MAGA’s Authoritarian Campus Crusade

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: What’s up everybody, and welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence Caden Mock, on this show. We’re building a roadmap. For the movement that’s working to block the impact of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

This week on the show, we take a look at how ICE is being used to disappear outspoken voices and effective organizers from their communities. It’s on campuses. On farms. It’s also challenging for us to really think through what we can do to fight back. But as that is what we do on this show.

First, we’re gonna look at how detainment and deep threats of deportation are being weaponized against labor organizers. I’m joined by organizer with Community to community, Liz Darrow, to discuss this and how the work. And their work being done to free. Illegally detained farm worker Unionist Alfredo Juarez.

Then from frightening illegal disappearances of students to dismantling the entire Department of education. The MAGA agenda is waving, waging an aggressive anti-intellectual assault on education and universities straight out of the 1930s German Playbook. The American Association of University Professors or A UP are managing four lawsuits, seeking to slow or halt those efforts while also providing resources to help communities protect students.

And professors will then be joined by senior counsel and director of the legal Department of A UP, Aaron Neeson said to discuss, but first, these headlines starting with some truly concerning news about how the radical right is tipping the scales of power. The House passed the Save Act yesterday, which places some onerous requirements on anybody who wants to register to vote to prove that they’re citizens either through a birth certificate or a passport.

I think the issues with this are fairly self-evident. These high bar documents are hard and costly to access for many people and also may have outdated information for others. This is it folks, the culmination of decades of work to eviscerate Gains made during the Civil rights era. Voting rights groups and even state secretaries of state have maintained for years that the overblown, wailing, and gnashing of teeth from the GOP about non-citizen voting is basically a red herring.

It’s a fig leaf of outrage to just justify suppressing the votes of marginalized people, whether those are formerly incarcerated folks, people of color, more generally, people with disabilities, or trans and queer people. And as a presumptive or a preemptive test of this authority, the North Carolina GOP, is trying to run a third recount of last Fall’s State Supreme Court election.

We’ve covered this before in the magazine, a coalition of grassroots organizers successfully broke the state’s MAGA trifecta, overcoming a massive investment of money in the state legislative governors and state supreme court races last fall. But their work is not over. They have to now protect these wins.

State Supreme Court Justice. Allison Riggs won her race by a very narrow margin, some 700 votes, and her opponent is trying every trick available to him to overturn the results of this election. Basically, the proposal is throw out as many as 65,000 duly cast votes. Jefferson Griffin who lost to Riggs is basically doing his best.

Donald Trump in 2020. Impression, refusing to concede and taking the matter to the courts. Last week, the State Court of Appeals ordered yet another reco recount. Even though the State Elections Board has already upheld the results after a second recount, this is another test case for the Federalist Society Playbook to rig the courts against the will of the people.

I. If there’s ever a time to get involved in grassroots organizing in the Tarheel state it is now we’ll link back to Jen Fry’s piece about how grassroots organizing won in North Carolina in the show notes, as well as more information on the race from our friends at court. Accountability I. Meanwhile, it is no mistake that the Trump administration’s scattershot approach to its disgusting mass deportations is difficult to keep up with.

Amidst this widespread of lawsuits and court decisions that are flying in every direction, I cannot stress to you enough that flood the zone is also the strategy here. I. First, we saw the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the administration could continue to deport Venezuelan immigrants under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act, which is this 1798 law that gives the President the authority to detain and deports citizens of a enemy nation.

This alone sets a precedent which disregards that Congress is the authority that has the ability to declare war on other countries, because last I checked, we are not at war with Venezuela. The court did however agree that migrants still have the right to sue to stop their deportation, and we all know how easy that is.

In another decision just last night, the court also ruled the Trump administration has to make efforts to return a Maryland man who was mistakenly detained and sent to one of the now infamous El Salvador detention Centers. ICE’s evidence against him was little more than having seen him in a red Chicago bulls hat, and somehow that links him to MS 13 gang activity.

What remains to be seen is if the administration will comply with the order, but also what happens if they don’t? All this is to say that while many liberals are holding onto their belief in the courts as a viable institution to save us from the worst of the Trump administration’s overreach, we contend that the best way to protect our communities from detainment and deportation by ice is to prevent it before it even happens

on March 25th. Farm worker Alfredo. Layla Juarez was detained by ice agents who stopped his car as he drove his wife to work. Juarez is well known his Washington State community where he’s been involved with farm worker organizing since he was a teenager and helped found an independent farm workers union.

I’m joined now by organizer with Washington’s community to community, Liz Darrow, to learn more about Ju Juarez and the work being done to free him. Thanks Liz, for making the time to talk with us today. 

[00:05:51] Liz Darrow: Thanks so much for having me on Gaden. 

[00:05:53] Cayden Mak: Of course. It’s a pleasure. To start. Off, could you fill in some details for us about what we need to know about Alfredo’s story?

What are the circumstances and the timeline under which he was detained, and what do we know about where he’s at now? 

[00:06:07] Liz Darrow: Like you said we learned about seven 30 in the morning on March 25th. Lelo Alfredo reached out to an organizer with our organization while he was being detained so that she would be aware of where he.

Was going or what was happening. And so we were able to find him right away. He was being held at the, at a Ferndale ice facility that is unmarked, that we learned about from a separate detention in the past. It’s very hard to find people if you don’t know them personally or if their family doesn’t know what’s going on.

And so that’s part of the chaos you referenced at the top of the podcast is that people ask us all the time, how many folks are being detained daily. We only know if we know them or their family but we did. We did confirm that Alfredo was being held in Ferndale by ice, and so we mobilized right away.

More than 200 people showed up in solidarity with Lilo. He is so well known, not just locally, but nationally. And so people wanted to show up in solidarity for him. He’s done work for years for farm worker justice, and that intersects with. Just about every labor or life issue that people experience.

And it was a beautiful outpouring of solidarity for him. And then we learned later that afternoon that he was transferred to the Tacoma Detention Facility, the Northwest Detention Center which is most commonly where people in the Pacific Northwest are detained. He’s still there today as far as we know.

All we can do is, continue to check his A number and also go and visit when the hours allow. 

[00:07:30] Cayden Mak: Yeah. It seems like this was part of a like a kind of a wave of, it seems like targeted detentions in the Pacific Northwest against labor organizers. I. What can you tell us about the sort of like broader situation that this is a part of in your region?

[00:07:45] Liz Darrow: We believe it was targeted. Alfredo was very well known, like I said, has done monumental things and we have heard from other labor organizations that some of their leadership or membership are being detained in Tacoma as well. Part of the piece of the puzzle is that Alfredo has been organizing right out in the open in a very public way with the farm worker union here for years like you mentioned.

And the timing of this definitely makes it feel targeted. Also taking someone so prominent from the farm worker community. Yeah. At the top of what looks like many other workplace raids has a chilling effect on community speaking out about this systemic injustice. 

[00:08:20] Cayden Mak: Totally. Let’s talk a little bit about the community response.

What has the sort of effect been and what is the work. You mentioned getting hundreds of people to come out to rally in support of Laylo. What are the other things that you all are engaging in to support him and his family in this time? 

[00:08:37] Liz Darrow: First of all, there’s been a long time organized effort to try to shut down the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, and we support those efforts.

Absolutely. This isn’t just about Alfredo. Every person should be freed from that. Facility, it’s inhumane and absolutely should not be operating here. Lelo is a part of our movement family and very well known in our community. And he does have good representation that are doing everything that they can.

There is, there’s an intricacy between what is legal and then what ICE is willing to do. And right now that’s a very fine line. It used to be much more possible to get people out on bond hearing. To get people released back into their communities, to be with their families and continue to work, that’s looking less possible.

And Tacoma is an outlier almost in that injustice. We’re hearing that nobody’s being released. I hope that’s not true. But where we’re at right now is just trying to support Lelo and offer support to his family in this time where, we don’t know what’s gonna happen next. And then we’re also hearing that more workers are being brought into the detention facility every day.

And we know that there has been an increase in flights, deportation, flights to Mexico. And so it’s impossible to say what that’s gonna look like. But right now we’re doing everything that we can do outside of that facility. And then visiting whenever we can. 

[00:09:53] Cayden Mak: Right on. What are the things that you think folks, I’m in California, I’m in Northern California, where obviously there’s a very lively like union network.

I. Amongst farm workers, amongst people, all basically throughout our, the food industry and our food system. What are things that folks who are listening can do or do in their communities? And what are the things that you all are putting together responding to this larger threat against?

Against organized labor? 

[00:10:23] Liz Darrow: Yeah. If you have strong labor organizing in your community, which almost everyone does, for example, we heard from the A-F-L-C-I-O in California today. They’re working on an organizational sign-on letter in solidarity, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, which is national.

That Alfredo is a part of, has an organizational sign on, and so people can look for I think this story being so high profile is going to be helpful for all workers and families that are being separated right now because it shines a light on just how far ICE and this administration are willing to go to terrorize our communities.

But I definitely recommend that people look into their local organizing and support that work because it’s all part of the same struggle. And there are undoubtedly people in every community who are being impacted by this systemic failure. Get LinkedIn. For sure with your unions, if you’ve got cooperative development in your community.

Check that out. I think food sovereignty and food justice is something that many people who have unlimited access to food don’t think about, but it is something that in increasingly will become something we need to pay attention to, whereas our food coming from, how are people in the food chain being treated And just like in the pandemic, we see that food chain workers are first and worst impacted when things start.

[00:11:35] Cayden Mak: This story is a story that we’ll follow. And I also think that the insight that there are unions working on these issues in every community, not just here on the West Coast, but across the country is a really important one. My thanks to Liz for joining us today. And we’ll put links to the work that community to Community is doing in the show notes for folks to follow up with them.

Now I’m sure our listeners are familiar ’cause we’ve talked a bit about it on the show with these horrific abductions by ice of university students, largely graduate international graduate students, and some of the other attacks on universities by the Trump administration and the broader MAGA movement.

The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit organization of faculty and other academic professionals who work to advance academic freedom and shared governance. Higher education. They currently have four lawsuits against the Trump administration attempting to block some of their most egregious efforts to interfere with our education system.

I’m joined now by A UP member and attorney Aaron Nisenson to discuss what’s being done to push back against Mag’s, campus Crusade and how you can get involved to defend your campus and community. Aaron, thank you so much for making the time to talk to us today. 

[00:12:52] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, thanks. It’s great to be on.

Pleasure to be here. 

[00:12:56] Cayden Mak: First, can you tell us a little bit about the A UP and why you all have stepped in to carry these lawsuits against the administration? 

[00:13:02] Aaron Nisenson: Sure. Yeah. A EP, like you mentioned is it’s an association. It’s faculty members and other academic workers and other folks on higher ed campuses.

And we’re also labor union. We have a lot of local chapters that are labor unions and do collective bargaining, and we have other chapters that are just advocacy chapters. And as you said, we’re interested in academic freedom and. The independence of the university and university for the common good.

So it’s not just about the faculty members academic freedom, it’s about advancing the university for public good, for the common good, to do what universities have often done, which is to be sources of knowledge and power for individuals, not for systems. And so what we’re seeing is really.

Individual attacks on universities in the form of immigration and budget cuts and grant cuts, but there’s really an underlying attack on the entire concept of universities as independent institutions and institutions of free exchange of knowledge, pre exchange of information for students, free speech.

All of that is just under attack in a very coordinated and systematic way. So that’s what we’re involved in. 

[00:14:21] Cayden Mak: Great. Yeah, I think, we were chitchatting a little earlier about how this is very much about a playbook that is about eliminating other sources of information and power in our society that like a lot of the attacks that we’re seeing are about undermining alternative.

Like places where people are creating knowledge, and like sharing information. I’m curious if you have thoughts about like why like higher education in particular has become such a touchpoint, a flashpoint for the Trump administration and like why you all are in the cross hairs right now.

[00:14:59] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, there, there’s really been a devoted focus to this on the right, and it’s been the case probably for decades, but really it was ramped up at the end of the first Trump administration and the reality is the right wing in particular and up just do my lawyer Cabot to say, I’m not speaking on behalf of a EP.

I’m just giving my feelings about this. The right wing has viewed, I think, probably properly. Higher education institutions as sources of power and knowledge in our country. And they’re independent sources of power, knowledge, and we convey that power knowledge to the students. And the students develop their own power, their own knowledge, their own ability to go through and question, to question authority, to have their own perspectives.

If you’re thinking from an authoritarian perspective, you don’t want that, right? You don’t want folks having their own ideas. You don’t want independent sources of power. And so in a lot of ways, they’re trying to get rid of independent sources of power other than money and to a certain extent political power.

So trying to get rid of labor unions, independent press and higher ed is really one large sector. That is still independent and has a, su, a substantial amount of independence of power. 

[00:16:25] Cayden Mak: Makes a lot of sense to me. And it’s a playbook we’ve seen before in other authoritarian governments like trying to get rid of any of this, like spaces outside of the, their, this direct state control.

[00:16:37] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, lot of this comes from Hungary. Yeah. Who was a right wing influencer who went out to Hungary and who saw what Orban was doing to the universities and trying to capture them as arms of the state and trying to dictate what was taught and what was set on campus and brought that playbook back and then really dug into where could they get leverage on universities to try and make them beholden to the administration and try and make them total line.

Advance the uni, the in the administration’s talking points. 

[00:17:13] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Let’s run through these four lawsuits that you all have filed against the administration. We can start wherever. I’d like to know a little bit about where the lawsuits came from, what they’re dealing with, and also what their present status is.

[00:17:28] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, again, there, there’s a systematic attack on universities that comes in it a number of different ways. And we have to address the particular actions that the administration is taking, even though there is this kind of broader attack that is playing out behind the scenes.

And so we’re involved in pretty much the major components of the attack on, on universities. And the first one is, cuts to grants and funding, both in general and as an attempt to limit speech and particularly to limit speech on D divers, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and on anything that you know, highlights racism in this country or sexism in this country.

I think the desire is to eliminate discussion and information on those topics. Also on global warming environmentalism. Any of those topics that the right disagrees with. And so they’re trying to put that leverage on with funding cuts and investigations. So we have a a lawsuit on the funding cuts at Columbia University.

Folks are probably familiar with that, where they cut $400 million in funding and then tried to get Columbia to change its internal policies to kinda limit particularly teaching on international issues. And to limit protests. So we have a suit on the Columbia lawsuit that was filed just a few weeks ago.

It is pending in New York. We do these lawsuits with public interest organizations and so they do most of litigation. The Columbia lawsuit is done in conjunction with protect democracy. So one thing I’ll say real quick is that we have a website and I think you all have the link. We have a page on the issue of the political tax on higher ed, and so there are links to all these lawsuits there.

There’s a heading for lawsuit. There’s links to descriptions of the lawsuit. For those who are interested in one copies of the complaint, you can go to the page for that and their copies of the complaint and also what the status is of all these. Folks don’t have to write down notes and check later.

So we had that for the funding. Great. We attempt attempts to dictate what’s taught, to limit what’s taught, particularly like I said on DEI. And there were attempts to use grants as leverage to do that. In other words, if university had any DEI programs anywhere on campus, they were in danger of losing all of their federal grants.

So they attempted to use federal grants as basically as extortion. To limit DEI programming. We sued in February on that in Maryland. We got a preliminary injunction preventing them from enforcing that. Unfortunately, that was overturned by the court of appeals on an emergency basis. And now we’re in the court of appeals arguing for reinstatement of the injunction.

And that’s pending before the court. That’ll take a probably a couple months to resolve. So that’s another big one. And then an another one is the cuts to the Federal Depart, federal Government Department in particular. We have a lawsuit challenging the cuts to the Department of Education and the proposal to eliminate it.

And then I think the last area is a big one that you, we were just talking about, which is immigration. And there are a couple components to that. There’s the use of retaliation against, immigrants and visa holders for their speech. So we have the case of Columbia where he was leading the demonstrations on Palestine and then was arrested and under threat of deportation.

And so that’s a direct attempt to limit speech and intimidate immigrants and not just folks on visas. But you think about all the allies that they have. Sure. All the people they, that, that were in partnership with them. Then you also have a kind of a general attack on immigrants and visa holders that they’re doing, where the Trump administration is just pulling visas from students, not even notifying the universities, but just pulling ’em, not some of it’s political retaliation, some of it’s, anything from a parking ticket up.

They’re using that to justify revoke your visa. We have a suit on that, which is our suit that we’re doing with the Knight Foundation, and that’s a suit in Massachusetts that is challenging the attempt to use the Visa system to limit speech and intimidate folks on the campus.

So those are our lawsuits. 

[00:22:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah it covers a really wide range of attacks. 

[00:22:05] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, go ahead. And that’s what we’re seeing. They’re using every lever they can find. To essentially accomplish what I was talking about earlier, which is to kill the administration, to kill these independent universities. It’s to try and grab control over the intellectual property that the institutions produce.

[00:22:26] Cayden Mak: Yeah. No, that make, that makes a lot of sense. I’m, I have a couple of, I have a couple of follow up questions and one of the things that occurs to me is I’m curious about the way that you form partnerships with civil society organizations and like what the, what putting together these cases looks like for you all, and like how you choose your partners to work with on these lawsuits.

[00:22:49] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah we’re really fortunate. There are a lot of people working in this space. There’s some great organizations out there that are doing a lot of really good work as an attorney. You don’t wanna be in a situation where you’re calling attorneys all the time, but that it is not a good thing, but that’s where we’re, we don’t have a choice about that. And I’m pleased that we’re, that attorneys have done a lot of good work. And there’s just a lot of organizations out there who’ve taken up the cause. It is overwhelming even for all the nonprofits that are doing the work.

And, you see it with the Trump administration trying to knock out the big law firms from doing this work. I’m sure you all are familiar with that. Pulling a national security clearances and the like and they’re attempting to a intimidate law firms from doing the work. B. Sure.

They get the law firms to work for them, whether they want to or not for free. They’re claiming they’re gonna get like a billion dollars in free legal services by extorting the law firms, by pulling their security cares. That’s what the, that’s where this administration is coming from. It is using every lever the federal government has, whether it’s arrests, deportations, pulling of funding.

Pulling of security clearances to just grab control over power. That’s what they care about is power. And they want the power and they don’t want independent institutions to have those that power. So yeah, a lot of our allies are interested in just defending democracy and are independent institutions.

[00:24:21] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah, and I think one of the things that we learn from a lot of the people who are scholars of the advancement of authoritarianism is that institutions are a critical piece of the puzzle in terms of like roadblocks for authoritarianism, and then also the tools that people like us can use to fight back against their power consolidation.

Yeah. I 

[00:24:44] Aaron Nisenson: mean they’re, it’s distributed power. Which is what democracy is, but you need those institutions to stop us from being atomized individuals who are just floating out there and are sources of money and votes. Totally. Totally. That’s what they want us to be, not ideas, not concepts.

They want us to be sources of money and sources of votes, and they want to stop any attempt. To have ideas, e and a and power e and a from anywhere else. 

[00:25:17] Cayden Mak: I have also a question about, I guess like how the institutions of the universities themselves are responding, if at all, to this sort of back and forth in the courts.

We see a pretty wide variety of. Responses in the news, right? Where co speaking of Columbia, Columbia has just completely rolled over. But that, I imagine there are other institutions that are responding different ways to what’s going on. And I’m curious if there’s, if there are signs of life there that you’ve been seeing especially, in the legal arena that a lot of these, I graduated from University of Michigan with my undergraduate.

They have a huge endowment. What are they doing? Yeah. It’s like the question that I have for them via the alumni association constantly now. 

[00:26:00] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, I, that’s a great question and it let’s back up a little bit and talk about the fact that, Trump is just trampling these norms that we’ve had in our society going back over a hundred years, and there are norms of not using government power or just blatant attempts to extort.

Institutions to do their bidding. And so that’s a breaking down of a norm. And I think, frankly, the universities are struggling with how to respond. This is something they haven’t faced before, and so some of ’em are seeking to appease the administration and are seeking to get resolutions.

Columbia being an example, others are talking about pushing back. Princeton Brown have talked about that. I think we’ll see how much that actually happens. They haven’t filed suit yet. But, we’ll, hopefully that happens because we need those institutions to push back. The institutions still do have power.

Like you said, they have a lot of money. A lot of ’em have big endowments. They have alumni groups who are big voters. They have families who are involved in universities, who are voters. They have money, they have lawyers, they have the, have power. Yeah. And they have to exercise that power. I think they’ve, a lot of them have just been ducking for cover and sticking their head in the sand literally, and hoping the danger goes away.

I think Columbia found that trying to appease the administration isn’t gonna work there. There’s no level of appeasement that they’re gonna accept. 

[00:27:28] Cayden Mak: Yeah. You give them an inch and they take a mile. 

[00:27:30] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, absolutely. And they’re gonna keep taking, and taking and that’s the thing. They’re gonna come back.

There’s no end to the extortion. And so hopefully universities or finding that are gonna start to be more willing to push back, I understand the position they’re in ’cause some of these get like very significant amounts of grant funding. And then there’s also always the potential that the federal government could say we’re not gonna support student loans at your organ, at your institution.

That’s called Title six funding. And obviously without student loans, a lot of institutions just would not be able to even stay in business. So they, the federal government has some big hammers that it could use. Yeah. But they’re also, we have rights in this country, first Amendment rights, contract rights.

There are lots of rights that institutions have that they can assert, and they’ve just really gotta find a way to do that. 

[00:28:27] Cayden Mak: Right on. The other sort of like line of thing that I would love to talk to you a little bit about is the sort of like. What are the like levers that the federal government really has to enforce the DEI stuff like, I feel like one of the conversations I’ve been seeing back and forth online is look like, what if we just call it something else and just do the thing anyway, right?

It’s also obviously happening at the state level where especially like. States that have Republican trifectas are passing these laws at the state level too. But what are the ways that people are maybe thinking about like I. Enforcement on some of this stuff are like, is there like a way that some institutions are thinking about their I know, and I’m speaking of my alma mater, they just announced that.

They were just like, no, we’re just eliminating it. It’s cool. We’re complying in advance. Let’s go. And I was like, this is embarrassing, Frank. Yeah. 

[00:29:27] Aaron Nisenson: It’s really sad, right? Yeah. It’s like you didn’t even try it all. No. And I think there actually are some questions about how much they actually tried in the first place.

Yeah. Whether these were just names of offices that used to do one thing and then they named them diversity offices and they do largely the same thing that they used to do. And they’re not really diversity offices and then they’re changing ’em back to what they were before. Sure. But there are also lots of institutions I think that really took it to heart.

I really did it. And one of our activists, you say, you have to name it to fight it. You have to name it racism, you have to Yeah. In some ways really call it out and not use euphemisms in order to really drive change. And so what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to say, you can’t even name it.

[00:30:17] Cayden Mak: And so 

[00:30:17] Aaron Nisenson: therefore you can’t drive change. What they’re trying to do. And so they’re looking through, the administration is looking through all the grant funding for names like diverse words like diversity racism, or anything that even attempts, for example, a lot of these fund, we talk about funding as if it’s just money going to university.

It’s funding for grants like researching cancer, looking at disparities in healthcare. All of that. 

[00:30:44] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Things that have real 

[00:30:45] Aaron Nisenson: consequences. 

[00:30:46] Cayden Mak: Material consequences. 

[00:30:48] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah. Yeah. That have driven a lot of the improvements in our lives. Health improvements, our attempts to address race.

A lot of that stuff is driven by the grants and the funding that, that flow to universities, and they’re trying to get rid of all of these attempts. To improve those areas because they don’t wanna see them improve. They want to go back. 

[00:31:14] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:31:15] Aaron Nisenson: I gave a speech before Trump that maybe two, three years ago, I said, they wanna go back.

They wanna go back to the nineties. Someone want to go back to 1990s, someone want to go back to 1890s, nineties, 

[00:31:31] Cayden Mak: right? Yeah, no, I mean with this, with the, like the voting rights stuff, it’s like they wanna go back to at least the 1890s, 

[00:31:38] Aaron Nisenson: right? They wanna go, back to after reconstruction was destroyed, where you had all these voting tests and stuff like that, and the black participation went down from, you know what, for 20% of the vote to 0.1% of the vote in the south. They would be happy to go. A lot of ’em would be happy to go back to that. And I think what the, what, when we get to the pushback is, one is to push back against the attempts to do it, to not just succumb the way Columbia did, but to really push back.

And I, and one of the ways to do it is to really step back and think about, what is the institution trying? What are the institutional values? 

[00:32:17] Cayden Mak: And 

[00:32:17] Aaron Nisenson: what is the institution trying to do with its students? And its, and it in its community, not what its ranking is in the US world or, whether it’s football team won might be nice, but, that’s not an institutional value we hope.

Not how many students do they got that were valedictorians in the class? Not that. 

[00:32:38] Cayden Mak: Yeah, 

[00:32:38] Aaron Nisenson: it’s about, advancing the community, common good, trying to expand knowledge and opportunity to folks. And if you look at trying to expand it, then you’re gonna end up really having a look at racism and how racism has, really stopped a lot of the opportunity for advancement in this country.

Once you do that, then you really are in a better place. And I think the places that are really being successful have done that soul searching and have really thought about, what is our place in the community. And I think for folks out there, who aren’t faculty members, like yourself, alumni are great.

Alumni are great, alumni really have an oppor, a lot of opportunity to put some pressure on and to really push alumni, students and families to students. 

[00:33:29] Cayden Mak: Also 

[00:33:29] Aaron Nisenson: members of the community who might be involved in university or might have contracts. It’s really an opportunity to ask university what are your values?

What are you here for? Is it just to try and get the top 10% of the class into your school, or are we really hear about advancing opportunity, knowledge and the, the general interest of the country. And I think if we push that inquiry with universities and with board members in particular that we, that hopefully we can make some progress.

[00:34:03] Cayden Mak: Yeah. It strikes me that like this is another area where like the neoliberal turn. Is, has like really hollowed out a lot of the values of these institutions, at least in terms of the way they present themselves and the way that they strategize about their trajectories. Like I remember when I was in graduate school and was a member of public sector union as a graduate instructor, like how hard we had to fight for like we are members of the community. We are teaching our students, we are doing all these things and you don’t value our labor. You don’t value the fact that it’s not just in the classroom. It’s in the department I was in like one of very few, like instructors of color supporting first generation college students who were like not seeing faces like theirs in positions of power.

And just thinking about how the thing that the state of New York and then the university would keep coming back to us with was about these sort of value propositions that were about the market, not about like human flourishing. And that there’s so much there’s so much groundwork unfortunately, that it feels like that has been laid.

Yeah. Within these institutions by the like marketization of everything, by the like turn towards let’s squeeze every last cent of value out of our human resources or whatever. That has really atrophied their ability to fight this fight. 

[00:35:25] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah. And I think that’s exactly right and, it might, this might be an opportunity for universities and the communities to.

Really revisit that question, because one of the reasons that the administration is able to do this is because universities have lost a lot of just the common support out in the country, yeah. On the right they’ve been attacked. On the left, there’s questions about, how much it costs and student loans, and like you said, the neoliberal agenda, so on both sides of the coin, there’s really.

You have questions about universities and I think they’ve really gotta step back and look at what their role is in the community and what they’re really doing. There’s a lot of, for a lot of folks who, first gen folks who are not from an educated political class, universities are this to me are this thing out there that is often unattainable.

And not a, not an avenue or an option in their lives. And because of cost, because of this idea of, we’re gonna get the people who are already ready for college to get in here, and we don’t want people who are gonna be difficult to, get up to speed or anything like that, folks who are not accustomed to the system, I think have a hard time managing the system, so I think all of those things are hurdles and for a large amount of population, they don’t really see universities as having a role in their lives. And that’s that’s a very sad thing, and I think it’s something that, this moment gives us an opportunity to rethink a lot of that.

[00:37:06] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no I think that this insight that like this moment of rupture creates an opportunity for those of us who want to see our institutions fill a greater role in like standing up for defending, advancing the common good. That’s. It’s really hard when there is this sort of like full spectrum of flurry of attacks to keep that still in mind. But I do think that there’s some important, there’s an important strategy there that you’re describing about being able to ask these bigger questions about what is it that we want, for instance, our government to do for us? What is the value of democracy?

What could it 

[00:37:44] Aaron Nisenson: be? 

[00:37:45] Cayden Mak: Not what is it now? 

[00:37:47] Aaron Nisenson: What you know. What’s the value of having an independent institu institution if that institution doesn’t do something good? And that’s what we’re fighting for is the independence of these institutions. But I think we really have to have the institutions think about what are they doing that’s good for the country, for the community for the members of the community.

I think for folks to really understand what that is historically and currently. And that might, that’s gonna bring some universities, take some reformulation of what they’re doing and that’s that probably a good thing, right? Yeah. They just go out there and say, Hey, we’re great because we got all these grants and we got the cream of the crop coming to our institution.

Is that something that is really. A claim for the common good and that folks in general can grab onto. 

[00:38:39] Cayden Mak: And does it justify the frankly, the hoarding of wealth that is happening in a lot of these endowments, does it, is this justified? 

[00:38:47] Aaron Nisenson: There are deeper questions.

We have these big endowments, we got these big gifts from, rich corporate donors and they limited the, us to only spending it on the school of economics. Woo. That’s some big accomplishment, sure, totally. So we gotta move away from that. And I think it’s, that’s the opport, now it’s the opportunity to do that.

Yeah. It’s hard when it’s under attack, but at some point it’s, you really gotta say, we are in a fight, but what are we fighting for? And yeah. 

[00:39:17] Cayden Mak: I, and I think these questions are actually questions that like, are going to animate people to be like, yeah, no, we want a robust system of higher education in this country.

Because there’s something here that is for me, for my community, like finding the places where like we can put solidarity to work for us. I. And I also think that lacking a vision is just losing proposition that like, if we are on the defensive only even in these, even the, in these like really trying times, if we’re on the defensive only, I don’t think we’re gonna win, 

[00:39:48] Aaron Nisenson: frankly.

Yeah, no. Yeah. I think that’s totally right. I think that we have to ex explain to first examine what. We’re really there for and why universities are there and what they’re doing, and then communicate that and get that out. Yeah, I think a lot of people tend to focus on, oh, we’re just not communicating well enough.

And there’s some of that, but some of that’s, that needs to start, but start at a deeper level. 

[00:40:14] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yes. 

[00:40:15] Aaron Nisenson: Why are we here? What are we doing for folks throughout the count country, not just the advantaged. Not just getting on our board, the big donors and the big corporate people, because we want them on our board or they’re friends with the governor, or they’re politically powerful people, yeah. Totally. Getting some diversity on the boards and getting some folks who have a broader conception of what’s good for the country rather than just money flowing in. Yeah, 

[00:40:45] Cayden Mak: There’s more to life than dollar signs, right? 

[00:40:47] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we have a, we’re doing a lot on that. I, like I said, I in the chat, you have the link to the page.

We also have a day of action on April 17th coming up. Great. There’s a link from that page that I shared with you on, I’m sure it’s gonna be available for folks. Yeah. We’ll stick it in 

[00:41:04] Cayden Mak: the show now. It’s for folks. 

[00:41:05] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah. And you go to our website, we’re just a p.org and if you look under issues and there’ll be something on political inter interference, so lots of other things on issues we have, broken down by topic. So on immigration, we have fact sheets about what your basic rights are. We have fact sheets about ICE raids keeping ice off campus. Great. We have what you can do both as faculty members, but also the general public, actions we can take. And like I said, we have the day of action coming up, so we have.

A lot of things that we’re doing, and I think a lot of things that we’re doing to try and not just defend the university but advance it at the same time. 

[00:41:44] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Great. Yeah I think the combination of the wide variety of kinds of action that the a UP is involved in is also really important that lawsuits are valuable and they gum up the works and they like really force the administration to account for what it’s trying to do. And also having these other ways for the public to get involved, for campus communities to be involved seems also critical to honestly critical to the success of the lawsuits too, that like people need to understand the ways those things those things interact with one another.

[00:42:17] Aaron Nisenson: And I think also we as faculty members. N and as institutions do need to do a better job of really talking to folks about also what we do and we have to do that internal examination. Like on these cuts, we talk about grant cuts and a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there.

I’ve listened to a lot of stories about what folks are getting cut, and it’s they have these long 10 year longitudinal studies on the impacts of race on healthcare and they’re just stopping ’em, yeah. We’re not getting those solutions and we’re wasting all of that time, money, and effort we put into that stuff.

And there are people who deeply care about, expanding healthcare, about finding, cures to diseases about. Finding ways to address inequity and their work is being stopped, their publications are being pulled off websites. Yeah. And all the work that they have done is just being essentially thrown aside.

And it’s a tragedy. And I think we’ve gotta get better at relating that to folks and talking about our stories and talk about the faculty stories about what they’re doing, yeah. 

[00:43:31] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s crucially important. And it’s actually interesting. I was, as you were describing these like long-term longitudinal studies, I had just listened to a podcast that was describing some like long-term longitudinal like nutrition studies.

That like they don’t know if they’re gonna be able to continue that research. And that’s research that’s not just about specific populations. That’s research that’s about like, how do we feed ourselves in responsible ways, right? Like how do I live a good life as an individual person, but also it informs policy, it involves personal choices.

It informs the market and like thinking about. Lighting that money and that effort on fire is just I appreciated the podcast host on this show. ’cause they actually called it out. They were like, look, there, this study is at risk. And I think those of us who are communicators also need to do more of that.

That like, when we see it, when we talk about it, like we should name those things ’cause the effects, the downstream effects are coming for us pretty fast. 

[00:44:29] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah. Absolutely. And you look at, for example, Columbia where they had the $400 million cut, they’re not cutting, they are definitely looking and cutting, things that have diversity so that, that’s part of it.

Sure. Without question, but they’re cutting like cancer studies. Yeah. In an attempt. Yeah. To get universities to tow their political line. They’re willing to throw people’s lives and health in danger in order to get power. Yeah, and not like in danger in some abstract way, but in a real way because you have people who are enrolled in those studies.

[00:45:10] Cayden Mak: Who, like often the people, those studies are like, this is their last ditch effort in a lot of ways. That they’re like, 

[00:45:15] Aaron Nisenson: yeah, 

[00:45:15] Cayden Mak: their literal lives are on the line. 

[00:45:17] Aaron Nisenson: Those individuals lives are on the line and then the lives that could be saved by those cures are on the line.

But the administration doesn’t care because they want power and they’re willing to do, to throw all that at risk, to get power and to get revenge on institutions they don’t like. Yeah. That’s where we’re, yeah. 

[00:45:38] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And you’re right, I don’t hear enough people being really explicit about the fact that this is playing political football with people’s lives and that that is what the mag agenda is fundamentally, in order to consolidate power. 

[00:45:52] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah. Yeah. I think, like I said before, they’re breaking down these norms that. Who would think, even under Republican administrations where they want to cut the budget, they want to cut money, they wanna cut money going to universities, they’re not gonna can stop a cancer study in the middle of it.

There’s been bipartisan support for that stuff. Republicans get cancer too. Exactly. Yeah. So it’s in some ways almost inconceivable that would happen. And so now that’s happening. I think we’re all just frankly struggling with how to. Push back on this thing that we never even thought would’ve been conceivable.

Sure. And you’re right, we need to get those stories out. We probably need to have people who are involved in those trials talk about ’em. Yeah. And have individuals whose loved ones suffer from, the. Sickle cell or who suffer from esophagal cancer and they’re doing a research study and that one either helped save a life or could help save a life.

We, we really need to talk in those very personal terms about it. Yeah. And we’re slowly moving that direction. 

[00:46:59] Cayden Mak: Aaron, thank you so much for all of your work and for making the time to talk with us today. I feel actually like very energized about all of this talking to you. ’cause I don’t know, it feels like these are dire times.

But we definitely need this kind of this kind of fight. We need to take this fight to them and we need this kind of strategic insight. That you are clearly bringing to the table. So thank you so much. 

[00:47:19] Aaron Nisenson: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. It was great to be on. I really appreciate you all doing the work to get the word out on these different things that are going on, not just with us, but with your other podcast.

So it was a pleasure to be on. 

[00:47:30] Cayden Mak: Great. My thanks again to Liz Darrow for joining us today. You can connect with community Co to Communities, [email protected] and also on Instagram. We’ll put links to them in the show notes. And thanks also to Erin Enson as well. You’ll find resources on how to protect your community and [email protected].

And we’ll also share the Day of Action for Higher Education website in the show notes too. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Caden Mock. Our producer is Josh Stro. Kimmy David designed our cover art. If you have something to say, please do drop me a line.

You can send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming mailbag episode at [email protected]. And finally, if you’d like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a [email protected] slash donate.

Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure that our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this 

helps.