Blog Archives

8/28/25

8/26/2025

AN EPOCH OF MISERY
Engineered by the nation’s criminal-at-the-top

THE NATIONAL GUARD at Washington D.C.'s Union Station. CREDIT: Department of Defense

IN ALASKA, seasoned dictator with apprentice dictator. CREDIT: White House video

I’M NOT GIVING UP, and I hope the rest of us aren’t, either.
But these are miserable times. They are hard, painful, exhausting and relentless.
We are ensnared in Donald Trump’s Epoch of Misery.
Every day, no matter the time and day of the week,there’s a new barrage of cruel, destructive and shattering assaults on the American character, our experiment in democracy, our aspiration to be just, creative, decent and loving.
It’s because there’s a criminal in charge of an entire country – our country, our America, our United States of America – and that crook at the top is out to get us – all of us.
We are in a moment when a merciless, murderous, malevolent mind is stalking our collective and individual lives.
It never sleeps, never takes a day off, never goes on vacation, never misses a beat in its ceaseless crusade to ravage the sacred mystery of what makes us decent, good and human.
August, the last full chapter of summer, has been particularly savage.
There was the red carpet meeting in Alaska between the seasoned dictator and the apprentice dictator that pretended to be focused on ending the Ukraine war, but was really just a chance for two mean guys to be mean together.
There's the still evolving invasion of Washington by the National Guard, plus agents of “law” enforcement, dispatched on the pretext of cleaning up crime in Washington, D.C. – orchestrated by the criminal-at-the-top.
Imagine, soldiers, military vehicles, patrolling the streets and parks of our capital city. The National Guard is supposed to protect citizens from enemies aboard, and rescue them from disasters at home. The Guard is populated by our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, our friends and work colleagues.
Now, these folks are dispatched on a new mission: to terrify us, to arrest us, maybe shoot us, but for the time being, to get us used to the idea that if we get out of line – protest, express our freedom of speech rights, display a sign with the wrong picture or slogan – that Guard will follow orders and do whatever it takes to shut us up.
Next deployment, Chicago. But maybe Baltimore is closer. Then onto New York. Any place that votes Democratic, and better still, has a Black mayor and lots of Black citizens, because the criminal-at-the-top, in addition to being a bully, an extortionist, a cheat and a liar, is, at heart, a racist.

BY NOW WE KNOW THE WORST PART OF ANY DAY is waking up to nightmare headlines about the fresh Miseries engineered the previous day by the criminal-at-the-top.
But a couple of mornings ago, Misery got off to a particularly early, “breaking news” start, with live video of the FBI searching the home of one of the people the criminal-at-the-top hates the most (which is saying something), John Bolton.

JOHN BOLTON CREDIT: Gage Skidmore

Bolton is the man with the funny mustache who is disliked throughout the spectrum of good and evil, who was once Trump’s national security advisor, but later turned out to be an eloquent and compulsive Trump critic.
The 7 a.m. searches of Bolton’s home and his office were both a smack down of a Trump enemy, but more importantly, a demonstration that no man or woman is beyond the reach of the criminal-at-the-top.
Indeed, a onetime Trump White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, joked that when he learned of the Bolton search, “I went down and locked my door.”
To prove the point, Trump over the weekend suggested that maybe his Department of Injustice should take a look at another friend-turned-enemy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Christie’s perceived crime was the moldy Bridgegate Scandal, which is too old and complicated to go into here. But Christie’s actual offense was mouthing off on the TV Sunday talk shows, suggesting that the Bolton searches could be a result of Trump’s politicized Department of Justice. Later, Trump got in the last word, noting that Christie is a “slob” and “everybody knows it.”

AN EXAMPLE OF PROLONGED TRUMPIAN MISERY was yesterday’s chapter in the saga of Kilmar Armando Ábrego Garcia.
He’s the immigrant illegally sent to a notorious El Salvadoran prison, eventually returned to the U.S., subsequently imprisoned, freed for several days, then scooped up again yesterday when he checked in – as he was required to – with federal officials. The new plan, deport him to Uganda, a move put on hold – last we heard – by a federal judge. The lesson being, if not “resistance is futile,” at least “you better have a lawyer or a whole bunch of lawyers on speed dial.”
Closer to home for me in tiny Rhode Island, the Misery Epoch last Friday halted construction of a big ocean wind farm off the coast. Forty-five of Revolution Wind’s 65 turbines already have been completed.
The project is supposed to produce enough power to light up 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and is a big part of the littlest state’s effort to limit climate change and create jobs.
But the criminal-at-the-top doesn’t like “windmills,” preferring energy from climate-wrecking fossil fuels. State and federal officials were fighting to reverse the stop-work order.
Moving from the tiniest state to one of the biggest, Texas, Republicans, like all Republicans everywhere, did as they were told by the criminal-at-the-top. The don’t mess with Texans moved to prevent a Democratic takeover of the House in the mid-term elections by creating five new Republican-heavy House districts.
This morning’s wake-up news was that Trump says he’s moving to fire Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, part of his drive to take over the supposedly independent central bank. Note that she is Black and a woman, two categories detested by the criminal-at-the-top.

ENOUGH, YOU ARE SAYING. Just stop. Too much. Shut up. Zip it, please.
Indeed, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know – which is that August isn’t over and neither is the Epoch of Misery. There’s always September and then the next three years.
The point is, and I expect that you know this, too, is that the criminal-at-the-top is only getting started and that the Misery Epoch will get worse, much, much worse.
In D.C., for example, I think Trump is trying ratchet up the Misery, trying to create “an incident” in which he can really crack down, maybe declare martial law and maybe not just in Washington.
My guess is that’s why the National Guard is now carrying guns; why Trump issued an executive order make burning the American flag a crime even though the Supreme Court once said it isn’t; why Trump is suggesting removal of no-cash bail - anything to make the DC crackdown more tense, more unstable, more explosive.

ENGINEER of the Epoch of Misery, the criminal-at-the-top. CREDIT: Gage Skidmore

Trump eventually, maybe sooner than eventually, will try to militarize more Democratic cities.
Trump will try to use that militarization to quell protests.
Trump will try to use facilities created for deportable immigrants to lock up national security risk protesters.
Trump will try use the Internet, AI and so forth to track what we write, what we read, what we say, and criminalize all three.
Which is why it is so important to keep speaking out, to go to rallies and protests, to support the John Boltons, the Kilmar Garcias and the Chris Christies, not because we like them, but because, like them, we are all at the same risk of a government under control of a criminal-at-the-top.
The only way to bring an end to the Epoch of Misery is for people of good will to bring it to an end. I don’t know how, don’t know exactly what to do. I can’t tell you what will work and what won’t.
It’s not an easy fight. But it’s ours.

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8/4/25

8/4/2025

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Guest Essay
TAKING TO THE STREETS
HOW EFFECTIVE ARE REGULAR PROTESTS
AT COUNTERING TRUMP'S WAR ON AMERICA?

ONE OF THE COMPLAINTS I hear most often is that Americans aren’t standing up to the cruel and destructive policies cascading from Donald Trump’s second administration.
“Why are people ignoring the fill-in-the-blank outrage of the moment: Medicare cuts, food stamp curbs, immigrant kidnappings and deportations, extortion of colleges, law firms and other institutions?”
Of course, millions of people are turning to the streets.
In my hometown, Newport, R.I., a “Bridge Brigade” is sponsored by the Newport Democratic City Committee and allies at the big Newport Bridge interchange every other week. There was a big turnout on “No Kings Day” back in June. There are, in fact, lots of demonstrations.
But do they have an impact? Have they become so common that they are little more than barely noticed wall paper? Do they feature the same folks, mostly elderly? In short, what's the point?
A friend, Maria Johnson, of Middletown, Conn., examines the plusses and minuses of regular protests in an essay published recently in the Hartford Courant. She’s given me permission to reprint it here.

Why We March
By Maria Johnson

I AM WRITING THIS exactly six months into Donald J. Trump’s presidency. That means – I did the math – there are still three and a half years left to go. Sigh. How are we gonna make it?
My unscientific survey – basically, of my friends and myself – reveals that four out of four people have had it, man. We’re tired, cranky, restless. Fed up.
We avoid the news, gripe to each other about whatever news seeps out, and share snarky posts.
And still, we suffer.
Nothing left to do but take to the streets. Put our bodies on the line. We make protest signs, some of them serious, referencing Germany in the ’30s; some of them funny (“Only Elvis is King”), and we stand at busy intersections, where passing cars mostly honk their support.
Are we saving democracy? That’s doubtful. Are we saving ourselves? More likely.
“I do it for myself,” said my art teacher friend Mary who protests weekly in Burlington, VT. “I cannot do nothing.”
Ed McKuen, one of the organizers of the weekly protests here in Middletown, said the aim is “to make people think. When they see their neighbors standing on the corner to protest what’s going on in Washington and when they see the messages people are holding up, we hope that they will think about it, maybe join us or get involved.”
Another fellow protester said she’s out there “because otherwise I fall into despair. It’s good to be around people who think and act the way I do. It kind of keeps you going.”
I get it. I protest to feel better, too, but I fear the serotonin may be wearing off. At yesterday’s protest, for example, I got into a dustup with a regular pedestrian at the crosswalk. Our exchange began benignly enough when he observed how consistently our group shows up. How long have we been doing this? he asked.
I’d joined the movement when it was already months in progress, so I wasn’t sure, but I pointed out Ed McKuen – “He would know.”
“Oh, the communist?” said the guy, and I, so brimming with the Kumbaya spirit of the sunny morning, mistakenly believed he was making a joke about what the other team thinks of us.
“Yep, we’re all communists,” I said.
Then the man made himself better understood. He said that, admittedly, Trump can be hard to take, but “at least he’s getting things done.”
Uh-oh. Getting things done?! That’s it, I told him, we’re done talking.
“Oh, because we disagree?”
Well, since he put it that way, yes.
What I couldn’t think to say in the moment is that what Trump’s “getting done” is dismantling democracy, cruelly depriving people of health care and a secure retirement, enlisting masked goons to pull innocent people off the street and deporting them to foreign jails, gutting or eliminating the government agencies that keep us safe and our children well-educated, turning on our allies, including Canada – Canada! – and generally making America a laughingstock around the world.
Disgusted, I said, “Why don’t you talk to my friend over here who has patience with people like you?” I pointed to my optimistic pal, Phoebe, who, unlike myself, actually believes she can change MAGA minds through the power of a civil conversation.
“Or else,” I said, changing the subject, “we can admire these lovely flowers here,” and I took a step toward a concrete planter abounding with pink and yellow petunias.
“Don’t come at me!” the guy said, as if I wielded a knife.
Come at him? And they call us libs snowflakes. I was seething with anger as he finally walked away down the sidewalk.
There was yet more drama to come – and from someone on our side!
I had approached a woman standing alone apart from the group. I told her I was going to write an essay about our protests and asked why she was out here today.
“It’s an opportunity to get …” she began, then stopped. “Are you recording me?”
It seemed an odd question considering I was holding my cellphone an inch from her mouth and had no notebook in which to record her response. I said yes, I was, and she gave me a good scolding for not saying so ahead of time.
What the …? O-kay, I said, backing away. Fine. I won’t use you. And I headed across the street, inwardly repeating my new mantra: “Fewer people, more painting.”

"NO KINGS DAY," June 14, Middletown, Conn.

"NO KINGS DAY," June 14, Middletown, R.I.

BECAUSE WHAT WAS I EVEN DOING HERE? I thought of Colin McEnroe, the Connecticut Public Radio host who on his Monday call-in show said he thinks there are “too many protests, frankly.” Asked by a caller to expand, he said he fears they’re becoming “background noise.”
“In West Hartford,” he noted, “there’s a bunch of people who protest every Saturday morning, every single Saturday morning. That’s fine, and good on them, and God bless all those guys in their gray ponytails. I think at a certain level that’s good.”
(The “gray ponytails” crack struck me as a little mean, but there’s no denying that our Resistance movement does trend older. “I never thought at my age I’d be protesting again,” said a 74-year-old woman on the corner with me. But that’s an essay for another day.)
McEnroe praised, by contrast, the “really effective” No Kings protest of a few weeks earlier, the wildly popular nationwide one that coincided with Trump’s bust of a birthday military parade.
He shared an anecdote about a particularly heartbreaking situation, in which a woman declined to seek medical treatment for fear of bankrupting her family, and he mused that maybe protests can somehow be joined to educating the public -- “and then maybe when you’ve learned a few new things, you can think more about what your next protest would be…so it’ll be a sonic boom instead of a pop gun.”
Like myself, and unlike my optimistic friend Phoebe, McEnroe despairs of MAGA types ever changing their minds, because “people’s existential identity is wrapped up in their hatred of the other side.”
That’s true. I barely recognize myself wearing this new existential identity.
And as with the most primitive forms of reptilian consciousness, McEnroe went on, it would “go against survival” to concede the merest point to the enemy.
That’s true, too. And it is about survival.
Survival of the country, survival of our personal happiness, our peace of mind, our ability, even willingness, to get along with one another, our hope in the future. That’s what’s so at risk.
So. Will I drag my sorry-ass self and my sign back onto the sidewalk, where people will very likely annoy me, next week and the week after that for the next three and a half years? I guess I will. Because short of voting the bums out in the midterms, what else can I do?
My friend Patty thinks I’m playing into MAGA’s hands by being ready to give up because of the unrelenting bad news out of Washington and two unpleasant encounters. My crankiness, she said, is blinding me to the loveliness of the protests, the new friends made, and the sense of solidarity, all of which does us good.
Plus, “it’s exposure,” said another fellow protester over the encouraging honking of horns, “and any exposure we can provide – everything’s needed now.”

* * *
Maria Johnson lives with her husband in Middletown, Conn., where she paints, writes, and, okay, protests.

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8/2/25

8/2/2025

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AN INSPIRED VOICE FROM
- AND FOR - HIGHER-ED
"Ransom" and "protection money:" What Wesleyan's Michael Wolf says Trump is demanding from the nation's universities and colleges.

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY'S campus in Middletown, Conn. CREDIT: Wesleyan University

IN MY LAST DANGEROUS TIMES POST, I featured a broadcast interview with an academic veteran, M. Lee Pelton, whom I thought gave voice to the worst arguments that higher education officials are using as they give in to President Trump’s extortion and shake-downs demands.
Pelton, former president of Willamette University and Emerson College, argued on a Boston radio talk show that the government’s financial hold over universities is so vast that “. . .you find yourself in a position of having to capitulate.”
But there are more inspired collegiate voices, and an eloquent one is that of Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
He appeared on a recent PBS News Hour broadcast, and described a settlement Columbia University made with the Trump administration as equivalent to paying "ransom" to a kidnapper. And that paying "protection money" to Trump compromises not only the independence of colleges and universities, but many other American institutions.
My own view is that no college or university – no law firm, no media organization – should ever let themselves be bullied by Trump. I like how Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha put it after Brown University in Providence announced a settlement with Trump
“I think he’s a blackmailer, frankly,” Neronha said of Trump to the Boston Globe. “My overall view is to fight, not give in, even if it requires sacrifice.”
As I did with Pelton’s statements, I’m copying the Roth interview transcript.
I don’t think transcripts make for great reading, but they do put the speakers’ views in context. You can follow this link to the archived News Hour broadcast.

THE NEWS HOUR INTERVIEW

MICHAEL ROTH, president of Wesleyan University. CREDIT: Wesleyan University

AMNA NAWAZ, of the News Hour: Columbia University and the Trump administration have reached a deal that restores federal funding and research grant money to the university. As part of the agreement, Columbia will pay $200 million to the federal government over three years and an additional $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees.

The university agreed to suspend, expel, or revoke degrees from some 70 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and it will issue a report to a monitor to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion is not promoted on campus. Columbia, which was at risk of losing billions of dollars from the government, says it retains its academic freedom.

For a closer look at this agreement and what it means for a higher education in the U.S., I'm joined by Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University. President Roth, welcome back to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us.

MICHAEL ROTH: Thanks for having me.

NAWAZ: So let's just start with your initial reaction. When you heard the news and the details of this settlement, what did you think?

ROTH: Well, I felt like one must feel when you have paid a ransom in a kidnapping situation and the person who's been kidnapped is returned safely.
You think, thank goodness, the kid's OK, or the person kidnapped is OK. But I wouldn't praise the agreement that led to the liberation of the kidnapped person. And so, in this case, I was pleased that this particular moment of assault on higher education by the Trump administration has been resolved, at least for now, although who knows? These agreements come and go with this White House.

I was and I am distressed that, in this country today, the executive branch of the federal government wants to be able to dictate terms to private universities, law firms, newspapers, TV stations. And so all of these things are evidence that the current administration is trying to erode support for institutions in civil society.

NAWAZ: Let me put to you, if I may, what the acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman, said in an interview on CNN this morning defending the terms of the deal.

Claire Shipman, Acting President, Columbia University:

"I think there are a couple of really important things about this agreement from our point of view. One, it doesn't cross the red lines that we laid out. It protects our academic integrity. That was, of course, essential to us.

"And, two, it does reset our relationship with the federal government in terms of research funding. And it's not just money for Columbia. I mean, this is about science. It's about curing cancer, cutting-edge, boundary-breaking science that actually benefits the country and humanity."

NAWAZ: President Roth, do you believe that, after this deal, Columbia can move forward with full academic freedom, as President Shipman there is saying? And what do you believe the downstream effects of making a deal like this are for other universities?

ROTH: Well, it's very clear that if you annoy the White House in this regime, you could get sucked into a process of litigation or fines that bear no relation to the facts of the matter, but just become a way of expressing loyalty, of conforming to the wishes of the government.

We saw it at UVA (University of Virginia) just a week or two ago. You see it now at George Mason (University). This is an effort to tell universities, as they have told law firms, as they're telling newspapers and as they have done with TV stations, telling these organizations, you are not independent. If you contract with the federal government, we have a — we, the government, has the right to tell you what to do.

This agreement does protect many things at Columbia. And, again, I'm not criticizing them for signing it. I don't criticize the parent for paying a ransom to get their kids back. They're getting their science back. But they're also telling the federal government, you can tell us how to run our Middle East studies program, telling the federal government, you can tell us how many police officers we should have at a minimum on campus or how students should be disciplined.

The White House has determined how students should be disciplined at a private university. This is massive overreach. This is an assault on the independence of civil society in America. And conservatives, liberals, moderates, they should all be concerned when a White House tells you how to run your private associations.

NAWAZ: So you're saying they should be concerned. As you note, Columbia is not the only university that's been targeted by this administration. Harvard, as we have been covering, has actually been fighting the administration in court, but we know there's also settlement talks going on. Do you believe universities and colleges will have no other choice but to make some kind of deal in order to move forward?

ROTH: Well, I do think that, when you're dealing with a very, very powerful entity like the federal government, especially when it doesn't obey its own laws — I mean, there are no findings of fact here about what the specific actions of anti-Semitism were — or discrimination against white people.

There's no findings of facts there. It's just, you give us $221 million, and then we allow you to compete for grants. I mean, it's a very old-fashioned game. You pay the powerful figure so that you can go along and continue to operate.

Now, you operate in a way, of course, that you don't want to annoy that powerful figure or that powerful organization. And it sends a chilling message across America that, if you have a late-night comedy show, if you have a law firm, if you are working in an educational institution or a library, or, as we read today, in a museum like the Smithsonian, if you don't please the president, you are at risk.

And, again, I don't blame them for trying to make the best of that situation, but, as Americans, I'm not worried about Columbia. I'm not worried about Wesleyan. I'm worried about the country, where we are being subject to a White House that thinks it could tell us what to do at every turn.

NAWAZ: As you know, the administration has long argued that this was about combating antisemitism on campus. This was a deal welcomed by Columbia's Hillel Jewish organization.

The executive director said in part: "The announcement's an important recognition of what Jewish students and families have expressed with increasing urgency. Anti-Semitism at Columbia is real. It has a tangible impact on Jewish students' sense of safety, belonging, and their civil rights."

I guess the question, President Roth, is if it makes Jewish students and staff feel safer, did the administration pressure and the deal do what it intended to do?

ROTH: How does paying the government $220 million to do basic science make Jews safer? As a Jew, I find this horrific.

I know anti-Semitism is real, and I know it was real and is real at Columbia, as it is in Congress, as it is in most places in the United States. But the idea that you pay off the government in order to get them off your back so you can do cancer research, and that's good for the Jews, I think it's ridiculous.

We don't need the White House to tell us anti-Semitism is real two weeks after the Defense Department contracts with Grok, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence entity after it praised Hitler.

This is an administration that is not concerned with Jewish welfare. I am concerned with Jewish welfare as a Jew, as a professor, as a college president. I think it's really important to call out anti-Semitism.

But to pay up basically protection money in a way that's supposed to make Jews safer, I think, in the long run, it's — as we say in my community, it's not good for the Jews.

NAWAZ: That is Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, joining us tonight. President Roth, thank you for your time.

ROTH: Thank you for having me.

A COMMENTATOR to my previous post, D. Neale Adams, (See it below) noted that I overstated the case in asserting that Lee Pelton speaks for all campus officials in rationalizing a devil's bargain with Trump.
Adams is right - the academic barrel is not completely rotten, and, in fact, I had planned today's Roth interview as a follow up and contrast to Pelton.
What led to my exaggeration is the worry that unless enough campus institutions fight back as a group, Trump-the-bully will have a greater chance of success. I should be more careful as a writer - as should the campus quislings.
In short, bullies can be beaten - but only if enough would-be victims stand up to them.
As the cliche/ slogan goes ( not necessarily from Ben Franklin):
'We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'

The following links were used in preparation of this post:

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8/1/25

8/1/2025

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A VOICE OF CAMPUS CAPITULATION
What it sounds like when higher-ed
kowtows to the schoolyard bully

BROWN UNIVERSITY's campus. Brown recently reached a "settlement" with the Trump administration: CREDIT: Brown University

STUPID ME. It’s taken me years to figure out what’s wrong with our country, or, more to the point, who is wrong with the country.
And it’s not Donald Trump, the psychopath and the most accomplished extortionist-gangster-bully president in American history; nor, for that matter, is it one of the slavish, suck-up enablers of Trump's Republican cult; nor is it one of the Trump whisperers, like the loathsome aide Stephen Miller, the presumed architect of Trump's racist immigration pogrom.
The people who are undermining the country are outwardly the most respectable, admired and upright people among us. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call this convocation of thugs, traitors and turncoats by their official titles: college presidents and trustees.
What a disgusting, repugnant bunch.
While the rest of us are wringing our hands and self-flagellating about “what can we do” to reverse Trump’s assault on America and democracy, we are being double-crossed by this supposedly articulate, well-dressed, highly credentialed, and probably decent-smelling gang of academic betrayers.
They are allowing Trump to extort their institutions of higher education by reaching “settlements” that are nothing more than shakedown demands in which power, not money, is the extorter-in-chief’s most favored kind of tribute.
By caving in to Trump to protect their own interests, the compliant campuses trigger a chain reaction of capitulation throughout the educational eco-system, which then extends to businesses, non-profit organizations, religious institutions and other sectors in the rest of the country.
You’d think that the university and college royalty would be in the best position – due to its vast intellectual and institutional resources – to confront the most common kind of educational outlaw: the schoolyard bully.
But instead of teaching the rest of us about how to neuter and defeat the schoolyard bully, the higher-ed crowd is conducting a national seminar in capitulation and humiliation, empowering the bully to succeed beyond his wildest expectations.
Recently, I actually heard an actual Voice of Capitulation, spelling out the rationalizations, defeatism and doublespeak that threatens not only the leafy campuses of academia, but the country itself.
The forum was the weekday midday radio program, “Boston Public Radio,” (*see correction at end) produced by GBH, the Boston public broadcasting superpower and featuring long-time co-hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braudy, who have an engaging sweet-and-sour chemistry and a relentless liberal focus.
One of their interviewees this day – July 29 – was a regular guest of the show, M. Lee Pelton, former president at two campuses, Willamette University in Oregon and Emerson College in Massachusetts and, since 2021, CEO of the Boston Foundation.
I don’t know anything about Pelton, who may have a personal history of educational accomplishment and social heroism, but on this day, he gave a shocking, if candid, rationale for kowtowing to Trump.
What follows is a transcript I made of a portion of the interview, which you can hear for yourself on the station’s podcast, at this link: https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/boston-public-radio/bpr-full-show-7-29-such-as-it-is
I apologize in advance for the awkwardness of translating a verbal exchange into a printed format. And I’ve edited some of Braude’s typically long-winded question/lectures.
The co-hosts were concerned about a report in the New York Times that Harvard University may be edging toward a huge financial settlement with the Trump administration. They were obviously worried that Harvard might follow the lead of Columbia University, which earlier had caved into Trump’s demands for tribute to correct alleged anti-Semitism.

LEE PELTON CREDIT: The Boston Foundation

MARGERY EAGAN: . . . Now, shortly after closing their diversity offices at Harvard that serve minority students, LGBTQ students and women, they've closed that over there at Harvard, now, they may be open to spending up to $500 million to get Trump off their back and making some concessions to the president. So what do you think?

JIM BRAUDE: Can I break up your questions? So I’m interested to hear first what you think of the done deal of the Columbia thing and then we can move on to what we're reading in the New York Times this morning, what do you think about what happened?

LEE PELTON: Well, you know, when Bart Giamatti stepped down as the president of Yale, he said that being a college president is no way for an adult to make a living. And this is especially true these days. So the paradigm shift, which has been in existence for quite a while, but which the Trump administration has taken advantage of, is it's private universities are really not private anymore.

EAGAN: Right.

PELTON: They're not private, because they're beholden to federal funding of, you know, the billions of dollars, that's for Columbia, that's for Harvard. And so you find yourself in a position of having to capitulate and, you know, I think unfortunately that's just where we are. And they're just, they're, they're not the beginning, but they're one of several private universities that I think will not be able to survive with the withdrawal of billions of dollars in federal funding to support their research and other aspects of the university.

BRAUDE: So would you've done the same thing – you were president of Emerson – if you were confronted with the same situation… you're being accused by somebody who hangs out with neo Nazis, the President United States, of anti-Semitism? We know there is is anti-Semitism being dealt with; we know he blows it out of proportion. And they say to you, not only do we want money from you, not only are we gonna limit your academic freedom, you have to agree to a monitor, an outside monitor to oversee your compliance. Would you agree to that?

PELTON: I don't know. I mean, I can't speak . . . .

BRAUDE: I think you do know.

PELTON: No, I know I can't because I can't speak to the particulars of this, of this, only what I read in the press, so I don't know what else, what are some of the other aspects of this. But you know, we live in an authoritarian, of the authoritarian federal government.

BRUADE: So you give into authoritarianism. Is that what? Because you have no choice? Because they . . . .

PELTON: Maybe, yeah, maybe. I don't, I don't know. I don't know what I would do in that situation, because I'm not confronted with it. I don't know all the facts, the details and so on and so forth. I think it's unfortunate. It, it upsets me to no end.

And, but, should I be upset with the fact that they capitulated, or should I be upset because we have this authoritarian regime that is using all of its tools to bring colleges and universities to their knees?

BRAUDE: This may be totally naive, because I've never had a job at that level of responsibility like you did when you ran Emerson or (Claire) Shipman (acting president at Columbia) or (President Alan) Garber over there at Harvard. But it's, there's no question that if you don't cut a deal and you lose – well, you know, even if you win the litigation, it's about short term funding – Trump legally will probably deny billions in the future . . . .

PELTON: Right. But it's not just money that – this is not money. This is about people. And so, you know, dozens, hundreds of people will no longer be able to work there. Or be able to do their, you know, the lifesaving research that we all depend on. So it's not, you know, we can talk about it in terms of, of, you know, monetary perspective, but it's, it's much more than that, it's really about, it's really about people.

EAGAN: But you know what? You're, you're much more of an historian than I am. You're certainly much more of an expert on civil rights struggles than I am. It seems to me that in every kind of struggle, particularly in the civil rights struggle, there were people that were willing to say “No, I'm not . . . . I’m gonna to stand up . . . “ at risk of their own lives, and people lost their lives, never mind their jobs,. And it seems like that's sort of, I mean I'm quite a coward myself, so I'm not, you know, (if) I could stand up to this kind of pressure. Do you know what I'm saying? But this doesn't; this doesn't work.

PELTON: Yeah, but it's, maybe it doesn't, we'll see. But it's a massive, massive scale, and it involves hundreds of thousands of people. It involves giving up the search to do lifesaving research for millions of people. So you know….

EAGAN: So you don’t think he won’t back down? You don't think he’ll get his capitulation, and then he’ll say: Ha, ha, ha?

PELTON: I don't know. I, I, I have no idea whether or not he will back down. We'll, we'll see. The history is, of course, he will change his mind and some quixotic moment. So you know, we'll just, we’ll see, so . . . .

BRAUDE: Can I ask you one more thing here on this deal, and by the way, I, I… It's very hard to say what you're saying. I know it is, because I know you, and I know how you feel about fights, and you are a guy who fights. But you've also been a university president . . . .

If the most powerful university in the world gets accused of anti-Semitism. They think they have a legal case against what Trump is doing; they decide to drop it to make a settlement that at least in part gives in to Trump. Then it seems to me that the message to Donald Trump is that you should send a letter to every single college and university that gets a dollar in federal funding, accuse them of anti-Semitism – no hearings, no nothing, no due process – and say, if it turns out you don't cut a deal with me like Harvard and Columbia did, next week, you're never getting another federal dollar. I mean, that's not a ridiculous extrapolation from the Columbia and potentially the Harvard situation. Is it?

PELTON: No, it's not. But this is not just about anti-Semitism, this is about the erasure of DEI.

BRAUDE: Exactly! Exactly! And the anti-Semitism thing is the cover.

PELTON: Yeah, this is what this is about and it's, it's – the scale it, of the encroachment of it is really frightening and disturbing.

BRAUDE: You talk to some of these presidents; you talk, you talk to some of these people, I assume, is that right?

PELTON: No, not so much.

BRAUDE: Really, is that true? You're not making eye contact with me?

PELTON: No, no, I know, I mean, I've got my own gig. . . .

(They all laugh at Pelton’s joke that his current job is running the community foundation, not a college or university.)

JIM BRAUDY & MARGERY EAGAN in screenshot from a 2022 video CREDIT: GBH

I THINK EAGAN AND BRAUDY asked the right questions, and Pelton gave the wrong answers.
Most distressing was Pelton’s defeatism.
He deemed that the fight is over and that, as the saying goes, resistance is futile; that the universities are out-gunned by the federal government; that the bully has all the cards.
Further, Pelton says there’s simply too much to lose to warrant resistance – billions of dollars, vital research, hundreds and thousands of employees and their jobs..
And that complexity confounds a solution: the “problem” has deep historical roots; the facts, unknown and known, differ from place to place.
All of which is nonsense.
Bullies, whether they haunt the schoolyard or the White House, succeed when the rest of us let them.
If enough universities stand up to Trump, he cannot succeed. But if one university after another makes an individual “deal” with Trump, it encourages the rest to fall into line.
As of this writing, the latest cave-in is Rhode Island’s homegrown member of the Ivy League.
Brown University announced a “settlement” that doesn’t seem as egregious as Columbia’s. But Brown still gave Trump his due: spending money that’s in short supply at the university for Rhode Island workforce development. Brown also agreed not to do something it doesn’t do anyway: provide medical treatment to transsexual minors. But, by failing to robustly defend transsexuals, the agreement opens the door to Trumpian scapegoating of other minorities.
Still, the details of the Brown agreement aren’t as important as that fact that the university agreed to a settlement in the first place. That betrayed the rest of us and encourages others to follow its example.
In dealing with bullies, what counts is what the crowd does: stand up to the bully or give in.
Lee Pelton, of course, is not the source of the problem. He’s not promoting Trump; he’s not currently a college president.
But, chillingly, he gives voice to the quisling mentality that is empowering the schoolyard bully.
His voice is what capitulation sounds like.

The following links were used in preparation of this post:

* Correction: The original version of this post wrongly identified the program on which Lee Pelton appeared as "Greater Boston." The correct title is "Boston Public Radio."

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Categories

AN EPOCH OF MISERY
Engineered by the nation’s criminal-at-the-top

Guest Essay
TAKING TO THE STREETS
HOW EFFECTIVE ARE REGULAR PROTESTS
AT COUNTERING TRUMP'S WAR ON AMERICA?

AN INSPIRED VOICE FROM
- AND FOR - HIGHER-ED
"Ransom" and "protection money:" What Wesleyan's Michael Wolf says Trump is demanding from the nation's universities and colleges.

A VOICE OF CAMPUS CAPITULATION
What it sounds like when higher-ed
kowtows to the schoolyard bully