The Terrifying Meekness of Administrators

In 2016, many university administrators publicly reassured students and community members who feared marginalization and persecution by the incoming Trump administration. As another Trump term approaches, administrators seem to be responding more quietly, if at all. The near silence of these presidents and deans, coupled with the ongoing repression of student organizing for Palestine, leaves me wondering whether they are willing or able to protect students like me.

As a current undergraduate at Pitzer College, I’ve been terrified by the meekness of administrators since the election. I’m transgender and a Palestine solidarity organizer. Several of my friends in college are immigrants. Many classmates are worried about their access to reproductive health care. We know all too well what the incoming presidential administration means to do and how it could marginalize and discriminate against us on campus. Yet post-election messages from our college president and dean of students have only gestured toward “challenging times” and “uncertainty and anxiety,” without any specific discussion of how people like us might be affected or what the college might do to keep us safe.

Broad, symbolic language was disappointingly typical in the statements by many university leaders when they responded to the 2016 election as well—but at least they responded. After this most recent election it seems that many have simply chosen to say nothing at all. Why so quiet?

New and self-imposed university policies of “neutrality,” often implemented in response to student and faculty organizing in solidarity with Palestine, represent administrators’ self-separation from their university communities. They have chosen to disengage from social issues, operating instead as mere enforcers of the rules.

Escalating repression and policing on campuses is a more dire sign of this disengaged, enforcement-oriented style of administration. In recent months, police have attacked and arrested pro-Palestine student protesters on campuses across the country at the behest of administrators. The American Civil Liberties Union joined Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch in expressing “serious concerns about the violent consequences when university officials call in police to quell protests,” including the apparent use of chemical irritants and rubber bullets against students by police.

At Pomona College (a member of the Claremont Colleges alongside Pitzer), administrators followed up the mass arrest by riot police of student protesters who occupied an office in April by using Wi-Fi data to track and discipline student protesters in October. Also in October, University of Pennsylvania police in tactical gear launched a raid of the off-campus house of student activists for unclear purposes related to a “vandalism investigation”; a university spokesperson sought to justify the shocking action with the assertion that “laws must be enforced uniformly and fairly and are not designed to be waived when they do not suit a particular viewpoint.”

I fear that the administrators choosing such law-and-order approaches to their communities may become unintentional participants in the violence the Trump administration plans to call for. What does it mean to claim neutrality, ramp up the repression of students and state that “laws must be enforced” as President-elect Trump’s second administration plans mass deportations, persecution of transgender students and other orders that could devastate higher education?

Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University, offers a simple piece of advice about authoritarianism at the beginning of his book On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance.” When people comply with an authoritarian leader before being asked—whether out of fear, obedience or conformity—Snyder argues they hasten increased repression and violence. “In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked,” Snyder writes. “A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

If we see university leaders surveilling and repressing students who protest for Palestine today, whom might they target tomorrow? Can we imagine administrators mustering squads of riot police again, this time to arrest undocumented students or staff after a deportation order comes down from the federal government? (Even arresting students who protest for Palestine could have a similar outcome under the new administration given Trump’s threat to revoke the visas of international student protesters.) Or could we picture deans tracking transgender students’ locations with Wi-Fi to see when and where they might have used the bathroom, desperate to protect the federal funding of their institutions and to avoid running afoul of a reinterpreted Title IX?

University administrators have been building up an arsenal of tools for surveilling and enforcing rules upon their communities, and now Trump is returning to office bent on further marginalizing many of the nation’s most vulnerable. My concern is not that the average university president or dean wants to do these terrible things. It’s that when they are pressured to do so—by a federal agency threatening their funding, state laws targeting their operations, trustees concerned about their institutional finances—they may have already brought themselves too close to the brink.

But it isn’t too late.

Administrators who want to protect their university communities must stop acting as simple enforcers and avoid pursuing increased policing and surveillance. They should recall the rich history of civil disobedience and resistance to injustice in the United States. They need to get clear about who is in the crosshairs of the incoming presidential administration, so that in the coming months and years they can take tangible steps to support and protect marginalized faculty, staff and students like me.

Public statements like one from San Francisco State University president Lynn Mahoney are a start. Mahoney acknowledged the specific risks the new administration will pose to reproductive rights, the rights of LGBTQ+ people and the rights of immigrants. She shared specific resources for targeted groups and expressed a commitment to including and supporting them in the future. She and her colleagues across the nation must continue to make statements like these and back them up with material action.

Campus administrations that avoid calling the police on student protesters, such as ours here at Pitzer thus far, are also moving in the right direction. This decision is even more praiseworthy when combined with a public commitment like the one we saw a few months ago from Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth. In explaining why Wesleyan prioritized the social engagement of its university community rather than cracking down on minor rule violations, Roth offered a powerful articulation of his vision for higher education: “We must learn to practice freedom better.”

How do we shift away from fear, obedience and conformity in the face of repression? How do we practice freedom better instead of obeying in advance? Beyond bucking the trend of increased policing on campuses, Roth also made the commitment that Wesleyan “will not voluntarily assist in any efforts by the federal government to deport our students, faculty or staff solely because of their citizenship status.”

Other universities should follow suit in defending their students (as well as faculty and staff) from laws that target them. Alongside commitments like Roth’s, this defense can take the form of providing legal support and building strong campus communities, as well as preparing for direct federal attempts to enforce discriminatory policies.

All of this should take place as openly and transparently as possible. For students, feeling supported by our university leaders in such a fearful moment could be reassuring and even lifesaving. Realistic honesty is important here, too: We need to understand what our universities will and won’t do to protect us so that we can make our own decisions to keep ourselves and each other safe.

There is still time for university administrators to correct their course, reclaiming their place as leaders who protect the communities of scholars on their campuses and the staff who care for them. I hope they can chart a path toward principled leadership rather than fearful obedience and blind enforcement. Students like me desperately need their support right now.