Dr. Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" (Abingdon Press, 2017) and vice president of the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
In recent years, the escalation of demonstrations and protests across the United States has highlighted the importance of ensuring that First Amendment activities remain safeguarded. One strategy gaining momentum in maintaining security and upholding these essential rights is dialogue policing.
With roots in the research of Clifford Stott and supplemented by my research on empathy transformation model, this approach shows considerable promise in fostering healthy engagement between activist, community, and socio-democratic groups.
Dialogue policing is not just a hypothetical concept. After protests in 2022, the Columbus Ohio police department created the Dialogue Officers Unit to explore new ways to build stronger relationships with the community.
Dialogue policing is a method of law enforcement that focuses on communication and engagement with the public to manage social conflicts and maintain order effectively. It emphasizes building trust between police and community members by creating open communication channels, fostering collaboration, and promoting understanding. The approach aims to reduce tension, prevent escalation of conflicts, and ultimately improve the relationship between law enforcement and the public.
Stott's extensive research on crowd behavior explored how crowd dynamics are positively instituted while minimizing aggression and violence. His studies indicate if the police communicate more effectively they will be perceived as facilitating peaceful expression rather than suppressing it resulting in less confrontation. The crux of dialogue policing promotes communication, mutual respect, and trust between protesting groups and law enforcement officers.
The combination of Stott's research that provides a strategic foundation for dialogue policing and my empathic transformation model enhances reduced tension and conflict during protests and demonstrations by citizens during First Amendment activities. This model revolves around the belief that empathetic exchanges can help bridge gaps between opposing parties by fostering an environment of trust and understanding.
Together, these frameworks outline an approach for interfacing the activist, community, the police and other socio-democratic groups during First Amendment activities:
- Establishing Open Lines of Communication: Policing officials need to prioritize open channels of communication between themselves and protest organizers to keep interactions honest, purposeful, and proactive.
- Humanizing Approach: Officers should avoid militaristic or overpowering tactics. Instead they should embrace a more compassionate posture that humanizes law enforcement officers and protesters.
- Contingency Planning: Police should collaborate with event organizers to identify potential risks or hazards while developing appropriate response plans that respect participants' rights.
- Empathy Training for Law Enforcement: Empathy training should be a fundamental component of police education programs in order to strengthen understanding and rapport between officers and protesters.
- Proactive Engagement: Regular meetings or forums between law enforcement, community members, and activists to address concerns or emerging issues are essential in promoting dialogue, establishing relationships, deterring miscommunication, and allowing for greater oversight.
Dialogue policing dares to better protect the rights enshrined in the First Amendment while fostering positive engagement between diverse groups. Dialogue policing represents an opportunity to rethink conventional law enforcement strategies and proactively support citizens in expressing their democratic rights safely and peacefully.
I am encouraged by the potential moving forward as the collaborative work of community stakeholders and a select group of Columbus Police Department Dialogue Officers is scaled and amplified through an intensive cohort-style community engagement initiative that is now underway and will continue for the next six months.
Stay tuned for updates in the coming months.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.