1. The much-vaunted resistance from Trump's first term didn't work terribly well, did it? He barely lost re-election in the middle of a pandemic, and then won in 2024. So much for making noise.
2. The election victory of 2024 was a "throw up your hands" moment. The American people knew exactly who he was and what he'd done, and they not only reelected him but handed the GOP the other two branches of government. Well, okay, then, that makes everything seem useless.
3. What exactly does yelling and screaming do? Trump loves it because he can fulminate on social media to his base and there's no effective lever behind it. Yay! The Ivy Presidents wrote an op-ed! That'll definitely save things.
You're right. I wrote before reading yours. The establishment are not so much appeasers as don't stick your neck out in any way that can really hurt you -ers
We’ve reached the point where elite private universities are hedge funds and possibly sports franchises paired with a commercial research arm and — after all that — educators. The ivory tower has turned to glass. They’re in no position to piss off the swells.
The passivity is not new - 'peak wokeness' (the last 'move quickly and break things' hurricane that swept through) also promulgated a set of policies and principles that succeeded in capturing a relatively quiescent set of institutions: academia (my field), corporations, foundations, government agencies, businesses, cultural institutions, etc. I would venture to say that most people did not agree with the policies and principles as formulated, and the quick recent turn away from them by most people is evidence of that. But resistance to peak wokeness was thin on the ground. So I suspect that the causes of the passivity DD addresses are generic: I suspect that they have to do with the internet, and the new role a quite young cadre of activists have been playing in forming 'public opinion'. It will probably take a while before before we can look back analytically and really understand how we've gotten here.
There's a meaningful conversation around a unity of university presidents/ legal counsel which could be driven by faculty. News readers are counting the recent shocking interruption to medical studies, and many interpret the general anti-intellectual anti-expert atmosphere as a prelude to further suppression of speech.
University Adminstrators have given themselves ever escalating salaries over the last 20 years, justifying it by saying they provide leadership. Well I don't believe these salaries are justified at all but if they are being paid the reason is to provide leadership at moments like this, if they stay silent now then they fully and finally prove that their salaries represent nothing other than theft.
One would hope that the university leaders might also realize, as Canadians did quite rapidly, that appeasing an abuser only invites more abuse.
Consider that Columbia has already burned it's reputation as well as it's relationship with the students, faculty, and even the surrounding community to appease Trump. They have assisted in deportations, and they have now invented new excuses to *retroactively* torch student degrees.
Trump has now demanded more.
There is no amount of self-flagellation that will make him stop. And there is only so much that even a rich school like Columbia can sustain.
I think it has been middling because this is just the start with 3.8 more years to go, and he can do much worse than he has up to this point. He is attempting to close the department of education, and Lord knows what else he and/or Vance + Musk will demand in the years ahead.
I'm engaged with a local community round table that has been meeting weekly since the election, activating around the Trump administration's illegal and frankly horrifying actions. I agree with what has been said in both this substack article and the comments, but would reiterate that it's all happened SO FAST. There is a ground swell movement in western NY calling for those in power to resist, particularly our Democratic representatives who so deeply disappointed us recently. We know it's not "business as usual" but our elected officials do not seem to be recognizing this.
We are hoping and praying that some with more power than we have will begin to stand against the administration's actions, and are heartened to see some response from the judiciary. We are willing to stand up and speak out and march and support those who do counter the executive branch's actions, but are also looking for a leader to guide that resistance.
Dani Rodrik's decades-long embrace of naive populist nationalism against "neoliberal globalization" answers his own question. He's been leading the charge for "structural reform" of the LIO and its institutions. Now that it's actually happening they wonder why they are powerless to stop it, without even the minutest or most fleeting thought of self-critique.
The word "Trump" does not appear. Well, Dani, you wanted a self-help system and you got it, and not just in international relations: every higher ed institution, every party leader, every business, and damn near every individual is responding rationally to anarchy through self-help. This is what that looks like.
Here is Dani in 2022, providing intellectual justification for the DOGE style of government that is currently being weaponized against universities: "The most effective industrial policies entail close, collaborative interaction between government agencies and private firms, whereby companies receive critical public inputs – financial support, skilled workers, or technological assistance – in exchange for meeting soft and evolving targets on investment and employment." https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/will-productivism-supersede-neoliberalism-by-dani-rodrik-2022-08
It is far, far too late for people who have been writing in this way to start talking about institutional solidarity and the importance of open system *now*. He (like others) thought they could channel populist nationalism for their own purposes but instead got #uncommitted. This what happens when you consistently erode support for public institutions over long periods of time, drip drip drip: when the time has come for someone to speak up for you there is no longer anyone there to do it.
Same thing elsewhere in the Ideas Industry: the institutions have been cannibalized by the anti-institutionalists within them to the point where they are powerless to stop the flood. There is no normie bourgeois civil society left to "resist", the leaders who did last time were systematically replaced -- sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly -- in the years since 2016, without a peep from Dani and the other know-it-all "social democrat" economists cosplaying as geopolitical analysts, who (well, actually) think it's fun to gamble with international orders.
In a more intellectual age we used to refer to people like this as "useful idiots".
Thank you for the explanation. Would it be correct to assume that an individual faculty member who pens a letter in opposition to the Trump administration’s actions might find him or herself under pressure by Trump-aligned alums to resign or face being fired? Maybe a better strategy is to be quietly subversive.
I'd add a couple of things:
1. The much-vaunted resistance from Trump's first term didn't work terribly well, did it? He barely lost re-election in the middle of a pandemic, and then won in 2024. So much for making noise.
2. The election victory of 2024 was a "throw up your hands" moment. The American people knew exactly who he was and what he'd done, and they not only reelected him but handed the GOP the other two branches of government. Well, okay, then, that makes everything seem useless.
3. What exactly does yelling and screaming do? Trump loves it because he can fulminate on social media to his base and there's no effective lever behind it. Yay! The Ivy Presidents wrote an op-ed! That'll definitely save things.
You're right. I wrote before reading yours. The establishment are not so much appeasers as don't stick your neck out in any way that can really hurt you -ers
Oh, Richard. When you agree with me it makes me reconsider my entire world view.
"The US establishment lives in dread of the kraken" The establishment are always appeasers. That's how you become the establishment
We’ve reached the point where elite private universities are hedge funds and possibly sports franchises paired with a commercial research arm and — after all that — educators. The ivory tower has turned to glass. They’re in no position to piss off the swells.
The passivity is not new - 'peak wokeness' (the last 'move quickly and break things' hurricane that swept through) also promulgated a set of policies and principles that succeeded in capturing a relatively quiescent set of institutions: academia (my field), corporations, foundations, government agencies, businesses, cultural institutions, etc. I would venture to say that most people did not agree with the policies and principles as formulated, and the quick recent turn away from them by most people is evidence of that. But resistance to peak wokeness was thin on the ground. So I suspect that the causes of the passivity DD addresses are generic: I suspect that they have to do with the internet, and the new role a quite young cadre of activists have been playing in forming 'public opinion'. It will probably take a while before before we can look back analytically and really understand how we've gotten here.
There's a meaningful conversation around a unity of university presidents/ legal counsel which could be driven by faculty. News readers are counting the recent shocking interruption to medical studies, and many interpret the general anti-intellectual anti-expert atmosphere as a prelude to further suppression of speech.
University Adminstrators have given themselves ever escalating salaries over the last 20 years, justifying it by saying they provide leadership. Well I don't believe these salaries are justified at all but if they are being paid the reason is to provide leadership at moments like this, if they stay silent now then they fully and finally prove that their salaries represent nothing other than theft.
One would hope that the university leaders might also realize, as Canadians did quite rapidly, that appeasing an abuser only invites more abuse.
Consider that Columbia has already burned it's reputation as well as it's relationship with the students, faculty, and even the surrounding community to appease Trump. They have assisted in deportations, and they have now invented new excuses to *retroactively* torch student degrees.
Trump has now demanded more.
There is no amount of self-flagellation that will make him stop. And there is only so much that even a rich school like Columbia can sustain.
Appeasing an abuser only invites more abuse.
I think it has been middling because this is just the start with 3.8 more years to go, and he can do much worse than he has up to this point. He is attempting to close the department of education, and Lord knows what else he and/or Vance + Musk will demand in the years ahead.
Good commentary by Princeton president Chris Eisgruber in The Atlantic. March 19. The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia.
I'm engaged with a local community round table that has been meeting weekly since the election, activating around the Trump administration's illegal and frankly horrifying actions. I agree with what has been said in both this substack article and the comments, but would reiterate that it's all happened SO FAST. There is a ground swell movement in western NY calling for those in power to resist, particularly our Democratic representatives who so deeply disappointed us recently. We know it's not "business as usual" but our elected officials do not seem to be recognizing this.
We are hoping and praying that some with more power than we have will begin to stand against the administration's actions, and are heartened to see some response from the judiciary. We are willing to stand up and speak out and march and support those who do counter the executive branch's actions, but are also looking for a leader to guide that resistance.
Dani Rodrik's decades-long embrace of naive populist nationalism against "neoliberal globalization" answers his own question. He's been leading the charge for "structural reform" of the LIO and its institutions. Now that it's actually happening they wonder why they are powerless to stop it, without even the minutest or most fleeting thought of self-critique.
E.g., here is Dani the month before the election writing IN FAVOR OF zero-sum nationalism, including a semantic defense of beggaring-thy-neighbor industrial policy, the concluding line of which is about the VIRTUES of anarchy and the self-help international system! https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/economic-policy-debate-should-focus-not-on-subsidies-tariffs-but-on-beggar-thy-neighbor-by-dani-rodrik-2024-10
The word "Trump" does not appear. Well, Dani, you wanted a self-help system and you got it, and not just in international relations: every higher ed institution, every party leader, every business, and damn near every individual is responding rationally to anarchy through self-help. This is what that looks like.
Here is Dani in 2022, providing intellectual justification for the DOGE style of government that is currently being weaponized against universities: "The most effective industrial policies entail close, collaborative interaction between government agencies and private firms, whereby companies receive critical public inputs – financial support, skilled workers, or technological assistance – in exchange for meeting soft and evolving targets on investment and employment." https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/will-productivism-supersede-neoliberalism-by-dani-rodrik-2022-08
It is far, far too late for people who have been writing in this way to start talking about institutional solidarity and the importance of open system *now*. He (like others) thought they could channel populist nationalism for their own purposes but instead got #uncommitted. This what happens when you consistently erode support for public institutions over long periods of time, drip drip drip: when the time has come for someone to speak up for you there is no longer anyone there to do it.
Same thing elsewhere in the Ideas Industry: the institutions have been cannibalized by the anti-institutionalists within them to the point where they are powerless to stop the flood. There is no normie bourgeois civil society left to "resist", the leaders who did last time were systematically replaced -- sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly -- in the years since 2016, without a peep from Dani and the other know-it-all "social democrat" economists cosplaying as geopolitical analysts, who (well, actually) think it's fun to gamble with international orders.
In a more intellectual age we used to refer to people like this as "useful idiots".
Thank you for the explanation. Would it be correct to assume that an individual faculty member who pens a letter in opposition to the Trump administration’s actions might find him or herself under pressure by Trump-aligned alums to resign or face being fired? Maybe a better strategy is to be quietly subversive.