A Small College Faculty Takes Unprecedented Action to Stand Up for Democracy

In the Trump era, most of the attention on higher education has focused on presidents and what they will or won't do to protect their institutions from threats to academic freedom and institutional independence. Leadership matters, but it's time for the rank-and-file in the academy — and in business and other institutions — to fulfill their own obligations to protect democracy.

With a few exceptions, neither the rank and file nor their leaders in the academy have stood up for democracy and the rule of law in the world beyond their organizations. They have had little to say about the administration’s mounting lawlessness, corruption, and abuse of power.

Similarly, many US leaders in business and religion have chosen to remain silent and keep their heads down in the hope of protecting the organizations they lead. At the same time, many employees, congregations, and faculties at universities also have not taken collective action to express their own views about what is happening in Trump’s America.

On Friday, the faculty at Amherst College, a New England liberal arts college where I teach, broke the pattern. It voted overwhelmingly to speak out.

It endorsed the following statement: “Resolved that, in light of escalating threats to democracy and the rights of citizens and non-citizens in the United States, the faculty of Amherst College affirms its belief that those threats endanger our educational mission. We join with others who are also speaking out, defending freedom, democracy, and the rights of all, regardless of their political allegiances, religious, gender, and racial identities, or immigration status.”

The Amherst faculty did not do so to circumvent the college’s president, Michael Elliott, who is widely admired for his clear-headed and steady leadership, but rather to add its voice in the service of resistance to authoritarianism. Others should follow suit and speak out loudly and clearly in defense of democracy and the rights of all.

We’ve seen a few glimmers of this “opposition from below.” For example, members of some faith communities have taken a stand as congregations.

Some lawyers have opposed deals their firms made with Trump, and faculty at some universities have asked their leaders not to cave in to him. Labor unions have publicly opposed the president’s arbitrary terminations of federal employees.

Again, all that is to be admired, but it has largely focused on the internal affairs of those places rather than the broader political context.

One might counter that the broader resistance has happened in demonstrations, protests, letters to the editor, and the like. Yes, of course, millions of people have acted as individuals protesting both the administration’s policies and its dictatorial bent.

Those actions need to continue, but they will be all the stronger if supplemented by solidarity and collective action within our workplaces, schools, professional communities, and elsewhere.

Now is our moment.

There will be many reasons offered against those groups taking a stand. Some will say, “That’s not why I come to or join those groups.”

But as the Amherst faculty understood, we cannot do our work in the way it should be done if freedom and democracy are lost. The same is true for businesses that can thrive where the rule of law is respected or cultural institutions that do not want 6o become arms of the government.

Critics will say that passing resolutions like the one from the Amherst faculty will not make a difference. In truth, we can’t know for sure if it will work, though we can be confident that silence will not work.

We can’t know whether standing up for democracy will bring wrath from a vengeful administration. It might.

All of those who oppose the Trump Administration have reasons to be afraid. As Marc Elias, the lawyer and prominent anti-Trump spokesperson, says, “Anyone who tells you that Donald Trump targets them and they don’t care, I think they’re just lying to you. I think anyone who says they’re not afraid is either a psychopath or a liar. Of course you’re afraid.”

The question is what we will do with our fear. Members of the Amherst faculty decided to speak through their fear.

Some might say that it is easy for academics at a privileged school, many of whom have job security, to do so. They might accuse us of “virtue signaling,” as if the resolution were all talk and no action.

However, what might once have been mere virtue signaling in a liberal democratic regime is resistance in a country that is losing its democracy and where the president is trying to ferret out “the enemy within.”

Drawing on the Hungarian experience, Michael Ignatieff, who was president of Central European University when Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, tried to expel it from Budapest, counsels the following strategy for American universities: “Mobilize your alumni networks. Enlist families whose children’s lives have been saved in your hospitals; reach out to companies that have commercialized your research, make contact with universities in red and blue states, public and private, who face the same threat.”

Network. Build alliances.

“Do it fast," he advises. "Make sure your campaign is not just about you, because that opens you to attack as a defender of privilege.”

That last bit of wisdom is crucial. We need to stand up not just to protect our own interests.

The Amherst faculty resolution respects the college’s policy on institutional statements, which allows them only on matters that affect its educational mission. But, it doesn’t stop there. It affirms our support for others “who are also speaking out, defending freedom, democracy, and the rights of all….”

That is because civil society can only be strong in the face of authoritarianism if we value the rights of others who are unlike us as much as we value our own rights, and if we act to defend shared values.

All of us need to speak out now, in every venue. We need to heed the advice of Marc Elias.

We should not wait for those who run our institutions to express outrage “that our government is run by people with no regard for the Constitution or the rule of law…that the sycophants who run this administration are loyal only to Trump…that so few people in positions of power are willing to speak up when they see abuses….”

It is time to remember what Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote about the experience of life under German fascism. He memorably warned and the danger that if we don’t speak out now, there may be no one left to speak for us if we are targeted.

When our leaders speak out, they are to be cheered on, but all of us need to speak out as well, in every venue where our voices may be heard. The faculty of one small college has taken that admonition to heart and spoken in one voice, not just about themselves.

I hope that its example encourages other groups to do so as well.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.