We Won't Be Fig Leaves For Your Fascism

Last night, I posted about the Trump administration's declaration of war on American academia, there taking the form of a threatened academic boycott of Georgetown University for having "DEI" in its curriculum. Today, the Trump administration continued its attack in even more aggressive fashion, axing $400 million of government grants to Columbia University, putatively as a sanction for campus antisemitism.

Let's get one thing clear off the jump: this is not about "fighting antisemitism". It is about destroying American higher education. We do not need to pretend, even for a moment, that fighting antisemitism -- which is very real, at Columbia and elsewhere -- has even the slightest relevance to the Trump administration's decision. As Jews, our only response should be to declare, loudly and without hesitation, for Trump to get lost. We will not be fig leaves for your fascism.

Because in reality, the only role Columbia's Jews are playing in this drama is that of the scapegoat -- Donald Trump is using us to soak up the blame for his authoritarian thuggery. As I noted the last time I posted on MAGA government officials targeting Columbia for "BDS"-style tactics, if it seems like these choices are hurting the Columbia Jewish students they putatively are supposed to "help", that's entirely by design. These people loathe Jews, generally, and Columbia's Jews, specifically -- the claimed love for "Jews" is entirely superseded by seething hatred for actual Jews. And so while the main goal is to hurt the university as a whole, hurting Columbia's Jewish students is I'm sure seen as a delightful bonus.

That the Trump administration is colonizing "fighting antisemitism" in service of his authoritarian agenda is despicable, and it makes Jews less safe (which, again, is entirely intentional). The other day, I was thinking about my baby boy growing up and starting school here in Portland, and, as all parents are wont to do on occasion, I began catastrophizing a little bit. I imagined him the victim of some antisemitic incident, and what I would do about it. 

And what paralyzed me was the thought that if I did need external support in some way (to go to the press, to blog publicly about it, to get the local Jewish Federation involved, etc.), I knew things would rapidly spiral out of my control, and my son would become a mascot for politics we never signed up for and fervently reject. We'd see people exploit our tragedy to attack DEI or indulge in anti-Palestinian racism, and nothing we could say or do would stop them, and nothing we could say or do would stop others from projecting those agendas onto us.*

It's a paralyzing thought because this fear -- and I think it's a very realistic fear -- would genuinely and seriously deter me from seeking aid I desperately need. It would push me to stay silent and quiet and suffer because seeking support would only make things worse. That's an incredibly lonely position to be in, and it's one that I think aptly characterizes how many campus Jews feel right now. We're lonely -- lonely because of the antisemitism we endure, and lonely because we know any steps we do take to publicize the issue will rapidly and brutally rebound against us, often by the very actors who most loudly boast they're "standing with us".

It is this loneliness that the Trump administration is intensifying. By wrenching "fighting antisemitism" away from what Jews actually want, and seizing it for his personal authoritarian revenge project, he isolates Jews yet further. We're isolated from other members of our community, we're isolated from actual resources of care and support, we're isolated from one another. It's despicable, and it's disgusting, and it is frankly terrifying. But the only way to fight it is to fight it. Don't indulge it, don't tip toe around it, don't even for a second pretend to think it has anything to do with actually fighting actual antisemitism.

We will not be fig leaves for your fascism.

* In many ways this is just the JV version of "dying politically", and if you think people would respect the victims they're nominally "protecting", you should see how people are responding to Hayim Katsman's mother right now.

Georgetown Stands Up in the Face of the Trump Admin's Attempted Academic Boycott

A little while ago, the Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin -- who has rapidly begun distinguishing himself as one of Trump's most odious foot soldiers -- sent a letter to Georgetown Law School demanding that they eliminate all "DEI" from their curriculum and threatening to refuse to hire Georgetown graduates until they do so (if "a little while ago" sounds vague, that's because it took Martin two attempts to send the letter -- he misaddressed it the first time).

Martin's threats are reminiscent of the announced boycott of Columbia grads by Judge James Ho and some of his fellow far-right travelers, and the Dean of Georgetown responded exactly how I wish the Dean of Columbia would have responded: by refusing to give in and also by naming exactly what is happening here: a threat of official government penalty against private institutions for refusing to kowtow to official ideological orthodoxy. This goes way beyond the "jawboning" or informal requests that caused conservatives to shriek their heads off during the Biden administration; we have in these cases an explicit promise of legal retaliation on private actors who don't toe the government's line. It is hard to imagine a clearer instance of de jure censorship than this, and Georgetown Dean Bill Treanor doesn't mince words:

As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding. For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution. Georgetown University also prohibits discrimination and harassment in its programs and activities and takes seriously its obligations to comply with all federal and local laws.

Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution. It inquires about Georgetown Law’s curriculum and classroom teaching, asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the curriculum, and asserts that your office will not hire individuals from schools where you find the curriculum “unacceptable.” The First Amendment, however, guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it. The Supreme Court has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it.

This is a bedrock principle of constitutional law – recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration in which you serve. The Department of Education confirmed last week that it cannot restrict First Amendment rights and that it is statutorily prohibited from “exercising control over the content of school curricula.” 

Your letter informs me that your office will deny our students and graduates government employment opportunities until you, as Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, approve of our curriculum. Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.

Georgetown Law has one of the preeminent faculties in the country, fostering groundbreaking scholarship, educating students in a wide variety of perspectives, and thriving on the robust exchange of ideas. Georgetown Law faculty have educated world leaders, members of Congress, and Justice Department officials, from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We pride ourselves on providing an excellent graduate and professional education, built upon the Catholic and Jesuit tradition. Georgetown-educated attorneys have, for decades, served this country capably and selflessly in offices such as yours, and we have confidence that tradition will continue. We look forward to your confirming that any Georgetown-affiliated candidates for employment with your office will receive full and fair consideration.

Very well said. The appeal to religious liberty is also appreciated in this context, though I suspect the Jesuits will fare as well as liberal Jews will under the new free exercise jurisprudence.

It should be clear by now that the Trump administration and its right-wing fellow travelers are launching a full-fledged BDS campaign against American universities that don't bow to its ideological agenda. The proposed academic boycott against Georgetown is one example, the myriad donor threats to divest their funding from colleges that don't crackdown on disfavored programs or speech is another, the proposal to sanction Columbia by axing over $50 million in contracts is yet another. These endeavors are an anathema to academic freedom and First Amendment values, and must be opposed by all principled defenders of the academy.*

* What a shame that the AAUP recently and abruptly shifted course and decided, after decades of strong opposition, that actually academic boycotts are a-okay. It's almost like it was eminently predictable that abandoning that principle might backfire very quickly given how the right has been racing for excuses to punish universities who they've deemed "complicit" in ideological projects and activities they oppose!

How To Handle Leopard Chow

Has there been a more resonant viral post in the past decade than "'I never thought leopards would eat my face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party"? It's so funny, and so evocative, and I can't believe we're going through it a second time.

But we are, and articles like this about axed federal workers ruing their votes are once again setting off a discussion about how the rest of us should relate to these remorseful Trump supporters. Basically the entire conversation is about being pulled between two entirely reasonable and understandable instincts.

1. Trump won the last election. If Democrats are going to win the next election, by definition they need to persuade some number of people who either voted for Trump or couldn't be bothered to vote against him to make a different choice. When at least some erstwhile Trump backers signal they're waking up and recognizing their mistakes, that's an unabashed good thing.
2. Trump voters made a choice that in all cases was some combination of bone-jarringly stupid and actively malicious. That they're now facing consequences for their actions is entirely their own fault and moral just deserts, and the idea that they're entitled to even a smidgeon of emotional care and support from the rest of us (many of whom are suffering too) is outrageous.

My basic belief is that if you are a professional political operative, you have to emphasize the first instinct over the second. That's not because the second is unreasonable or unfair! It's just that it's the job. If you don't think you can do it, if that thought makes your stomach turn, that doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you might not be cut out for this job. Politics as vocation is not a venue for people to simply pour out their personal emotional baggage, however genuine and heartfelt. Take a different job.

But most people, including most random Democrats who post on social media, are not professional political operatives, and our own frustration/schadenfreude should not be confused with some sort of official party line. It's one thing to say Democrats need to have message discipline, but that demand is an impossible one if it means preserving "discipline" over every BlueSky account with #resist in the bio.

As for me, perhaps the deepest root of my frustration is my sense that even for the leopard chow, these lessons will not be internalized. The WaPo article, for instance, notes at the outset that the protagonist's own family and loved ones are cheering the very governmental cuts that have destroyed her future. I'm sure they think her firing was a mistake, but it's prompting no broader reassessment. After all, how many times have we seen posts of the form of "I support the goal of eliminating government waste, but my job is important and I'm a hard worker, so I can't believe you would terminate me?" For every one of those post, I guarantee that the guy you have mind as the example of "government waste" is drafting his own post explaining why his job matters while envisioning you as the right target to fire. The reality is that there just aren't, in the scheme of things, all that many government jobs that are useless or wasteful -- they're part of an important machine that makes society run. But as long as everyone thinks they're exceptional, they'll continue to miss the six-lane expressway starting from their contempt for their peers and ending at their own ruination.

Right after Trump was elected, I predicted this. The day after election day, I wrote of Trump's supporters that:

They will laugh as the leopard eats their neighbor's face, and then some number of them will be stunned, not just that the leopard turns on them, but that the people they were laughing with a moment early keep on laughing as it eats their face. There is no actual solidarity here, just an enjoyment of the cruelty and enjoyment of finding oneself on the right side of the cruelty, and there is perverse power in that -- your buddy next to you might get betrayed in an instant and it won't move the needle an inch. They will keep laughing even when their fellows are being hurt, so certainly they will keep laughing straight through our marches and protests and rage.

What are we do to do about this? Even if these people do recoil from the leopard gnawing on their face next election, they'll inevitably exhibit the memory of a goldfish the next a Democrat takes office and the price of eggs goes up 5 cents, or some Facebook meme convinces them that immigrants are going to eat their cat, or they just get bored with living in an era of unprecedented abundance and decide a little performative cruelty will fill their thirst for meaning. I just don't see a way of making the lesson stick with any scalability, and it's maddening.

Again, as a political message, none of this is useable. But that doesn't make the instincts unreasonable. Is it our job to try to win back half-eaten leopard chow, no matter how responsible they are for their own (and all of our) plights? Yes, it is. But nobody can judge us for judging them harshly, or having dim hopes that they'll actually clear the most bare-minimum bar of virtuous citizenship with any consistency going forward. They deserve the scorn they receive.