The Daily Dose: School Lessons

Harvard is putting on a clinic for America.

Dan Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts, had a piece out today on the Trump administration’s flailing attack on Harvard. In essence, Trump has used up all of his firepower and has now run out of ammunition. He simply has nothing left in the barrel—nothing that would make a difference anyway.

As the president scrambles for new ways to ramp up the pressure, Harvard continues to stand its ground—and neither Trump nor his advisors have any idea what to do about it.

But the months-long campaign has had a surprising effect on the campus. A year ago, Harvard was wracked by internal conflict over Palestine. Now, everyone has united against Trump. The prevailing atmosphere is one of defiance. As Drezner writes,

the Trump administration’s threats and actions have accomplished something exceedingly rare on the Harvard campus: getting the community to put aside longstanding grudges and agree that Trump is making everything worse.

Drezner goes on to quote from a New York Times article that describes the complete turnaround since Trump’s onslaught began:

The Trump administration’s attack on Harvard has infused the campus with a sense of unity it has lacked over the last year and half, as the university prepares for commencement this week.

“School pride is probably at an all-time high,” said Abdullah Shahid Sial, a sophomore from Pakistan and one of Harvard’s two undergraduate student body presidents. He said he had not seen the campus so unified. “I hope it continues.”….

The extraordinary attack has caused many in the Harvard community to set differences aside at what they say is an existential moment for the 388-year-old university.

Wherever one falls on the Middle East conflict, Mr. Sial said, “everyone is on the side that cracking down on international students will not solve any of those issues.”

In other words, as the Trump administration unleashed the most radical measures it could come up with, the campus community managed to overcome its divisions and unite against it.

The ramifications go well beyond the university. For what is happening at Harvard is a microcosm of what will likely transpire in society at large. As I have written before, authoritarian repression often has the opposite of its intended effect, causing societal resistance to intensify as anger mounts against the regime. Quite often, it escalates to the point that the regime cannot control it.

We are currently watching a live demonstration of this phenomenon in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

By any account, the attack on Harvard is extreme. It is so extreme, in fact, that the White House is having a hard time coming up with novel ways of continuing it. It has suspended Harvard’s federal funding, launched investigation after investigation, and barred the university from enrolling foreign students.

So, imagine what will happen once his attack on American society reaches its limit. Not only is Trump liable to use up all of his ammunition very quickly, but the resulting backlash could be massive enough to end his regime. As Harvard illustrates, repression has a way of bringing people together.

But civil resistance movements typically require leadership. It is precisely this that Harvard’s administration is providing, standing firm in the face of Trump’s assault and inspiring solidarity among the community.

So it goes for all democratic movements. When opposition parties both unite among themselves and join forces with civil society, it can prove fatal to authoritarian regimes. In the past decade alone, such coalitions managed to overthrow authoritarian leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador, Moldova, North Macedonia, Slovenia, South Korea, and Zambia.

Notably, all of these countries featured civil societies far weaker than America’s own.

A number of scholars have expressed doubts about American civil society’s ability to defeat Trump. I am sorry, but if Zambia’s civil society could do it, so can America’s.

If it is to happen, however,, the Democratic Party will have to get its head out of its ass and start leading.