Universities are under siege—and they are complicit in their own destruction. Higher education is unraveling by an even more deliberate, calculated force than before. Websites deleted.  Students and faculty disappeared. Faculty positions erased.  Faculty control over curriculum and research removed.  What stood yesterday is gone today. By tomorrow, the damage will have spread even further.

This isn’t just an isolated attack on institutions or budgets. It’s a fascist strategy to destabilize, confuse, and obstruct resistance that’s been decades in the making.  The current administration’s shifting regulations, expanded policing, and alarming forms of repression are designed to maintain a climate of uncertainty and chaos among us.

The weight of engineered chaos presses in from all sides. 

While many of us surely know how to resist, this moment has been designed to keep us disoriented. With our departments, research, students, and jobs at risk, it is easy to feel like our capacity to organize with the clarity needed to gain footing is also being compromised.  

While there may be hope in the potential of the growing disillusionment in the Democratic Party to create an opening for the left, we cannot ignore the immense sense of overwhelm emerging as the assaults come from every direction, leaving little time to regroup before the next blow lands.

And that is exactly the point.

Fascism thrives on disorder, forcing those who resist to waste energy on chasing clarity instead of building power. When the conditions are this chaotic, exhaustion sets in. 

Uncertainty turns into inaction. Our capacity for organizing with clarity disappears.

But engineered chaos does not have to define how we move through it. Refusing to be trapped in this spiral will be crucial to our resistance.

Rooting Ourselves

In the dysregulated state of stress, in the pressure to adapt to a non-stop crisis…when the involuntary reactions of  fight, flight, and freeze are activated, whatever form of resistance we had at the ready can become unreachable and break down. 

The threats we face are real. Fear is valid. 

But we don’t have to let what’s happening around us control how we move through it. 

Escaping the psychic life of fear isn’t an effective strategy, tempting as it may seem. Instead, we need to root ourselves into what’s happening now, in real-time.  Accessing our capacity to actively resist surrender demands making room for the inevitable emotions that are arising before they engulf us. 

What does this look like?

• Slow down.
  Not everything we read or hear is real. Not every worst-case scenario is inevitable. Take a moment. Is this really happening? Am I/are we safe in this moment?
  
• Recognize spiraling.
  Fear makes everything feel immediate and urgent.  Respond from presence, not panic.
  
• Resist reactionary strategies.
  Fascism thrives on forcing people into a state of hypervigilance—where the need to know everything–even control each other and our collective work– becomes its own obstacle. We can still organize movements even if we don’t have answers. 

Refusing chaos requires cultivating the discipline of steadiness to move within it…even in the face of uncertainty. When we are presented with the opportunity to rise and meet the face of the oppressor, we are first given the chance to decide how we meet it.

The Power of Relationships 

Facism seeks a form of control over individuals, using shock and awe as vehicles to achieve this goal. And when it fractures individuals—it fractures movements, turning comrades into abusers, allies into adversaries. When we feel alone and unsure, and the space we once had to resist diminishes, we may turn that frustration inwards, into conflict and resentment towards each other.  When we have no safe outlet for expressing rage, it is all too easy to direct it at each other.  On many campuses, small disagreements are turning into escalated conflicts, and collective spaces are becoming more and more strained.  

We must refuse to allow the pressures of state violence to affect our relationships. We all need relationships to thrive, but relationships are also a counterforce to chaos. When we stand strong with each other, we cut through manipulation, shock, and fear. When we are not alone, we have greater capacity to recognize what is real rather than reacting to what is imposed.  We strengthen our ability to respond with precision when we engage in the demanding but essential work of trust-building, connection, repair, and accountability.

Spiraling happens in isolation; but our power is generated collectively.

Fascism thrives on disconnection, on making us believe we are alone in this fight. The strength of our relationships will determine whether we fortify our collective power or become tangled in the noise that aims to scatter and weaken us.

Sustaining collective organizing keeps confusion from being a weapon turned against us and the river of fear from dictating the landscape of our choices. It moves the forging of the futures they are working to erase forward.  

The Acts That Thrive

Fascism attacks our capacity to think, to write, to build.

Writing and organizing must continue if we want to sharpen our understanding, document our truths, and shape the ground we stand on.  To be sure, the stakes are not the same for everyone. Non-tenured faculty and graduate students may need to move more carefully, understanding the weight of their moves.  Some have more privilege to be visible, to push more openly.  We need immediate responses and long-term visions.  Some are countering the latest attack. Others are working to ensure that what we create next is strong enough to withstand whatever follows.

Yet we cannot let this moment break our momentum. We will write. We will organize. And we will make space for nurturing our relationships. We will refuse to be swallowed by chaos. We will refuse to be isolated.  We will create strategies–improvised, imperfect, or clearly defined–to shape the future rather than be erased from it. We will outlast repression and inform what grows in its place.  The choices each of us makes now–the positions we advance and where, how and to what extent we take action—will shape what comes next.  

Yet we cannot navigate this moment alone.  And if we are going to hold the line, we must refuse to spiral into chaos, and be lost.

— — —

For Actions you can take to Defend Higher Education, I highly recommend Jigna Desai’s post from March 21, 2025: 

20 Actions to Defend Higher Education 

Complying will not protect you, your department, your lab, or your university. What we are facing is not a series of isolated restrictions—this is a coordinated effort to dismantle higher education as we know it. This is not “just” about censoring departmental statements on websites, silencing faculty, or expelling students who support Palestinian rights. These are tactics in a larger campaign to erode academic freedom and freedom of speech, suppress critical inquiry, and strip universities of their role as spaces for rigorous debate, social progress, and intellectual autonomy. This is how fascism works. 

We cannot afford to be passive observers or believe that small concessions will shield us. We are in this together, and the only way forward is to fight for the whole institution—not just for research funding, individual programs, departments, or student groups, but for the very foundation of higher education itself. Ultimately, the goal of Project 2025 is to reduce the number of people who attend college by 50%. Let that sink in. 

Many groups are already engaged in this struggle. Find them. Learn what they are doing. Join the efforts that align with your capacity and commitments. You don’t have to take on everything at once—this is a collective fight, and no one person or group can or should do it all, including all the items on this list. What matters is that we act with intention, solidarity, and persistence.

Higher education will not survive if we retreat into silence and compliance. The only way to protect us is to resist.

Feel free to add to and adapt the list  for your own purposes. 

1. Do Not Comply in Advance.

Preemptively surrendering to harmful policies won’t protect the university. Challenge unconstitutional or unethical demands. Make them fight for every inch. Bigger institutions have more power, but all institutions—large elite Ivys, small liberal arts colleges, private universities, state universities, and community colleges—are in this fight together. Defend academic freedom and autonomy at every level

2. Be Invisible When Necessary.

Protect vulnerable students, faculty, and staff by removing identifying information from public platforms. Use encrypted communication tools like Signal (though not perfect) and protonmail – develop security protocols. Be cautious about online footprints, particularly for those at risk of harassment or political targeting.

3. Meet and Talk—Offline When Needed.

Gather off-campus if necessary. Strengthen networks through in-person meetings, secure online channels, and phone trees for rapid communication. The free exchange of ideas is under attack—protect it. Connecting is also crucial for mental health and morale, even when sharing negative feelings. Organizing happens best in community.

4. Connect to K-12

Without K-12, higher education hardly matters. Pay attention and connect to the K-12 struggles. Our struggles are interconnected. The (potential) eradication of the Department of Education is a step in destroying education as a public good for all in the US. Removing the DOE is a book for private education, erasing gains for equity and access for poor students, rural students, students of color, and disabled students. 

5. Archive Public Data and Knowledge.

Governments and universities have erased or restricted access to crucial research, from climate science to racial justice studies. Create decentralized, open-access repositories for threatened scholarship. Work with librarians, digital archivists, and activist groups to protect datasets, reports, and course materials from censorship or destruction. Academic knowledge belongs to the public—ensure it remains accessible.

6. Prepare for Doxxing and Harassment.

Develop rapid-response kits, legal resources, and institutional protections for those targeted. Universities must provide legal support and clear policies against harassment of faculty and students. Departments and colleagues should have response plans in place to support those under attack.

7. Leverage University Endowments.

Demand that institutions use their vast financial resources to support the mission of the university—research, learning, and engagement. Furthermore, defend academic freedom, students, and community programs. If not now, then when? Financial power must be mobilized in defense of academic integrity and social responsibility.

8. Connect to Professional Organizations Like AAUP, MLA, ASA, etc.

Professional organizations and certain foundations are likely to come under attack as well. Pay attention to the resources they are sharing and to what they are saying about attacks on 501(c)(3) status. These organizations can provide legal support, guidance, and solidarity.

9. Build Cross-Institutional Alliances.

Universities must work together, sharing strategies and resources across institutions to resist authoritarianism, austerity measures, and ideological attacks. Do not wait for elite universities to lead. Reconnect with colleagues in your field across all types of institutions, including community colleges and state schools.

10. Take Legal Action Against the Administration.

Challenge unconstitutional policies that threaten academic freedom, civil rights, and funding for critical research and programs. Support organizations filing lawsuits. Universities must use the legal system to resist political overreach and violations of academic independence.

11. Hold Universities Accountable.

Administrators who preemptively comply or fail to protect students and faculty must face scrutiny. Use faculty senates, student activism, and legal channels to push back. Universities must not be complicit in their own dismantling.

12. Defend Free Speech and Academic Freedom.

Ensure that scholars, educators, and students can speak out without fear of retribution. Push for strong institutional commitments to these principles. Share examples of good policies with colleagues in your discipline elsewhere. Make sure good examples of supporting academic freedom are available and circulating.

13. Resist Program Cuts and Department Closures.

Cuts to the humanities, social sciences, ethnic studies, and gender studies are political acts—fight them. Organize faculty and student resistance to program shutdowns. Insist that a university is not just a pipeline to the workforce but a place of critical inquiry, creativity, and civic engagement.

14. Defend Science and STEM Fields Must Collaborate Broadly.

We must all support science and scientific research. Scientists and engineers must work with the social sciences, humanities, and interdisciplinary fields to defend intellectual freedom and resist ideological control over research. Critical thinking, ethics, and historical context are essential in STEM fields—defend the full scope of knowledge production.  

15. Recognize the Contributions of Ethnic and Gender Studies.

Many innovations in race, gender, and equity studies have shaped broader discussions in science, medicine, and technology. These fields are vital, not expendable. Discrediting them is an attack on the very methodologies that have transformed research and policy across disciplines.

16. Educate About the Attacks on Higher Education.

Incorporate discussions of political interference, funding battles, and academic freedom into coursework, lectures, and public forums. Knowledge is power. Help students and colleagues understand what is at stake and how they can take action.

17. Engage with Local Organizing and Public Discourse.

Share research and expertise with grassroots movements, labor unions, and local communities. Universities must not operate in isolation—build power beyond the campus. Higher education must be a public good, not an elite fortress.

18. Help Those Who Are Most Vulnerable.

Marginalized communities—undocumented students, faculty of color, international students, LGBTQ+ scholars, and contingent faculty—are often the first targets. Prioritize their protection and support. Provide platforms, funding, and institutional backing to those most at risk. Solidarity must be at the center of resistance.

19. Pace Yourself—This Is a Long Haul.

The attacks on higher education are part of a broader, long-term strategy. Burnout is a real risk in activist work. Build sustainable practices into your organizing—take turns leading, create mutual aid networks, and support one another. This fight will require stamina.

20. Imagine and Build a Future Beyond the Attacks.

While resisting immediate threats, also invest in long-term visions for what universities should be. Fight not just to preserve what exists, but to create something better—more accessible, more just, more community-centered. A crisis is also an opportunity to reshape institutions for the future.