In its first 100 days, President Trump’s second term has unleashed the most dangerous attack on American democracy in generations.

While unprecedented in recent American politics, the events we are now witnessing are painfully familiar to scholars of democratic backsliding. We’ve seen these tactics deployed in Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela, and other nations where democracy has eroded into autocracy. Trump is following the autocrat’s playbook: attacking independent media, replacing non-political officials with partisans, undermining the judiciary, expanding executive power under flimsy emergency pretenses, and imprisoning dissidents without due process. Most chillingly, he has purged top military ranks, in a move some observers fear is designed to replace career officers with Trump loyalists. And we have more than 1,300 days to go.

To be clear, what makes these actions dangerous is not the policy goals themselves. Limiting immigration and shrinking the federal bureaucracy, for example, are legitimate policy preferences shared by many Americans. What is alarming is the administration’s lawless approach to achieving them. 

Attacking universities is another classic authoritarian tactic. At their best, college campuses are bastions of free inquiry, where government narratives can be challenged through rigorous scholarship and open debate. They also provide a space for young people to question received wisdom and develop as leaders. All of this threatens autocrats who prefer obedient, passive citizens over engaged, thoughtful ones.

True to form, the Trump Administration has prioritized attacking American higher education. The most direct assault has been withholding millions in government grants from specific schools like Harvard, while unlawfully demanding control over their curriculum and hiring — actions thatwhich strike at the heart of academic freedom. This is part of a broader assault that includes cutting indirect costs (which fund things like shared computing infrastructure), gutting grant-making agencies, and threatening increased endowment taxes. The rationale for these actions, when one is even provided, is transparently false. The real message to universities is clear: stay silent and keep your students and faculty in line.

So, what can the WashU community do in this precarious moment? The answer must begin with a clear-eyed recognition that we now operate in a fundamentally altered landscape in which both academic freedom and the institutions supporting it face direct government hostility. This is not politics as usual: it is a power grab by forces antithetical to the University’s core mission.  

More concretely, there are four actions we should take.

First, we must protect our most vulnerable community members. International scholars now face visa revocations or are denied entry to the country for trivial infractions, controversial essays, or even no reason at all. This not only chills academic freedom, but also places them in impossible positions: even attending an academic conference could risk indefinite separation from jobs and families. WashU should establish a need-based hardship fund and provide academic programs with flexibility to ensure that affected students can graduate and faculty retain their positions.

We must also support those whose work depends on federal grants. WashU cannot permanently replace these funds if they are fully rescinded, but we should explore ways to weather the storm together and protect what we can during these uncertain times. In particular, our $12 billion endowment exists partly to see us through rainy days. If it’s not raining now, the sky is certainly threatening. We can prepare now to strategically deploy these resources to protect research, faculty, and staff.

Second, we need to speak out and take action. Feelings of fear, hopelessness, and powerlessness are authoritarian tools we must reject.

Faculty should engage the public, not only countering misinformation with facts, but also explaining our work’s value. It’s one thing to hear abstractly about budget cuts at elite universities, quite another to understand how these actions disrupt specific clinical trials and derail the promising careers of a new generation of scientists, professionals, and artists.

Students should recognize their historical role in this moment — just as student movements have been vanguards against authoritarianism in places like Thailand, Hong Kong, and Bangladesh, WashU students must prepare to become active participants in defending democratic values, not just through peaceful campus activism but through civic engagement that extends beyond the University’s boundaries.

Our administration should publicly affirm its commitment to protecting faculty, students, and staff from political interference while establishing (and communicating) concrete protocols for responding to government pressure. The WashU administration’s response so far has been defiant, but cautious. In the short run, this may be prudent. We do not want to pick fights we cannot endure, and WashU’s historical strength in earning federal grant dollars means we are vulnerable. 

But in the long run, a more vocal strategy — preferably in collaboration with peer institutions — is needed. The Trump Administration is not just targeting universities for what they have done, but because of what they are. If we sit by silently while Trumpists savage other elite institutions, we risk that when they come for us, we will just have fewer allies in our corner. 

Importantly, taking a public stand would not violate WashU’s commitment to political neutrality, a policy I support. It is not the role of the University to take official positions on society’s many controversies, but rather to be a place where these issues can be freely debated and discussed. As the Board of Trustees’ recent statement acknowledges, however, neutrality does not apply to matters directly connected to the core functions of the University. Our students, our patients, our budgets, and our academic freedom are at stake. Taking a robust and public stand in their defense is not only appropriate but necessary.

Third, we must work together, both on campus and beyond. Administrators, faculty, and students should try to set aside differences when possible and collaborate as a unified community with a shared stake in preserving WashU’s mission. 

We must also actively work with peer institutions facing similar threats, engage our neighbors who depend on University research and employment, coordinate with contractors whose livelihoods are intertwined with ours, and — perhaps most critically — mobilize our extensive alumni network. These graduates, who have benefited from WashU’s excellence and carry its influence into every sector of society, represent an untapped resource of advocacy and support.

Left unchallenged, the Trump Administration’s attacks will not simply inconvenience us temporarily; they will diminish the institution we have collectively built over generations. We owe it to everyone who values WashU to provide meaningful opportunities to defend an institution that is not only part of their history, but a part of their identity.

Finally, we must persist with the understanding that we are in this struggle for the long haul. The experience of other nations teaches us that democratic decline is not easily reversed by a single election cycle. The institutional guardrails we once trusted to maintain our democracy have proven inadequate, and the structural damage being inflicted will not be undone just by changing administrations. We will not merely return to democracy; we must actively work to renew it.

Universities like WashU are uniquely positioned to contribute to this renewal through education, research, and community engagement. Throughout history, universities have weathered authoritarian storms and emerged as essential institutions in democratic revival. In facing this challenge, WashU has the opportunity not just to tolerate academic freedom, but to be its champion; not just to pursue a mission in support of learning, research, and patient care, but to be its defender; not just to reside in a democracy, but to be a wellspring for its rejuvenation.

In taking up this cause, we can draw inspiration from our namesake. While history often remembers George Washington as a statesman and president, he was first a revolutionary in the cause of freedom. When facing unjust governance, Washington did not acquiesce, but committed himself to a cause greater than self-interest, risking everything to defend democratic principles.

In this moment of peril for the democracy Washington founded, we have a special responsibility to honor that legacy. If we engage in effective resistance with the same resolve, we might live up to our name and be, in the fullest sense, Washington’s University.