David Brooks:
That’s how I see it. Michael Roth is right.
If I’m the leader of a university or of a nonprofit or of a foundation or of a private business, I’m thinking, this is an administration that uses extortionary power to try to destroy organizations or severely weaken organizations. And so what’s my response to that?
Well, there are two possible responses. One, the one that’s being chosen by most organizational leaders right now, is lay low. It’s so, well, maybe they won’t pick on me, or maybe we will make a concession and they won’t pick on me.
And if you go to a business conference and you hear what CEOs say about the Trump administration in private, I guarantee you it’s nothing like what they don’t say in public, because they’re laying low. That’s one option, just hope they don’t come for me.
The other option, which I thought we were going to have, is a broad coalition, not only of all universities, but all law firms, businesses, nonprofits foundations, anybody in any sector that could be part of the extortion attempt. And they would say, we will band together. There’s strength of numbers. If they come for one of us, they come for all of, sort of a domestic NATO Article V.
And that’s what I think needs to happen, because you leave Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia, out there all alone, well, of course she has no choice. So there has to be a coalition. And the coalitions that I have been hearing about are all defensive nature and quiet and private.
Somebody’s got to take the fight back to the administration. And it has to be organizational leaders acting together who collectively have a lot more power than they do alone.
