that the actions of the Trump administration do not have broad support.  It can’t all be on individuals, however.  Universities, philanthropies, corporations, nonprofits, and professional organizations need to remind each other of the power they have, and the principles they stand for.

“Don’t mourn, organize!”  These famous words of the labor songster Joe Hill have rarely been more timely.

Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019.  His Understanding Academic Freedom was published in October, 2021; a second edition will be published later this month.