A Reflection
It is easy to feel hopeless right now. The U.S. administration has designated professors as enemies of the nation, using broad, vague language reminiscent of post-9/11 rhetoric—”the enemy is everywhere and anywhere.” This strategy fosters a state of endless unknowns, breeding widespread anxiety. The emotional toll is immense, leaving many graduate students and faculty of color, migrants, international, and trans scholars—fearful, overwhelmed, and exhausted.

But we are not alone in this. Fear is designed to isolate us, yet history shows that solidarity is both a refuge and an imperative. We must remember: our collective presence holds power.

Naming the Moment
Faculty and graduate students face funding freezes, bans on DEI initiatives, attacks on books, courses, and research, and an expanded erosion of academic freedom. Policies shift unpredictably—research projects greenlit one day, under review the next, then reinstated or halted again. This chaos is not accidental. Its very purpose is to exhaust us, to keep us anxious, and ultimately, to make us disappear. It is a calculated campaign of fear designed to dismantle the infrastructure of higher education and the voices it amplifies.

This climate doesn’t just stifle public discourse; it suppresses our vital intellectual work. The fear and uncertainty seep into our ability to write, to think critically, to produce the scholarship that sustains our communities. When we stop writing, we are not just silenced—we are erased.

The Real Danger: Anticipatory Obedience
While we need to come together, strategize, and assess risks with clarity, many faculty and administrators have begun silencing themselves preemptively—what some are calling anticipatory obedience. This is the quiet, unnoticed compliance that occurs before any explicit demand is made.

Fascism thrives on this dynamic, encouraging obedience through intimidation and the normalization of fear. According to the AAUP, “some administrations are acting to comply in advance of any pressure to do so,” flagging courses for review, removing words like race, gender, class, and equity from syllabi—not because they were forced to, but because they anticipated pressure. This self-censorship is not protection; it is participation in the very system designed to oppress us.

Writing as Resistance
We cannot afford to shut down. Not now. Not ever.

Resistance isn’t just found in protests or petitions; it lives in the daily act of refusing to disappear. For faculty and graduate students, that means continuing to write. Our scholarship is a defiant act of presence.

• • Write as Resistance: Every paper, article, or research project you complete asserts that we are here and we are not going away, intellectually and politically.

• • Join Writing Communities: Collective care is an antidote to isolation. Writing groups can provide both emotional support and accountability, reminding us that we are not alone in this struggle.

• • Refuse to Stop Researching: Halting our academic work is a form of compliance. Continuing our scholarship, especially on topics deemed “controversial,” is a radical act of defiance.

If we are to refuse compliance, we must identify the gaps and loopholes where our resistance can thrive:

• • Understand Policies Deeply: Knowledge is power. Some faculty, for example, have posted signs asserting that their classrooms are private spaces where ICE cannot enter—because they took the time to study the policies.

• • Departments and collectives must stand together, speaking out in unison to publicly commit to protecting vulnerable scholars and rejecting intimidation tactics. The impact of many voices rising together cannot be underestimated.

• • Learn from History: Communities facing repression—whether in fields already under attack for decades or those living under harsh regimes across the globe—have devised imaginative strategies to keep their conversations, analysis, reading, and writing going. We must draw from these lessons.

Practices for Survivance
Instead of “courage” or “fortitude,” we need to be motivated by frameworks like Indigenous Studies’ “survivance”,” or active presence,  perhaps blending survival, active resistance, and community-based cultural expressions.

• • Anchor in Relationships: Even a single trusted connection can be a lifeline in turbulent times.

• • Generate conversation:  Hold discussions, share resources, create space for studying, analyzing, strategizing, and supporting each other, no matter how small.

• • Speak, write, and teach from your collective truths. When large groups raise their voices together, we create a protective force—each voice amplifying the others, making it harder for oppressive systems to target individuals.

Fear is a natural response to repression, but history is written by those who refuse to disappear. Our voices, our scholarship, and our presence are acts of defiance. We don’t have the luxury of silence—we are called to find strategies that balance risk with the recognition of our power. Together, we commit to the relentless pursuit of critical analysis, justice, and collective liberation.