I do know one thing about standing as much as the authoritarian impulses of the MAGA motion. I resigned as Kentucky’s commissioner of schooling in late 2023 slightly than implement the GOP-dominated state legislature’s shameful regulation aimed toward erasing and marginalizing LGBTQ+ college students.
The Trump administration has escalated these assaults from hostile rhetoric directed towards college students and Ok-12 and better schooling to placing insurance policies in place that aren’t simply disruptive, however outright dangerous — particularly to probably the most weak college students.
Throughout the nation, schooling leaders are being compelled to make some powerful selections — to decide on between defending core values, reminiscent of fairness and historic fact, or yielding to political coercion in hopes of avoiding battle. There isn’t any technique that doesn’t contain battle and trade-offs. Each schooling chief operates in their very own political context with distinctive authorized and cultural constraints.
However make no mistake: Inaction is just not impartial. Even the choice to do nothing is a alternative, one which has penalties.
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Among the many Trump administration’s more moderen calls for is that state schooling chiefs dismantle range, fairness and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or lose federal funding. Insisting that they pledge to take action is extra than simply an egregious federal overreach into state and native management. It’s a direct risk to the values round entry, alternative and fact that our faculties are supposed to uphold. And it’s not the one risk.
Different MAGA-aligned efforts embrace dismantling the U.S. Division of Schooling, stripping protections from college students with disabilities, criminalizing assist for LGBTQ+ youth and censoring educational content material deemed “anti-American” — together with teachings on race, gender and historic injustice.
Within the face of this, educators don’t have any straightforward path ahead. However we do have selections. And what we select now will form the way forward for our establishments and our nation for years to return.
Probably the most passive alternative is disengagement: turning away from nationwide politics to take care of the mechanics of schooling, specializing in instruction, operations, scholar occasions.
Getting schooling leaders and their college students to disengage has been an implicit aim of the MAGA schooling motion.
In turbulent instances, the schooling chief’s intuition to protect college students, households and employees from exterior chaos is comprehensible. Disengagement can protect short-term stability and supply a brief sense of peace for leaders, college students and academic communities underneath strain.
Whereas current protests counsel some awakening, the administration’s each day stream of democratic affronts is having a numbing impact. Many Individuals are fatigued and tuning out. An analogous dynamic has lengthy existed in Putin’s Russia, the place residents retreated from public life, prioritizing non-public issues as authoritarianism solidified round them.
A second choice is vigilance — a wait-and-see method. Lots of the administration’s proclamations seem to contradict federal or state regulation or primary constitutional protections.
Many exasperated Individuals, together with educators, hope the courts will maintain and intervene. Maybe future elections will appropriate the course. Or maybe the administration received’t be capable of observe by way of and execute a number of the threats they’re making. Vigilance permits leaders to preserve assets and keep away from untimely battles whereas assessing what is going to truly be enforced.
However like disengagement, vigilance is reactive and passive. It will probably depart weak college students unprotected, and it sends a muted sign to communities in search of management. By ready for the appropriate second and situation on which to have interaction and problem authoritarianism, we threat ready till it’s too late to cease it.
Associated: Monitoring Trump: His actions to dismantle the Schooling Division and extra
A 3rd choice is capitulation — compliance, whether or not out of worry or pragmatism. We’ve seen this clearly in current selections by Columbia College and a number of distinguished regulation corporations, which caved to Trump administration strain to eradicate DEI insurance policies or face monetary retaliation and Kafkaesque bureaucratic oversight.
For college leaders, the temptation to capitulate is actual, particularly when federal {dollars} fund important packages for at-risk college students. Capitulation might imply gutting DEI workplaces to keep away from scrutiny or rewriting curriculum to suit a government-approved narrative. However in any kind, it’s a retreat from our skilled and moral tasks.
Generally, capitulation occurs with out even being requested. Historian Timothy Snyder calls this “anticipatory obedience” — the impulse to give up freedom preemptively within the hope of avoiding punishment.
The appeasement that comes from capitulation doesn’t stop hurt — it invitations extra. Like giving in to any type of extortion, we simply present our tormentors that they’ve an efficient instrument for management and manipulation.
The ultimate choice is resistance.
Resistance can take many kinds: refusing to adjust to unconstitutional directives, issuing public statements defending inclusion, organizing your neighborhood to guard weak college students.
For me — and for a lot of different public servants — resistance is just not a political gesture. It’s a ethical obligation.
Authoritarian regimes depend upon the quiet cooperation of public servants. When schooling leaders keep silent whereas the federal government targets marginalized college students or makes an attempt to erase historic truths, we grow to be complicit.
Resistance carries threat. College districts and campuses might lose funding. Leaders who get up ought to count on to face assaults — political, skilled, even bodily — from MAGA-aligned extremists, the far-right media or Trump administration sycophants. As authoritarianism advances, the prices of dissent grow to be extra actual and extra private.
I’ve been impressed by the principled braveness of upper schooling leaders reminiscent of Princeton’s Christopher Eisgruber and Harvard’s Alan Garber, who’ve stood agency within the face of Trump’s calls for and are clear-eyed in regards to the penalties which will observe, and by state Ok-12 schooling chiefs who’re refusing to pledge to Schooling Secretary McMahon that they’ll finish DEI-related packages in native faculties.
As schooling leaders think about their choices in responding to the Trump administration’s more and more authoritarian actions, we should additionally ask: What’s the price of not resisting? What occurs when educators cease defending college students and begin enabling oppression?
Authoritarianism thrives when folks bend. It crumbles after they maintain agency. For our republic to outlive, schooling leaders have to be amongst those that maintain agency.
Our kids are watching.
Jason E. Glass is affiliate vice chairman for educating and studying at Western Michigan College. He beforehand served as state schooling chief in Kentucky and Iowa, and as a college superintendent in Colorado.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about schooling leaders’ response to authoritarianism was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, unbiased information group centered on inequality and innovation in schooling. Join Hechinger’s weekly publication.