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Monday, September 1, 2025

100 Ways the Trump Administration Has Undermined the Environment, Human Rights, World and Domestic Peace, Labor, and Knowledge

The Trump administration, since returning to power in 2025, has escalated attacks on the foundations of democracy, the environment, world peace, human rights, and intellectual inquiry. While the administration has marketed itself as “America First,” its policies have more often meant profits for the ultra-wealthy, repression for the working majority, and escalating dangers for the planet.

Below is a running list of 100 of the most dangerous actions and policies—a record of how quickly a government can dismantle hard-won protections for people, peace, and the planet.

I. Attacks on the Environment

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement—again.
Dismantling the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Opening federal lands and national parks to oil, gas, and mining leases.
Gutting protections for endangered species.
Allowing coal companies to dump mining waste in rivers and streams.
Rolling back vehicle fuel efficiency standards.
Subsidizing fossil fuel companies while defunding renewable energy programs.
Suppressing climate science at federal agencies.
Greenlighting pipelines that threaten Indigenous lands and water supplies.
Promoting offshore drilling in fragile ecosystems.
Weakening Clean Water Act enforcement.
Dismantling environmental justice programs that protect poor communities.
Politicizing NOAA and censoring weather/climate warnings.
Undermining international climate cooperation at the UN.
Allowing pesticides banned in Europe to return to U.S. farms.

II. Undermining World Peace and Global Stability

Threatening military action against Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.
Expanding the nuclear arsenal instead of pursuing arms control.
Cutting funding for diplomacy and the State Department.
Withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Weakening NATO alliances with inflammatory rhetoric.
Escalating drone strikes and loosening rules of engagement.
Providing cover for authoritarian leaders worldwide.
Walking away from peace negotiations in the Middle East.
Blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, Yemen, and other war-torn areas.
Expanding weapons sales to Saudi Arabia despite human rights abuses.
Using tariffs and sanctions as blunt instruments against allies.
Politicizing intelligence briefings to justify military adventurism.
Abandoning refugee protections and asylum agreements.
Treating climate refugees as security threats.
Reducing U.S. participation in the United Nations.

III. Attacks on Human Rights and the Rule of Law

Expanding family separation policies at the border.
Targeting asylum seekers for indefinite detention.
Militarizing immigration enforcement with National Guard troops.
Attacking reproductive rights and defunding women’s health programs.
Rolling back LGBTQ+ protections in schools and workplaces.
Reinstating bans on transgender service members in the military.
Undermining voting rights through purges and voter ID laws.
Packing the courts with extremist judges hostile to civil rights.
Weaponizing the Justice Department against political opponents.
Expanding surveillance powers with little oversight.
Encouraging police crackdowns on protests.
Expanding use of federal troops in U.S. cities.
Weakening consent decrees against abusive police departments.
Refusing to investigate hate crimes tied to far-right violence.
Deporting long-term immigrants with no criminal record.

IV. Attacks on Domestic Peace and Tranquility

Encouraging militias and extremist groups with dog whistles.
Using inflammatory rhetoric that stokes racial and religious hatred.
Equating journalists with “enemies of the people.”
Cutting funds for community-based violence prevention.
Politicizing natural disaster relief.
Treating peaceful protests as national security threats.
Expanding federal use of facial recognition surveillance.
Undermining local control with federal overreach.
Stigmatizing entire religious and ethnic groups.
Promoting conspiracy theories from the presidential podium.
Encouraging violent crackdowns on labor strikes.
Undermining pandemic preparedness and response.
Allowing corporations to sidestep workplace safety rules.
Shutting down diversity and inclusion training across agencies.
Promoting vigilante violence through online platforms.

V. Attacks on Labor Rights and the Working Class

Weakening the Department of Labor’s enforcement of wage theft.
Blocking attempts to raise the federal minimum wage.
Undermining collective bargaining rights for federal workers.
Supporting right-to-work laws across states.
Allowing employers to misclassify gig workers as “independent contractors.”
Blocking new OSHA safety standards.
Expanding exemptions for overtime pay.
Weakening rules on child labor in agriculture.
Cutting unemployment benefits during economic downturns.
Favoring union-busting corporations in federal contracts.
Rolling back protections for striking workers.
Encouraging outsourcing of jobs overseas.
Weakening enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in workplaces.
Cutting funding for worker retraining programs.
Promoting unpaid internships as a “pathway” to jobs.

VI. Attacks on Intellectualism and Knowledge

Defunding the Department of Education in favor of privatization.
Attacking public universities as “woke indoctrination centers.”
Promoting for-profit colleges with predatory practices.
Restricting student loan forgiveness programs.
Undermining Title IX protections for sexual harassment.
Defunding libraries and public broadcasting.
Politicizing scientific research grants.
Firing federal scientists who contradict administration narratives.
Suppressing research on gun violence.
Censoring federal climate and environmental data.
Promoting creationism and Christian nationalism in schools.
Expanding surveillance of student activists.
Encouraging book bans in schools and libraries.
Undermining accreditation standards for higher education.
Attacking historians who challenge nationalist myths.
Cutting humanities funding in favor of military research.
Encouraging political litmus tests for professors.
Treating journalists as combatants in a “culture war.”
Promoting AI-driven “robocolleges” with no faculty oversight.
Gutting federal student aid programs.
Allowing corporate donors to dictate university policy.
Discouraging international students from studying in the U.S.
Criminalizing whistleblowers who reveal government misconduct.
Promoting conspiracy theories over peer-reviewed science.
Normalizing ignorance as a political strategy.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Our Journalism

Our journalism is different than most others who cover higher education. Like those other outlets, we report the news, but that is not our focus. And like a few outlets, we also do time-consuming investigative work. We recognize the outstanding contributions of dedicated journalists, but these times, the 2020s, call good people to do more--much more.

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) follows the legacy of the muckrakers from the early 20th century. HEI delves into in-depth investigative reporting, uncovering scandals, institutional failures, and systemic inequalities in colleges, universities, and their related businesses. Journalists like Upton Sinclair (who exposed the meatpacking industry) and Ida Tarbell (who revealed monopolistic practices in oil) used their platforms to spotlight hidden problems. In a similar vein, HEI carries this tradition forward by focusing on the higher education industry and connects it with the world outside the ivory tower.

Muckraking journalists of the past often focused on giving a voice to the voiceless, and in today's context, HEI highlights issues such as racial, class, and gender disparities in education and the work that should follow. These topics have become more prominent in the 2020s as society grapples with the effects of systemic inequalities and how marginalized communities are underserved and underrepresented in elite institutions.

Just as muckrakers' stories led to reforms (e.g., child labor laws, anti-trust regulations), HEI aims to create change in higher education by influencing public opinion and policy. Change that can take decades to create and months to lose. By exposing unethical practices and systemic problems, such as the growing burden of student loans, the corporatization of universities, and complicity in climate change and authoritarianism, we hope to prompt action from lawmakers and educators to implement more equitable solutions.

Importance of This Type of Journalism in the 2020s:

In the 2020s, higher education is undergoing significant challenges, to include skyrocketing tuition, an increasing reliance on adjunct faculty, and concerns over the value of a college degree. Investigative journalism like ours holds universities accountable for the way they handle these issues. It serves as a check on the growing power and wealth of educational institutions, particularly in light of their increasing commercialization and influence over public policy.

The 2020s have brought heightened awareness of issues like racial inequality, mental health concerns, and the widening gap between wealthy and poor students. Investigative journalism continues to expose these problems, helping to drive conversations about fairness and equity in education. In an era when many people feel disconnected from powerful institutions, journalism that uncovers uncomfortable truths is essential for mobilizing change.

Higher education has been seen by many as a beacon of knowledge, innovation, and fairness, yet there are growing concerns about its accessibility and integrity. Investigative journalism done well helps maintain public trust in higher education by ensuring that universities live up to their purported values. HEI helps the public see when universities exploit students, misuse funds, or engage in unethical practices.

In the 2020s, many key policy issues—such as student debt, the cost of education, and educational access—are hot topics. Journalism that scrutinizes higher education can influence policy reform, potentially leading to legislative action aimed at reducing student debt, increasing transparency in university finances, and addressing fair hiring practices.

War and Peace:

War is often driven by political, economic, and technological forces, and universities are deeply intertwined with these drivers. Many top universities have longstanding partnerships with military contractors, defense organizations, and intelligence agencies. Research funded by these institutions may directly contribute to the development of weapons or military technologies, some of which are used in conflicts around the world.

The Higher Education Inquirer investigates how these partnerships influence the direction of research, as well as the ethical implications of universities prioritizing military contracts over other forms of academic inquiry. Similarly, university programs train future leaders who will shape foreign policy or lead military operations, and HEI will hold them accountable for the potential consequences of those actions.

On the other hand, universities can be spaces where peace studies, conflict resolution programs, and global diplomacy are taught—an important counterbalance that HEI highlights, showing how academia can be a force for peace amidst the militarization of knowledge.

Genocide:

Genocides are often preceded by a climate of division and dehumanization, and universities are often the breeding grounds for ideologies that either challenge or perpetuate these dynamics. Throughout history, some academic institutions have provided intellectual support to regimes that perpetrate genocide, whether through the training of military officers or the dissemination of harmful nationalist ideologies.

Conversely, universities can also serve as platforms for the resistance against genocide, with professors and students leading efforts to expose atrocities, advocate for human rights, and prevent violence.

The Higher Education Inquirer investigates how universities have both been complicit in, and resisted, the ideologies that fuel genocide. HEI explores the ways in which certain university-funded research or prominent academic figures have either contributed to genocidal narratives or become strong advocates for justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of such horrors.

Global Climate Change:

Climate change represents a massive, existential crisis that touches every part of society, and universities are both contributors to and leaders in tackling this challenge.

HEI investigates how universities have been complicit in exacerbating the climate crisis—whether through fossil fuel investments, ties to unsustainable industries, or research that furthers environmentally harmful practices. At the same time, universities are also at the cutting edge of climate science, sustainable technologies, and environmental activism.

The Higher Education Inquirer investigates whether universities are doing enough to address their own carbon footprints, promote sustainable practices on campus, and foster a generation of leaders who are committed to climate justice. In a world where universities are increasingly seen as both perpetrators of environmental degradation and potential agents of change, HEI’s investigative reporting is crucial in holding these institutions accountable.

Mass Incarceration:

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and universities are deeply involved in the systems that perpetuate this crisis. Many universities participate in research that supports law enforcement, surveillance technologies, or criminal justice policies, which can fuel the growth of the prison-industrial complex.

The Higher Education Inquirer examines how higher education sustains and challenges mass incarceration. For instance, some universities benefit from partnerships with prisons, offering education programs to incarcerated individuals, but also facing criticism for their indirect role in perpetuating a system that disproportionately targets people of color.

HEI investigates whether universities are actively working to dismantle mass incarceration through programs that promote restorative justice, education in prisons, or advocacy for systemic reform, or whether they are complicit in perpetuating the status quo through research and policy influence that supports harsh criminal justice policies.

Uniting These Issues:

The Higher Education Inquirer brings these issues together by demonstrating how universities are not isolated entities but integral parts of a global system that influences war, human rights, the environment, and justice.

For example, universities that are heavily funded by military contracts should be implicated in fueling global conflict and war, while also contributing to climate change through the development of harmful technologies. At the same time, these same universities often fail to adequately address the ways in which their research, policies, and curricula shape or reinforce systemic racism and mass incarceration.

By following the muckraker tradition of exposing corruption and exploitation, HEI investigates how the pursuit of profit, power, and prestige within academia intersects with larger global crises.

Investigative journalism that connects the dots between higher education, war, genocide, climate change, and mass incarceration is crucial to fully understanding these issues and holding institutions accountable for their roles in perpetuating or mitigating them.

In the 2020s, when universities hold immense cultural, political, and economic power, the Higher Education Inquirer continues the legacy of the muckrakers by pushing for a more ethical, transparent, and socially responsible approach to higher education—one that reveals the problems of the world and to its solutions.

Sunday, August 3, 2025

The Serenity Prayer, Climate Collapse, and Genocide: A Deal with the Devil

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."

The Serenity Prayer has comforted millions. In times of personal struggle, it can be a powerful call to surrender what lies beyond one’s control. But in moments of global crisis, when powerful institutions profit from destruction, the prayer can function less as a path to peace and more as a pact of passivity—a deal with the devil.

This danger becomes stark in the face of two intertwined realities: planetary climate collapse and the mass suffering of human populations through war and genocide. While glaciers melt and firestorms raze entire regions, and while families in Gaza are buried beneath rubble from precision airstrikes, too many well-meaning individuals offer only whispered prayers for acceptance. The language of “serenity” has become a spiritual sedative, numbing people to action in the face of unprecedented violence.

The horror in Gaza is not isolated. It is the latest chapter in a long history of calculated brutality. For more than nine months, Israeli forces have carried out one of the most intensive bombing campaigns of the century, reducing schools, hospitals, and apartment blocks to ash. Palestinians—already confined, stateless, and starving—are told to disappear quietly. And in the United States, many of the most powerful evangelical Christian institutions offer not protest, but prayer. They do not condemn the bombs. They bless them.

This theology of inaction extends to the climate crisis as well. Fires in Canada have darkened skies from New York to Kentucky. Rising seas threaten to erase Pacific island nations and entire Gulf communities. Extreme heat has shattered records from Delhi to Phoenix. The science is clear, and has been for decades. The cause is clear: the burning of fossil fuels for profit. And yet, rather than confront the systems responsible, many Americans—especially in religious communities—retreat into familiar verses, trusting in divine will while oil executives thank them for their silence.

This pattern is old. During the genocide of Native Americans, Christian settlers invoked scripture to justify massacres. Indigenous nations were labeled “heathens” standing in the way of Manifest Destiny. Boarding schools were built to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Entire civilizations were wiped out in the name of order, law, and even God. Churches, rather than stand with the oppressed, often operated hand-in-hand with empire. They prayed not for justice, but for tranquility—after the land had been stolen and the people erased.

In the twentieth century, many Christian leaders remained silent during the Holocaust. In the Rwandan genocide, clergy sometimes aided the killers. Again and again, the lesson is clear: serenity without resistance is complicity.

And today, we see this same quiet complicity in American Christian higher education. At Liberty University—a billion-dollar religious empire—the Serenity Prayer might just as well hang above the boardroom. The institution thrives on a mixture of fundamentalist certainty, political power, and economic ambition. Its law school has become a breeding ground for conservative legal warriors who reinterpret justice through dominionist theology. Its Jesse Helms School of Government honors a segregationist legacy while preparing students for ideological battle. Climate science is downplayed. Militarism is sanctified. And genocide—whether in the name of security or salvation—is never named.

In such an environment, prayer becomes performance. It soothes the conscience while injustice metastasizes. It gives believers a moral loophole: if change is deemed impossible, no action is required. But change is not impossible. Resistance is not futile. And silence is not neutral.

We must reclaim the Serenity Prayer from the institutions that have weaponized it. Serenity cannot be the first response to atrocity. Courage must lead, especially when the victims are silenced. Wisdom must include historical memory—of the land theft that built America, of the smoke rising from Gaza, of the forests burning in Siberia and the Sahel. And acceptance must come only after struggle, not before it.

The future will not judge us for how often we prayed, but for what we did while praying. In an age of climate catastrophe and global injustice, serenity without struggle is not peace—it is surrender.

Sources:
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer and its Contexts, Library of Congress
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Gaza Emergency Reports” (2023–2025)
UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report (2023)
Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Apparent War Crimes in Gaza” (2024)
Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt
Democracy Now!, “Witnessing the Gaza Bombardment”
Center for Environmental Justice, “Climate Apartheid” Report
Higher Education Inquirer, “Liberty University: A Billion-Dollar Edu-Religious Powerhouse Under the Lens” (2025)

Friday, October 25, 2024

The "Education Not Agitation" Act Seeks Crackdown on Campus Protestors

Republican Greg Murphy (MD) has introduced legislation in Congress to crack down on American college campuses, and to support the restriction of freedom of assembly and other Constitutional rights. The legislation is titled the Education Not Agitation Act.

This legislation disqualifies individuals who are convicted of certain criminal offenses from receiving education related tax benefits including the American Opportunity Tax Credit, the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit, and the deduction on student loan interest.

Specifically, if an individual is convicted of unlawful assembly, rioting, trespassing, vandalism, battery, or battery on a law enforcement officer while conducting a protest at an institute of higher education, they will be disqualified from receiving these tax benefits.

Unlawful assembly is the legal term to describe a group of people with the mutual intent of deliberate disturbance of the peace. Trespassing is knowingly entering another owners' property or land without permission. Vandalism is the intentional destruction or defacement of another person's property. These acts, however, are subject to the varying opinions of law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and juries.

The threat of arrest and use of force, detention, school suspensions, deportations, and other police and administrative powers may be enough to prevent peaceful protests or reduce the power of the protestors. Some universities and state governments have already acted to reduce and restrict freedom of speech and assembly on campus.

Legislation like the Education Not Agitation Act further sanctions those who may have valid reasons for resistance on existential matters like war and peace, genocide, and catastrophic climate change. History (hopefully) will record that.

Campus Protests, Campus Safety, and the Student Imagination

Democratic Protests on Campus: Modeling the Better World We Seek (Annelise Orleck)

Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance

Wikipedia Community Documents Pro-Palestinian Protests on University and College Campuses

One Fascism or Two?: The Reemergence of "Fascism(s)" in US Higher Education

A People's History of Higher Education in the US

How Would Trump's Plans for Mass Deportations Affect US Higher Education?

Monday, September 8, 2025

Campus Cops, A Critical History

Campus policing in the United States has a long and complicated history, one that cannot be understood apart from the larger culture of violence in the nation. Colleges and universities, far from being sanctuaries of peace, have mirrored the broader society’s struggles with crime, inequality, and abuse of power. The development of campus police forces is both a symptom of these realities and a contributor to them.

From Watchmen to Armed Police

In the early 20th century, many colleges relied on night watchmen or unarmed security guards to keep order. Their duties were limited: locking buildings, checking IDs, and responding to minor incidents. But as campuses expanded in size and complexity—particularly after the GI Bill opened higher education to millions—colleges began to formalize security forces. By the 1960s and 1970s, during an era of political unrest and rising crime rates, many institutions established their own sworn police departments with full arrest powers.

The rationale was simple: the surrounding society was becoming more violent, and colleges were not immune. Campus shootings, from the University of Texas tower massacre in 1966 to Virginia Tech in 2007, underscored the vulnerability of universities to extreme violence. Administrators and legislators justified campus policing as a necessary protection against a culture of guns, crime, and fear.

The Expansion of Campus Policing

Today, more than 90 percent of U.S. colleges and universities with 2,500 or more students have some form of armed campus police. Many operate as fully accredited police departments, indistinguishable from municipal counterparts. They are tasked with preventing theft, responding to assaults, and increasingly, preparing for mass shootings. This expansion reflects the broader American decision to deal with social breakdown through policing and incarceration rather than through prevention, education, or healthcare.

Yet the rise of campus police also brings deep contradictions. If colleges are supposed to be places of learning and community, what does it mean that they are patrolled by officers trained in the same punitive logics as city police? What does it say about the United States that students—especially students of color—often feel surveilled rather than protected?

Campus Coverups and the Protection of Institutions

Beyond concerns about over-policing, there is another side to the story: under-policing and coverups. Colleges have long been criticized for minimizing reports of sexual assault, hazing, hate crimes, and other misconduct in order to protect their reputations. Title IX litigation, Department of Education investigations, and journalism have revealed systemic patterns of universities failing to report crimes or discouraging survivors from coming forward.

Campus police departments have sometimes been complicit in these coverups. Because they report to university administrations rather than independent city governments, their accountability is compromised. The incentive to “keep the numbers down” and maintain the appearance of a safe, prestigious campus can lead to the suppression of reports. Survivors of sexual violence often describe being dismissed, ignored, or retraumatized by campus police who appeared more concerned about institutional liability than student well-being.

The Contradictions of Campus Safety

The dual role of campus police—protecting students from external dangers while shielding institutions from internal accountability—illustrates the contradictions of higher education in a violent society. Universities are expected to provide safety in a nation awash with firearms, misogyny, racism, and economic desperation. But instead of challenging these conditions, many campuses rely on armed policing, surveillance technologies, and public relations strategies.

The result is a paradox: campuses are policed as if they are dangerous cities, yet when crimes happen within their walls, especially those involving sexual violence or elite fraternities and athletes, those same crimes are often hidden from public view.

Toward a Different Model of Safety

Critics argue that true campus safety requires moving beyond reliance on police alone. Investments in mental health services, consent education, community accountability processes, and structural reforms to address gender violence and racial inequities are essential. Some advocates push for independent oversight of campus police, ensuring they are accountable not just to administrators but to students, staff, and the broader public.

If campus policing has grown because America has normalized violence, then reimagining campus safety requires confronting the roots of that violence. As long as universities remain more committed to protecting their brands than their students, campus cops will embody the contradictions of American higher education—part shield, part coverup, and part reflection of a society unable to address its deeper wounds.

Sources

Sloan, John J. and Fisher, Bonnie S. The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower: Campus Crime as a Social Problem. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Karjane, Heather M., Fisher, Bonnie S., and Cullen, Francis T. Campus Sexual Assault: How America’s Institutions of Higher Education Respond. National Institute of Justice, 2002.
U.S. Department of Education, Clery Act Reports.
Armstrong, Elizabeth A. and Hamilton, Laura. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Harvard University Press, 2013.

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Higher Education Inquirer: Increasingly Relevant

The Higher Education Inquirer continues to grow. Last month the number of views rose to more than 45,000. And our total number of views has increased to more than 440,000. While we had added advertisements, we have not received any SEO help, and we do not pay Google for ads.

We believe our growth stems largely from our increasing relevance and in our truth telling, which other higher education news outlets are unwilling to do in these times.

Our devotion to transparency, accountability, and value for our readers guides us.

We invite a diverse group of guest authors who are willing to share their truths. The list includes academics from various disciplines, advocates, activists, journalists, consultants, and whistleblowers. We back up all of this work with data and critical analysis, irrespective of politics and social conventions. We are willing to challenge the higher education establishment, including trustees, donors, and university presidents.

Our articles covering student loan debt, academic labor, nonviolent methods of protest, and freedom of speech are unparalleled. And we are unafraid about including other issues that matter to our readers, including stories and videos about mental health, student safety, technology (such as artificial intelligence), academic cheating, and the nature of work. And matters of war, peace, democracy, and climate change.

Our focus, though mainly on US higher education, also has an international appeal.

Some of our work takes years to produce, through careful documentation of primary and secondary sources, database analysis, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. We share all of this information for everyone to see at no cost.

Of course, we could not operate without all your voices. We welcome all your voices. Something few other sources are willing to do.

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Rutgers University Workers Waging Historic Strike For Economic Justice (Hank Kalet)

Editors note: The Higher Education Inquirer thanks Hank Kalet for allowing us to reprint his substack Channel Surfing as a record of the Rutgers strike. Hank is a . We encourage you to subscribe to his substack and visit the Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union twitter pages.

You can donate to the strike fund at https://rafup.betterworld.org/donate

Post-Strike Diary: A Step Back and Some History
The Fight Here at Rutgers Is Not Over, Nor Is It an Isolated Battle

I want to get back to first principles. Put the strike at Rutgers into the broader context of higher ed and contingent worker right. Connect it to the larger currents in the labor movement.

The 40 years starting with Ronald Reagan’s election were awful ones for labor unions. Union activity had already peaked when Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers and signaled to business that the era of labor peace on the employer side was over.

I worked in a factory in Trenton that summer. There were whispers that union organizing was taking place, but it wasn’t gaining much traction. Factory jobs were leaving the state and the Northeast and there was fear that management would close shop and move to Georgia, Alabama, or another anti-union state. Reagan’s action was the final straw, dooming the efforts, and setting in motion a frenzy of union busting we are still struggling to understand. (I’m working on a play about this moment.)

The 40 years that followed were mostly dark for the union movement, with some victories. Some of this darkness was brought on by the unions themselves, many of which had calcified and were either corrupt or overly cozy with management and politicians. Grassroots energy was dismissed and reform efforts short-lived.

The Covid pandemic shifted the terrain. Donna Murch, a union colleague and associate professor of history at Rutgers, has been making the case that Covid laid bare the vulnerabilities of all faculty members and all workers at Rutgers. Covid forced classes online with little assistance and no compensation for the work needed to make that happen. It put clinicians and lab workers in peril, requiring them to work through the pandemic often without proper PPE. It disrupted grad students’ research, even as their funding clock continued to tick.

This precarity was evident throughout society, a realization that led to union drives at Amazon, Starbucks, and other companies that relied on short-term and/or low-paid workers. Warehouse workers — many immigrants, some undocumented— often faced the worst conditions.

Those of us with a level of economic privilege were able to pay folks in the gig economy to do our grocery shopping and provide needed services, allowing Im us to stay home.

Unemployment shot up, wages stagnated with the economy, and the fascistic wing of the Republican Party — those most aligned with then-President Trump and opposed to vaccines, masks, and those who violently responded to the Black Lives Matter protests that spread after the state murder of George Floyd — cracked down and continue to crackdown on efforts to expand opportunity and inclusion.

This is the backdrop against which we have to judge the current wave of organizing and strikes — a movement that is gaining traction in ways we have not seen in a long time.

Gallup reports:

Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions. Although statistically similar to last year's 68%, it is up from 64% before the pandemic and is the highest Gallup has recorded on this measure since 1965.

Union density remains an issue, though this is likely because of the legal impediments erected over 40-plus years of aggressive anti-union activity from both parties, abetted by a media infrastructure that has lost its connections to workers.

News coverage of labor is lagging badly behind this surge of organizing. The loss of labor as a beat has created a structural coverage deficit that, in practical terms, means reporters are reporting and writing stories with at best a limited background on labor issues and dynamics, including how labor law works and just how much power the bosses have accumulated over the years. The upshot is a series of stories throughout the press that boils nearly every labor dispute down to money, or that filters these disputes through an earlier lens in which each dispute is a singular event unrelated to the larger American economy.

The reality, as we discussed in my class today, is that the current wave of organizing is about more than money. It is about life conditions, workplace conditions, about safety and scheduling, and long-term job security. Starbucks workers want more control of their schedules, more regularity, so they can plan their lives. Amazon workers and others working in the new mostly unregulated warehouse industry want safety rules, regular breaks, sick time. The rail workers, who were thrown onto the tracks by President Joe Biden, want an end to the kind of scheduling that results in exhaustion and dangerous conditions — one of the many factors that resulted in the deadly East Palestine crash.

Adjuncts and grads at Rutgers and other institutions of higher education want raises. But we also want respect. We want job security — big raises mean little if we can be fired or laid off easily. We want a shift in values in higher ed away from the current model, which is more focused on creating a profit (big reserve accounts and endowments that can be invested to generate bigger reserves and endowments), on building sports empires, on turning faculty into grant chasers or replaceable cogs.

The framework in place at Rutgers is a start, but this contract fight is far from over. And even when this one ends, we know there will be more work to be done. This is the beginning of the transformation of higher ed, not the conclusion.

Post-Strike Diary: Rutgers Unions Fight On Historic Gains But Work To Be Done.

The strike is off, for now. But the efforts to remake Rutgers continues.

As I wrote Saturday, the unions representing striking workers voted to accept a contract framework in exchange for pausing the strike before it entered its second week. We paused to let students get back to classes. To let them finish their semester, their careers at Rutgers.

The framework includes a 14% raise over four years for full-time faculty, a 33% pay increase for grads over four years, a 25.5% bump for post-docs, and a 48% increase for adjuncts; multi-semester contracts for adjuncts, presumptive renewal of contracts, recognition of graduate fellows as grad workers, changes in grievance and evaluations procedures, and five-year funding for grads. The framework also includes elements of the “Bargaining for the Common Good” agenda: a $600,000 recurring Community Fund and the end of the university policy that prevents students from registering for classes or getting transcripts or diplomas due to unpaid fines and fees, and a Union-University-Community table.

Much of this is historic, but it’s still a work in progress. The clinicians, researchers, and professors represented by BHSNJ-AAUP have nothing from administration, and more needs to be done for grads, for students and the community, and for adjuncts.

That was the message Monday afternoon as about 100 picketers gathered and chanted, reminding the community and the press that the battle to end the corporatization on higher ed continues — both here in New Jersey and nationally — continues.

Picketers carried strike signs with the word “suspended” stapled above “On Strike.” We marched intro of Scott Hall on College Avenue chanting, “The strike may be suspended. The struggle hasn’t ended.” We did his despite the cold win blowing own College Avenue as students looked on. We have more actions planned this week, part of a rolling set of protests designed to keep our issues in front of the public and to maintain pressure on an administration that failed to take us seriously until we walked and the governor got involved.

I told NBC New York that we could reinstate the strike if management fails to play ball. A threat? Idle talk? I’ll leave it at that. But we’re not going away. We’re not backing down.

RU Strike Diary, Day 5 Ends With a 'Framework'

We have a framework for a deal and are pausing the strike that has shut down Rutgers University for the last five days. I’m being careful of the language. We don’t have a deal and we have not ended the strike. We have a framework. There remain a lot issues to address, but most of the big ones are settled. The framework takes us a long way toward our demands of equal pay, job security, better pay for grads, and making Rutgers a better neighbor. It is not a perfect deal. We wanted more. But I think we moved the ball far down the field. This is not the final battle, but part of a larger movement.

Cliches. Platitudes. Bromides.

But still accurate.

I think the deal is good for the workers and students involved, but I can’t say much about the details. The journalist in me bristles at this, but my role as a member of the adjunct faculty union executive board prohibits me from saying much more. This is in line with the week for me, a week in which I found myself on the other side of the reporter’s notebook. I’ve talked with more reporters this week than in my entire adult life.

I teach journalism at Rutgers as an adjunct. I became involved in the union effort in 2021 and have become more and more active. The more active I became, the more I learned about the inequities of higher ed. The more I learned about these inequities, the more I became involved.

This was the same for just about everyone I talked with all week. I spent five days on the lines in New Brunswick. It was hot. It was exhausting. It was thrilling. Turnout fluctuated and the size of the pickets on College Avenue varied from day to day. We probably hit 1,000 picketers on Tuesday afternoon, when the folks from Cook/Douglass and Livingston and Busch joined in a march up George Street to the administration building on the Old Queens campus (a small subsection of the College Avenue campus) and joined the College Avenue contingent in an emotional and forceful show of solidarity. Wednesday featured a wake-up tour of campus, while Friday offered a festive feel, even as talks were heating up in Trenton.

The larger experience was one of joy and unity. That does not mean everyone is happy, but we made massive gains and I think we need to acknowledge that.

The message I would offer to the public at this point is that academic workers are tired of being pushed around. We are tired of the corporate bent of higher ed, angry that universities have been coopted by big-time athletics, corporate-style governance and funding models, and that what should be their primary missions — education and research — have been sold off to funders who only care about how they can monetize their scientific discoveries.

We have watched as more and more teaching and research jobs have been remade as contingent, easily replaceable labor. We have watched as the humanities are decimated in favor of incredibly important STEM courses and programs, not because of academic need, but because STEM generates grant revenue.

Rutgers, like most American universities, operates as a corporation. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated while thousands of poorly paid educators and staff are denied job security and benefits. Adjunct faculty and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid. They frequently take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa. This inversion of values is destroying the nation’s educational system.

This is why we have seen academic workers strike across the country, from California to Illinois to New York. The strike at Rutgers is part of this movement and, because of the university’s size and the fact that all three of its faculty unions walked out of class, might be the most important of these efforts. The University of California strike was larger, but as with all other walkouts it only featured mainly graduate students. The strike at The New School was about adjunct wages. At Temple, it was just grads. At Rutgers, I walked along side non-tenure-track professors, full professors, graduate students, undergraduates and allies from the area.

The framework — again, not a tentative agreement or a contract — goes some of the way toward addressing these issues at Rutgers and, if it is ratified, could stand as a model and the largest victory so far in the battle for the soul of the American university system.

RU Strike Diary, Day 4

Day four was a tougher haul. The heat had a draining effect on many of us, but we were out on the lines and we are committed to remaining out for as long as it takes to win the transformation we are demanding.

There are three unions on strike — AAUP-AFT, the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and BHSNJ-AFT. We are negotiating together. Fighting together.

Our demands:

*Equal pay for equal work and job security for adjuncts like me;
*A living wage and longer guaranteed funding for grad workers;
*Recognition of grad fellows as workers who should be part of the union;
*Job security for non-tenure-track professors;
*Protections for academic freedom;
*Control of schedules;
*Wages that keep up with inflation;
*An end to onerous fines on students and the practices of withholding class registration and transcripts and the sale of student debt to collection agencies;
*A rent freeze on Rutgers-owned properties;
*A community hardship fund;
*Health care for all workers;
*And numerous other changes in the way Rutgers operates.

Thursday featured numerous targeted pickets, which may have left the impression on College Ave that there were fewer people out. But we made joyful noise on Voorhees Mall and in front of Scott Hall, marched through the streets of the city to show solidarity with the community, marched on President Jonathan Holloway’s mansion in Piscataway, and on the homes of several members of the university Board of Governors.

Our pressure has had an effect. As our bargaining team has reported, the administration has been pushed significantly — by us and because of pressure for Gov. Phil Murphy. I’ve been critical of his public statements, but it’s clear he has contributed to at least some of the progress.

Make no mistake, however. We are winning this because we’ve out organized management, showed our commitment, and made the public case that we are engaged in a moral cause to bring equity to high ed, a message that is resonating beyond our campuses.

Bernie Sanders issued this video this week:

And I’ve talked to state and National reporters, including small labor and lefty print and video sites and a student TV station at James Madison in Virginia.

Power of the People Evident on the Pickets

Day 3 went much like Day 2, with massive pickets and a powerful rally in front of Winants Hall — home to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway offices. There were drag queens, music, and a festive atmosphere — but hanging over it all was the specter of negotiations.

On Sunday night, Gov. Phil Murphy summoned both sides to Trenton, using his office to try to avert the strike — didn’t happened — and possibly get the dispute settled quickly. We walked, knowing this was the backdrop and brought hundreds upon hundreds of people into the streets — faculty, staff, community members, and students.

The rest of this post will be filled with photos, which should remind everyone how much energy and unity there is and to help keep our spirits high as this stretches into the fourth day.

More than a thousand strikers across the campuses is not something you ignore. And we’re planning to grow our already robust pickets every day until this strike ends.

Several images stood out for me from Day 2:

The massive picket that marched up College Avenue and circled the campus, led by students and faculty carrying a banner declaring “Equal Pay for Equal Work” — which has been the central fight of the adjunct union. Our demands were centered in this amazing march, as was a push for equity — for adjuncts, grad workers, students, and the community.

Rutgers functions like a corporation in too many ways, chewing up and spitting out vulnerable workers and the community in which it’s situated. It’s real estate practices — buying up properties across the city and either raising rents or gentrifying— are making New Brunswick unaffordable. It’s why we’re calling for a rent freeze on Rutgers’ properties, an end to predatory student fees and punitive actions when those fees and fines go unpaid, and a community fund to help our neighbors.

We’ve been saying that this strike is about faculty and students and the university’s largely poor and immigrant neighbors, and we mean it.

Later in the day came the mass convergence, when all of the New Brunswick picketing marched to the entrance gates of Old Queens, the origin point of Rutgers. Picketers from Cook and Douglass were joined by their colleagues from Busch and Livingston and marched down George Street through the center of town. They were joined by the Mason Gross School of the Arts and Edward Bloustein school and marched to meet the College Ave crew, creating a sea of picketers as we marched to Voorhees Mall and a not-quite impromptu party/rally.

I’m not one for hyperbole or sentimentality, so when I say it gave me chills the reader should understand I mean it.

More important, though, was the impact on the bargaining table. Our colleagues there were buoyed by our show of strength, our joy, outer commitment. And they are using it to their advantage. Management appears to be buckling, and we plan to keep this up until we win a better Rutgers, a kinder less corporate Rutgers.

RU Strike Diary, Day 1: The Inevitable Happens

This is where it’s been leading since the beginning. A historic strike at my alma mater. A school where I’ve taught journalism for 10 years. That I think is one of the best and most underrated institutions of higher learning in the country. From the beginning.

This is not what anyone wanted, but it’s what had to happen. Higher ed is in crisis. Rutgers is in crisis. We’ve been taken over by the corporate power structure. Had a change in mission crammed down our throats. Higher ed has become just another cog in the American oligarchy and Rutgers, despite its proclamations to the contrary, has been doing its part.

I was at UBS Arena last night watching Bruce Springsteen when we — our union’s executive boards — voted. I voted by proxy. It was unanimous. I listened and shouted and sang as the man known as The Boss tore through a catalogue of songs about working people. And the irony was not lost on me. Springsteen singing of working class dreams as he allowed Ticketmaster to drive up prices and BMW to offer exclusive parking.

Still, as my phone was blowing up with texts about the now very real strike, he broke into “Wrecking Ball” and the lines “So hold tight on your anger, you hold tight on your anger / Hold tight to your anger, don't fall to your fears” hit me like a truck.

We are angry. Tired of being disrespected. Tired of the neoliberal model of higher ed reducing everything to profit.

We’ll hold tight and fight. We’re going to win this.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Borrower Defense Story 3: Modern Indentured Servitude (Feral Woman)

[Editor's note: This is the third story in our series on the social and philosophical dimensions of Borrower Defense to Repayment. We hope that by sharing these stories, more people will understand why Borrower Defense is morally essential.]

I went to school so I could lift myself out of poverty. I went and learned a trade in healthcare that I was told would have an income that would be more than enough to pay my loans. I vetted current providers in the field and learned what would be needed to be successful.

The school made a lot of promises, but they misrepresented information and, in some cases, completely lied about our profession and our income ability. My profession at the time was averaging 25k-35k/yr in income. They told us it was 100k-125k in order to justify taking out 100k to pay for the education.

I lived simply and thought that as long as I made 100k I could easily pay my loans back within two years. No student loan should take more than 3 years to pay back, and I had a plan to do it in two.

I graduated in the height of the second financial crash of my lifetime - 2007/2008. Turns out there were no jobs available prior to this crash and certainly wasn't during the crash. Opening a practice was impossible and due to illness of both myself and my partner at the time, we were in deep poverty with only a roof over our head due to family. I was able to secure a part-time job at a grocery store. During this time, I also found out that my 4 year medical degree meant nothing outside of the field I was in - also another lie from the school. I couldn't transition to any other medical profession without starting over.

I made 12- 20k a year for several years in unrelated fields, meanwhile catastrophic interest was building. Congress had also passed a law to block bankruptcy and to add capitalized interest to student loans in 2005 - which is considered predatory lending in almost all types of lending, especially for large loans. My interest rate was averaging 8%. As a former business analyst, I knew this was going to have catastrophic impacts.

Since that time, I have tried to pass a student loan bill for the last 17 years that would solve this for 95% of borrowers from the past, current and future.

I borrowed 108k, paid 85k and I owe close to 260k for this specific degree. I have tried leaving the profession for the last 15 years but have been stuck because of the loans and no one wanting to hire me outside of my profession. I've had a few part-time jobs, but those have also dried up.

I filed for Borrowers Defense, but don't have high hopes that this will be approved under this administration, despite my school being closed down. My education has been a lifetime sentence of indentured servitude. I've been in crisis since I graduated and have never known a moment of peace. I had started to feel some hope in 2019, but lost everything and more in the pandemic and have now declared bankruptcy and will attempt an "adversarial proceeding" to get relief from my student loans as well. It will cost between 6-12k to file for adversarial proceedings with no guarantee I'll win.

I also recently found out that my IBR should have been approved in Jan 2025 for full cancellation, but instead the administration INCREASED the number of years of repayment another 12 years.

If it weren't for my son, I would have fled this country 18 years ago and started over. As it is, I'm preparing to leave because of the fear of debtors' prisons for people like me. I absolutely can not afford any additional payment to my student loans. Despite hard work to change careers and well over 3k applications in the last 4 years, not including prior to that, I keep being told my education and credentials are not enough, even in the field I'm in.

This insanity is easy to fix. Yet, neither Democrats nor Republicans have been willing to pass basic laws to restore (yes restore) sanity to education and student loans.

Thursday, August 21, 2025

"ACTIVE SHOOTER" at Villanova University was a "cruel hoax."

News sources in the Philadelphia area were alerted today that there was an active shooter at Villanova University. Students received text messages and rushed for safety. About two hours later, the university President Rev. Peter M. Donohue called it a "cruel hoax."

Campus hoaxes are not mere pranks. They are crimes and a dangerous reflection of a society where the line between reality and rumor blurs under the shadow of violence. Each false alarm chips away at the sense of security that universities promise their students. Until the United States addresses the root causes of both gun violence and the culture of fear it breeds, campus hoaxes will remain part of higher education’s uneasy reality.

The Broader Context: America’s Culture of Violence

The threat of harm is not abstract. In the U.S., campus shootings have become a recurring tragedy: Virginia Tech (2007), Northern Illinois University (2008), Umpqua Community College (2015), and Michigan State (2023), among many others. This context makes hoaxes especially dangerous: police and students cannot know in the moment whether the threat is real. A single misstep could cost lives.

Accountability and Prevention

Universities and local authorities have begun tracking and prosecuting hoaxes and swatting calls, but enforcement is difficult. Prevention may require better technology, coordinated responses, and clear communication with students. Most importantly, it requires addressing the broader conditions that make both real shootings and hoaxes possible: widespread access to firearms, untreated mental illness, and a culture desensitized to violence.

August 21, 2025

Dear Members of the Villanova Community,

Today, as we are celebrating Orientation Mass to welcome our newest Villanovans and their families to our community, panic and terror ensued with the news of a possible shooter at the Law School. Mercifully, no one was injured, and we now know that it was a cruel hoax—there was no active shooter, no injuries and no evidence of firearms present on campus. While that is a blessing and relief, I know today’s events have shaken our entire community.

I would like to thank everyone involved in securing the safety of our community, especially our Villanova Public Safety department and the first responders from Radnor Police and other local police departments. I would also like to thank our Orientation Counselors and all of the Villanova staff in attendance at the Orientation Mass, who responded calmly and compassionately to a very frightening and unnerving situation.

Amid my thanks, I would like to apologize to our first-year students and their families. This is not the introduction to Villanova that I had hoped for you. And while I cannot do anything to relieve the unrest that you are feeling right now, I can offer a prayer. As generations of Villanovan know, this prayer is how I close Orientation Mass each year. Since we were interrupted today, I would like to offer it now. Whomever you are with, I ask that you reach out to them and repeat after me.

May God bless you and protect you.
May your heart and mind be united in faith so that you may be able to love wisely, work creatively, laugh heartily, and live honestly. May you use your education to bring justice and peace to the world, for the benefit of our human family and all of God’s creation.
And may you always know that you are loved. Amen

I am sure there will be more questions in the coming days and weeks, and we will share as much information with you as we can, but for now, I am thankful that everyone is safe.

With Caritas,

Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA
President

Monday, October 10, 2022

Modeling civil unrest in the United States: some historical cases (Bryan Alexander*)

[Editor's note: This essay first appeared at BryanAlexander.org on September 6, 2022]

I’ve been modeling potential civil unrest in the US for a while, as some of you know (in terms of polycrisis, neonationalism, recent polls, after Trump, the 2020 election, 2018-2019, the 2016 election, egging on fears, and Sinclair Lewis). One way of doing this futuring work is by drawing on historical examples. History does not repeat, but some relevant historical events can give us some rough ideas of how insurrections/civil war/rebellions/secession/etc. might play out. At the least they give us examples to think with.

Today I wanted to offer a group of these examples, drawn from the past few generations, which might be useful. For each one I’ll offer a very brief introduction, then explore how something similar might play out in the modern American setting.

One caveat: what follows are sketches of history, not serious historiography. Each one is way too short, and you should really dive into each on your own, including in comments. They are samples and summaries to stir your imaginations and investigations.

Another caveat. For these examples/models I assume a few details:

Trump (and DeSantis, the most likely Trump successor now) live and keep doing their thing for at least a few years.
Civil unrest happens, to some degree.
Time horizon: medium term, the next 5 years, or so.

The future can easily invalidate #s 1 and 2. While Trump often appears in rude health and, in American style, is rich enough to pay for top notch medical care, he also has poor health habits and is nearing 80. He or DeSantis could, of course, be killed, either in accidents or by the time-honored American tradition of assassination. As for my second assumption, we haven’t seen much unrest over the past five years, despite my forecasts. We might not experience anything of the kind – and should hope to be so fortunate.

One last bit of throat-clearing: there are other historical examples we can draw from, especially on the global stage. I have been working on others, but wanted to get some out there now. I’d love to hear your own historical ideas.

Onward:

THE YEARS OF LEAD Italy endured a low grade civil conflict starting in the 1960s. Various extreme right and left groups targeted each other, the government, civil society, and civilians with bombings, kidnapping, robberies, and assassinations. The extreme right’s goal was the notorious “strategy of tension“: to scare people with terror enough that they would accept a reactionary government. The left’s strategy: to mobilize the population enough to kick off a left-wing revolution. Both used violence and terror as risky but sometimes successful recruiting tools, as well as for resource-gathering (cf bank robberies). Violence and terror also kept the cycle going by instilling the desire for revenge in survivors, friends, family, and witnesses.

Strage di bologna - By Beppe Briguglio, Patrizia Pulga, Medardo Pedrini, Marco Vaccari - www.stragi.it/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=301978

The 1980 Bologna railway massacre.

How might this apply to the United States? It is not difficult to foresee some extreme right-wing groups (3%ers, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, etc) increasing their violent acts and becoming more ambitious. One established American precedent is The Order, a hard-right racist fringe outfit which conducted bank robberies and at least one assassination in the mid-1980s. Following the Italian example, not to mention the action of some Republicans around the January 6th event, we would envision some politicians allying themselves with these fringe activists to varying degrees of secrecy or openness, for a shared cause and/or mutual benefit.

I’m not sure if there will be any such corresponding action on the extreme left, since so many are wedded to nonviolent action. But we could see such organizing happen if a group feels right-wing dangers are dire enough and if they are willing to obtain the necessary tools. Perhaps right wing attacks will spur retaliation. Or maybe some will see their struggle as so fundamental to humanity that they must risk extreme action (cf the classic “if you had a time machine, would you travel to the 1920s and murder Hitler?” prompt).

Recall that in the Italian case the activists were very small in number. The Red Brigades numbered a few hundred out of a nation with circa 50 million people. The United States, in contrast, numbers nearly 330 million and is very well supplied with weaponry.

Recall, too, that in Italy’s Years of Lead neither side succeeded in taking over the government, even after kidnapping and killing a former prime minister.

CHINA’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION From 1966 to 1976 political chaos engulfed the People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao, having lost a great deal of power due to the horrific failure of his Great Leap Forward, launched a political gamble to rebuild his leadership. The story is complex and not easy to summarize, but it took the broad form of a revolution from above, which developed into widespread unrest to the level of civil war. Mao used national, regional, local, and cultural supporters to provoke political instability while building up a Stalin-level cult of personality. To do this Mao and his allies ran huge propaganda campaigns, created new political-military units out of teenagers, spurred endless rounds of local political fighting (hence struggle sessions and escalating local violence), and purged leaders across the system, along with preparing the nation for war with the Soviet Union, and more.

China Cultural Revolution Tiananmen 1966_Wikipedia

(I recommend Frank Dikötter’s The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962—1976. The complexity of this story is immense, and its recency means it’s difficult to get perspective and documents.)

How might this play out in the United States? Obviously the American situation is very different. Contemporary America is a world leader and is neoliberal in ideology, as opposed to China’s developing nation status during these events, not to mention being a communist state. However, we could imagine a right wing American leader, such as Trump, applying some of Mao’s practices if he wins the 2024 presidential election. Imagine him authorizing various local groups (militias, friendly state governments, local or state police) and federal agencies to go after people he doesn’t like (liberal school boards, tech companies, whatever Trump thinks Antifa is). Trump (or DeSantis) could use federal powers to crack down on anyone he doesn’t like, such as sending troops to deep blue cities, increasing digital surveillance, or denying resources. Trump (or DeSantis) could also follow Mao in urging repeatedly updated political opinions, talking up foreign war to scare people at home, calling out domestic enemies, and generally building up a cult of personality.

Obviously there are limits to this analogy. Trump is no ideologue like Mao was; I’m not sure what a Little Red Book analog might be. Further, today’s GOP counts economic growth as a major, even leading achievement, while a Cultural Revolution level of chaos would undermine that.

One thing to keep in mind: Mao succeeded, at least in terms of his drive to rebuild his own power. He lived the last years of his life in supreme authority, albeit in declining health, after dismantling some of his support structures.

THE DESTRUCTION OF YUGOSLAVIA In the 1990s this nation tore itself apart, as a nationalist party tried to seize and expand control over the whole republic, and as different sub-nations sought to secede. A powerful national army proved a major power source for the Serb hardliners, as did militias. Republics generated their own forces, including irregular militias. Violence escalated in cycles of vengeance and deliberately inflicted terror. Republics exited the federation while the war grew in complexity and horror. Other nations intervened, eventually establishing a shaky peace – followed by more conflicts and more unstable settlements.

Bosnia’s Stary Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva River, rebuilt after being shattered in the war.

What vision for American conflict does the destruction of Yugoslavia present? This is a more extreme model than the first two, but it could play out in several ways. imagine if Trump or DeSantis wins the White House and cracks down much harder than in the Mao model. Such suppression, surveillance, and violence provokes resistance at the state and city level. Democrats/liberals/the left attempt to secede in some way, such as declaring local autonomy from the Republican administration. They could organize self-defense forces at scale. This could spark an escalated federal crackdown. Any violence would drive all sides to further organization and action, and the nation spirals into civil war.

Alternatively, we could imagine the reverse, with a Democratic election victory and the Trump/reactionary right treating the winner as a tyrant. The latter could attempt to secede at the city, state, and/or regional level. They could organizing violence at various levels, from lone activists to militias or suborned local police, aimed against federal forces or locals perceived as aligned with them. The White House follows Lincoln in 1861 and responds with greater force. The civil war spiral kicks off.

Once more, there are obvious differences between the United States in the 2020s and post-Tito Yugoslavia. As with the Chinese comparison, America is not a communist state. The USA is also more powerful geopolitically, not at the point of having foreign forces intervene and force settlements. There are not clear-cut mixtures of ethnic, religious, and linguistic divides; the American situation is more complex. Yet ethnic cleansing, should it occur, might take different forms, such as racial mass murder.

Why these historical examples out of all others?

First off, I was looking for situations that were as close to the present as possible. That makes the comparisons less removed than, say, examples from Europe in the 1600s. These histories are still distant from our present in key ways. The contemporary internet, for example, could prove a powerful tool in any actor’s arsenal. The experience and impact of COVID-19 might inflect any such future history in ways quite different from our examples.

Second, for each one I began by isolating present-day factors which could drive civil unrest in the United States. Looking at dueling small groups in Portland, Oregon and the group which rioted in the US Capitol brought to mind the fierce, committed extremists of modern Italy. Considering Trump’s cult of personality, I looked for contemporary examples. North Korea offers one, as does Italy’s Berlusconi, but not with the deliberate cultivation of chaos represented by Mao’s top-down revolution. Considering secession presents several alternatives, like Czechoslovakia’s split or the Eritrean war, but former Yugoslavia has advantages: a larger number of factions, a late industrial economic base, and a mix of ideologies with other identities.

Again, these are sketches. There is a lot more to say about each of those stories. There are plenty of ways today’s American context differs from each. Plus I have a lot more research behind this, but don’t want to overwhelm in a single FB post. My goal is to get you all thinking and commenting, so have at it.

(Bologna bombing photo by Beppe Briguglio, Patrizia Pulga, Medardo Pedrini, Marco Vaccari – www.stragi.it/, CC BY-SA 3.0; Cultural Revolution photo from Wikipedia; Mostar’s Stary Most image from Wikipedia)

**Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future. He is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University. Bryan's next book is Universities on Fire, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This article was originally published at BryanAlexander.org.

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