Columbia University Press

Hard as it may seem to believe, American academia is entering a period of even more uncertainty. Under the incoming Trump administration, the possibilities we face range from something like a continuation of our current trajectory (financial precarity, eroding trust, rising intolerance and corrosion of the public sphere) to one of the more extreme authoritarian scenarios modernity has spawned over the last century. Our campuses may become playgrounds for partisan accreditors imposing patriotic education standards under threat of seized endowments, or sites of military raids to deport undocumented students and protesters—even as research funds are tied up by the conspiracy-addled machinations of power-hungry propagandists.

So this is where we find ourselves. A freshman U.S. Senate candidate, JD Vance, in 2021 elevated the private grumblings of a disgraced president Nixon—“the professors are the enemy”—to the level of policy principle and then rode it (and a lot of tech money) to the vice presidency. We may not be the first technologically advanced modern society with a government devoted to undermining research and higher education, but the United States is the most powerful yet to have started down this road, and the stakes are high.

This is also a tricky moment for me to launch a book (Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists) premised on the idea that professional intellectuals should embrace a constructive role in the public arena that compromises neither our citizenship nor our scholarship. It’s exciting, because the issue of community engagement is having a moment and seems more important than ever. But also awkward, because the book promotes practices that dedicated public intellectuals like me really thought might help hold off the arrival of just this situation. We—I—failed, and the book launches right before the inauguration celebrating that failure.

Social scientists are in our own sort of tight spot right now. Even if people can’t judge the scientific merit of our methods or data, they can judge us based on our conclusions—which is risky. Some rise to that risk, thrilling one devoted audience while alienating others. Others seek to avoid drawing conclusions that arouse emotions—or just hope the public won’t actually read our work so we can do our jobs in peace.

I understand both the thrill and the fear of speaking out. But not the blame that follows. It’s a dangerous mistake to conclude that the highly visible work of our colleagues has made our institutions, or our disciplines, a target for authoritarians. However many inflammatory claims or protesting professors we have served up, they did not actually lead to the strategy of demonizing us. That was coming already, as the history of authoritarianism makes abundantly clear. Purging, or hiding, the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” in the faculty lounge won’t actually help, because they’re not the real target. The enemy within is represented by leftist activists (and they will always be able to find one), but the core problem is the modern worldview in which democratic principles of inclusive representation rest on a foundation of rational knowledge creation. Experience has shown authoritarians that they can’t fatally undermine democracy without taking down rationality as well. The rhetorical goalposts are movable; the central problem is not.

Some academics embrace activist identities and need little encouragement from me. Others burrow into their scholarly warrens and hope to find a discursive space removed from the uproar and recrimination that thrive on the surface of society. For the scholars in between these two, I have some suggestions.

A key principle underlying my advice is that we can’t face this alone. Most of us do our best work when we play a role—one that supports others and allows them to support us as well. Our partners may be other professional scholars, as well as activists, journalists, neighbors and online or in-real-life friends.

The opponents of knowledge and education are weaponizing ignorance dressed as patriotism against our institutions—including through threats to our systems of governance, budgets or specific leaders. But they also target us as professionals, and we need to respond individually —which doesn’t mean alone. It’s not enough for our scholarship to be helpful as content. We need to be present—as people—at the intersection of scholarship and citizenship. Make a statement, sign a letter, publish openly, mentor, connect colleagues with a journalist, help an activist group get the data they need, stand up for a more precarious scholar. In these ways, we make it more likely our communities will support us, protecting both our life’s work and the democratic society that makes it possible.