Government “for the people” (Gary Krenz)

Posted on September 14, 2026 by gdkrenz

As I mentioned here, I am reflecting on “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as a formula to understand democracy. We will take the phrases in reverse order. So let’s begin: “government for the people.”

This phrase articulates the people as the beneficiaries of the actions of the government. That government should be for the people has ancient roots — indeed, it can be seen as a necessary criterion for any government that is just, or, maybe better, “righteous,” to avoid modern connotations of the former term. The ruler who does not work for the good of the flock could hardly be called righteous. In the Old Testament, books of the prophets might be read as evaluations of the kings of Israel in terms of this criterion, understanding that “for the people” meant that the rulers were judged on the degree to which they either facilitated or hindered the development of the people as the chosen of YHWH (which development also brought with it certain material benefits). The Hindu scriptures discuss the virtue of rajadharma, the duty of the ruler, basing it on care for the people, saying that the ruler’s dharma rests with the subjects’ happiness. In Chinese thought, the Mandate of Heaven conferred the right to rule but conditioned it on beneficence toward the people. Confucius and Mencius and later philosophers amplified this theme. Examples could be further multiplied. The upshot is, where the people do not thrive, all things equal, the government cannot be called righteous.

J.S. Bach’s beautiful “Schafe Können” movement from the Hunt Cantata (BWV 208) captures this sense of governance:

Schafe können sicher weiden
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht.
Wo Regenten wohl regieren
Kann man Ruh’ und Friede spüren
Und was Länder glücklich macht.

Sheep may safely graze
Where a good shepherd watches over them.
Where rulers are ruling well,
We may feel peace and rest
And what makes countries happy.

So, government for the people is a basic criterion for legitimate government; anything else is nothing more than exploitation, control, bondage. How we define what is for the people is at least in part culturally and historically contingent: for instance, the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, which we find horrific, could nonetheless be seen by Aztecs as an expression of the rightful order of the people with respect to nature and the divine. But if an Aztec priest were to take a bribe intended to influence the choice of sacrificial victim — that would be exploitation and a corruption of the order.

At a minimum, then, legitimate government must be for the people. That the government of King George III did not meet this criterion for the American colonies, according to the Declaration, justified dissolving the political bands with England: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” It is not only that the people were not sufficiently represented in a democratic (or republican) sense, it is not just that the king “usurped” their rightful place, it is also that the king inflicted “repeated injuries” upon them, as most of the enumerated complaints lay out. It is that the king failed to represent, to stand for, to enact, the people’s good, and that he inflicted real harm. He failed the test of righteousness. And part of the Colonists’ complaint was that in this respect, they were treated unfavorably, unjustly, compared to the inhabitants of Great Britain. 

Today we face a near-complete failure of  government for the people at the federal level (except for those pockets of dedicated civil servants who continue to work for public good despite Trump’s all-out assault on our government). Trump’s government is not for the people, it is for the wealthy. This is to be sure a long-term trend that pre-dates Trump, as this graph from the Congressional Budget Office shows:

That is only one measure of our descent into oligarchy and oligophely, government by the few and government for the few. That descent fuels current populism on both the Left and (misguidedly) the Right. 

Today, of course, government is for Donald Trump. That is exactly how he treats it: as his personal property. (See Robert Reich here and Tom Nichols here for variations on this theme.)  It is hard to overestimate the degree to which Trump & Co. has exploited the American people — to the tune of billions of dollars and counting in direct benefit, let alone hundreds of millions at least for his vanity projects such as the ballroom, the reflecting pool and the arch. And what are we to make of the Iran war in this respect?  A minimum of $40 billion to date in direct costs (some estimates much higher), with no end in sight, and estimates of costs to American consumers well over $100 billion in shortages and rising prices. The war might not be corruption in the strict legal sense, such as violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. But it is fair to call the level of incompetence and willful ignorance corruption in another sense; it is rot at the very top, and we will be making up for it for years to come. And none of this is to mention other evils that Trump is inflicting on the people through executive orders of all sorts, largely to gratify his sense of power and to assuage his fragile ego. To return to the Hebrew prophets:

Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them. And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered. (Ezekial 34:2-5, KJV)

All of which is to say that our anti-Trump rhetoric can fall a little short. “No Kings,” fine — it is a pithy, memorable and clearly engaging term that goes directly at Trump’s aspirations. But according to Lincoln’s formula, Trump does not even meet the minimum legitimation threshold for a genuine king. 

One of the things we said in the previous post was that democracy, functioning properly, is a check against this kind of injustice, exploitation and corruption. That said, I think it is a sad and possibly dangerous fact that the idea of government for the people dominates our political discourse, at the expense of the rest of Lincoln’s formula. “What’s in it for me? How can government help me?” are the constant refrains. As if when we vote it is like signing up for a benefits package. We might as well call it an auction. And in an auction, we know who the winners are likely to be. 

At least that is the tone of so much political rhetoric, punditry, reporting. Trump’s recent ploy to give Americans a $5000 dividend if we re-elect a Republican House and Senate puts an exclamation point on such discourse. Long gone, it can seem, are the days of John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” 

Fortunately, this is not entirely so. The vast majority of us take jury duty seriously; we rise to the aid of others when disaster or ICE strikes; many of us regularly contact our representatives or attend town halls; we participate in protests; we sign petitions as a matter of course; and we vote, albeit in too-low levels.  

And that points us toward the next post, “government by the people.”

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Remembering 9/11 (Gary Krenz)

Posted on September 11, 2026 by gdkrenz

Much is being spoken and written today about September 11, 2001 — much of it very good, much of it very thoughtful.

It is, I think, hard to know what to say, and my feelings about the horrors of that day, and the courageous response, are mixed with those sad and despairing feelings about the day’s long aftermath up to now. 

Like so many of us, I will always remember where I was that morning. It is important to remember.

Remember    

those who lost their lives, as civilians, as first responders.

those who survived but who bear the scars.

their families, friends, loved ones, neighbors, who still grieve.

Remember 

those on UA Flight 93 who sacrificed themselves willingly to keep the plane from its intended target.

those who rushed to the attack sites to bring aid.

those who dealt with casualties in ambulances and ERs.

Remember    

how Americans came together to face the tragedy and its unknown ramifications.

how President Bush in the immediate aftermath spoke of unity and diversity, seeking to provide a protective umbrella to Muslim and Arab Americans.

how nations across the globe came forward with aid and support — and the only time NATO has invoked Article 5, mutual self-defense.

Remember 

how the news media capitalized on the attacks, immediately framing them in the idiom of slow-motion visuals and banner crawls, leading the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard to say 9/11 “never happened.”

how our politics became very quickly even more jingoistic than usual and have remained so.

Remember

how we became fixated on the need to “bring down” Osama Bin Laden, as if that were an answer to any of the real questions we should have been asking.

how virtually any effort to ask such questions was met with censorship and censure.

how we launched ill-founded wars, characterized by mission-accomplished bravado and costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

Remember

how we have not yet healed the wound to our national psyche, to our “American Exceptionalism.”

how, while the day brought out the best of us, the years since have too often brought out the worst.

We do not remember enough.

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“Government of the people, by the people, for the people”: A Prologue (Gary Krenz)

Posted on September 9, 2026 by gdkrenz

I have been re-reading Garry Wills’s 1992 masterful and transformative work, Lincoln at Gettysburg.1 Wills takes a deep dive into the Gettysburg Address: its place in the history of funerary oration, in the burial culture of mid-19th-century America, in the intellectual tradition of American Transcendentalism, in the development of modern rhetoric2, and most importantly for our purposes, in the re-shaping of American political self-understanding, helping to pave the way for the “Second Revolution” amendments following the war. The subtitle of the book is “The Words That Changed America,” and Wills makes a strong case. I highly recommend it. It provides  important clues for how to think about what I have been calling Lincoln’s “formula for democracy.”

Wills dispels the popular myth that Lincoln’s address was so surprisingly short that the on-site photographer was caught off guard and only managed to capture the president on camera when he was descending the dais.3 There was no “surprise.” Lincoln was not the “main event” – that honor belonged to the beloved orator Edward Everett, who spoke for two hours. Lincoln’s sole job was precisely to dedicate the cemetery where the Union dead were buried, no more and no less. A lengthy “address” rather than a brief dedication would have been out of place and unseemly. The real miracle is that Lincoln transformed a dedicatory statement into an “address” that “transformed America.”

There is of course much more to the address than the concluding formula, though much in the address points toward that formula. Lincoln did not invent the formula out of whole cloth. Precursors can be found in Daniel Webster, whom Lincoln revered, and perhaps even more clearly in the speeches of the American Transcendentalist Theodore Parker, who, reflecting on the Declaration of Independence, said this: 

By Democracy, I mean government over all the people, by all the people, and for the sake of all the people . . . .  This is not the democracy of the parties, but it is that ideal government . . . whereunto mankind slowly draws near.

Lincoln was in possession of a collection of Parker’s writings, having been given them by his law partner, William Herndon, who was an acolyte of Parker. Parker was a staunch and vociferous abolitionist; he was also a believer in the superiority of the white race.  Nevertheless, he believed that as human beings, Blacks had the same natural rights as people of any race.  As a Transcendentalist, he contended that the United States was constituted so as to realize an ideal and that that ideal had been articulated in the Declaration’s claim of equality and unalienable rights – specifically, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In that respect, if not in others, all were equal.

Lincoln was no Transcendentalist philosopher. He was a political animal and strategist — though also a deeply thoughtful and thoughtfully moral person. And in his own way, as Wills makes clear, he had been working over years toward an understanding similar to Parker’s, perhaps influenced by him, but certainly carried forward by his own moral-political logic. Wills traces this development through the Lincoln-Douglass debates, through Lincoln’s correspondence, and through a variety of speeches up to the 1860 election and after.

The essence of this development was this: 

The Declaration, not the Constitution, established the United States as one nation defined by the ideals of its second sentence. Lincoln was building on the work of his hero Webster and others. It was the Declaration, not the Constitution, that established the American people as “one people” that would “assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God” entitled them. The Constitution was a particular form of government adopted by that people, as had been the Articles of Confederation. And so it was the Declaration that set forth the ideals by which the Constitution had always to be judged and corrected. The Constitution was shaped by necessary (or seemingly necessary) compromises, including the at-once enabling and debilitating compromise with slavery. (Ancillary to this is that, for Lincoln, we the people – not just the people of the South – were culpable for the sin of slavery, something we still struggle to deal with, as the present assault on “wokeness” makes clear.) Those compromises were historically contingent; they were by their nature provisional steps along the way in the ongoing task of realizing the ideals of the Declaration, the ideals according to which we had declared ourselves “one people.” In other words, the Constitution was meant to be amended, and amended in progress toward the ideals of equality and unalienable rights. 

Lincoln found in the Constitution itself evidence of its authors’ own understanding of this situation (e.g., it included abolition of the slave trade). In other words, its authors knew – or at least what came from their collective chartering of a new government clearly meant in full view – that they were making a pact with a pernicious institution in order to make a government. That they deemed this compromise — and those that sustained it in the first four-score years of the new government’s existence – worthwhile is and should be open for debate.4 Theodore Parker thought it was not and was prepared to sacrifice the Union for the abolition of slavery. Not so, Lincoln. But these are questions I will leave to another time.

Thus we are, as Lincoln says at the beginning of the Address, a nation “dedicated to a proposition” (indeed, a world-historical proposition: “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived”). We are not a nation defined by our ethnic inheritance, our racial constitution, our familial ties — all of those things that “blood loyalty” demagogues like J.D. Vance want us to believe. No, we are a nation about a commitment to an idea, an idea of equality and freedom.  Indeed, it is hard to overstate how innovative and profound this idea was, in both the Declaration and the Address. Neither is this an idea without any downsides, and that, too, could be for another time. 

But it is an idea well worth recovering and defending. As William Hoagland points out in this thoughtful piece, “Separation of Power,” our over-reliance on appeals to the Constitution is ill-founded if we restrict ourselves to the Constitution of 1789 — in so many ways an anti-democratic document – as opposed to the Constitution re-shaped by the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments and many that followed. 

Equality and unalienable rights require a certain approach to government, although perhaps not a specific form of government. An argument for democratic government – whether pure, representative, republican, etc. – is that it is the approach most likely to ensure that our equal rights are obtained and sustained, as I discussed in a previous post.

Lincoln’s formula, “government of the people, by the people, for the people” condenses this into a mantra, a mantra I wish we would all meditate on. But let’s wrap this post up by noting that it’s a mantra that occurs in a dedication at a time when the democracy dedicated to a proposition was under threat. He concludes the Address in this way (paragraph breaks added for emphasis):

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us

—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion

—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain

—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom

—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In upcoming posts, we’ll explore each of the prepositional phrases in that final clause. And we will take the trio in reverse order, because therein lies an increase in our understanding of what democratic government is about.

1It brought a smile to my face to be reminded that Wills dedicated the book to The Great Expectations Bookstore in Evanston, IL, of which I have my own fond memories. Sadly the store closed in 2001.

2For another, brief rhetorical analysis of the Address, see this post by Oxford University Press.

3The photo sometimes used in conjunction with this myth — the photo I’ve used to illustrate this post — has been shown by analysis to have been taken about three hours before Lincoln actually spoke. It is one of only two photos of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and in both he is simply part of the crowd.

4The 1619 Project is a critical contribution to this discussion, questioning the entire premise of locating our founding in the Declaration.

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Why democracy? (Gary Krenz)

Posted on September 5, 2026 by gdkrenz

A refrain that we often hear is along the lines of: most people are not motivated by appeals to save our democracy; the concept is too abstract; people are focused on bread-and-butter issues; maybe they can get exercised about the loss of this or that right, but not democracy in the abstract. With few exceptions, candidates from Right to Left appear to agree on this — at least they campaign so. I asked ChatGPT to identify campaign slogans in current races in which “democracy” was a term, and the pickings were slim: a half-dozen campaigns, all Democrats or Independents, out of just over 500 races (House, Senate, Governorships).

To some extent, I can understand this. Some of us (you know who you are) are deeply committed to our nation’s ideals, intently following their ebb and flow, and engaged in their promotion. The vast majority of us are not and do not. “No Kings!” protests are important, but they have yet to crack the 3.5% of the population that some theories suggest is needed for fundamental impact. And to be sure, there are alternative ways to motivate people that are democracy-dependent, so to speak, but more concrete and immediate than the advocating the idea as such.

That said, I think especially now we need to work to understand and promote the ideal of democracy– understand why it is a good thing. 

Moral philosophers — going back to Plato — sometimes distinguish three sorts of good: things good in themselves, like happiness and pleasure; things good as means to achieving other goods, like exercise and money; and goods that are both good in themselves and good as means, like understanding and health.

So, what sort of good is democracy? Well first, for sake of argument if nothing else, let’s agree that it is a good. Clearly, this is no longer a universally accepted view in this country, or elsewhere. Democracy – perhaps more common in human history than we often think – is at a low ebb. We can deal another time with the objections to it as such. But for now let’s agree that it is a good. 

To start, let’s ask if democracy is good as a means to other goods — goods like equality, our unalienable rights, our safety, our security. If the people are empowered to shape the government, at least in principle the government is not as likely to be commandeered for the personal gain of the ruler; not as likely to exploit the people; more likely to be attuned to the good of the people. We can appreciate this in part through a counter-example: that African Americans were, following the abandonment of Reconstruction, denied genuine democratic participation in the South and elsewhere, and suffered the ills of oppression and segregation, is a perverse testimony to the effects of a non-democratic, authoritarian form of government. That example also shows how easy it is for democracy to be lost to oligarchic or supremacist powers, even when those powers might be the “rest of us.”  Socrates makes a case in Plato’s Republic that democracy is inevitably one step away from tyranny, and the American founders were certainly keen to include numerous checks on pure democracy, to prevent it from descending into tyranny, as Plato argued it could. (A descent which we are dangerously close to witnessing today.) Democracy is a flawed and uncertain means — but surely when it is effectively implemented, it is a means to the goods listed above and more.

Could democracy also be good in itself? I think so. Democracy, properly practiced, is a form of government that involves a set of virtues that are worthwhile in themselves: social responsibility and responsiveness, concern, care, courage, attentiveness, civic-mindedness, and more. The very participation in democracy as a form of government compared to other forms is good in itself. It is government humanized. 

So, democracy is both good in itself and good as a means — and in a sense, it is good in itself provided its value comes in concert with its instrumental value of good as means. If democracy did not protect equality, freedom, and unalienable rights, it cannot be considered good in itself only. Indeed, achieving those ends is inextricably connected with the virtues of responsible democratic participation. Virtually by definition, if it is not also a means to the goods we noted above, it is not really democracy. (A related take on this — a discussion of liberalism — is discussed by Joey McFadden here.)

To some extent, the above discussion, in its abstraction, has illustrated the problem we started with. What do we even mean by terms like “democracy” — or “socialism” or “capitalism” or “republicanism,” for that matter? There are always textbook or dictionary definitions of such terms, but they are not very helpful. In actuality, governments, economies, societies are complicated processes of subordinate systems and orders, operating with many local and some overarching processes and rules of communication and translation. There is no clear line between a “democracy” and an “autocracy,” between “capitalism” and “socialism” such as the dictionary might imply. 

McFadden says of liberalism that it “is a habit not a principle,” and although I disagree a bit with his use of the term “principle,” we might say the same thing about democracy: it is a habit, a praxis. And when we look to the development of a habit, we often look for and speak in terms of controlling ideals, at least as a beginning for discourse and organization.  Today, to a large extent we as a society have lost — and in many cases have come actually to question — the guiding ideal of democracy. What can we do to resurrect a deeper understanding of it?

In some posts, I have referred to what I call Lincoln’s “formula” for democracy: the closing phrase of the Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (here, for instance). What I would like to do is devote four posts to this formula, as a way of talking about the ideal of democracy. So please stay tuned.

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Chaos and Resolve (Gary Krenz)

Posted on September 3, 2026 by gdkrenz

It is hard to imagine more chaos than we in the US face right now — though I fear we will find out what more is like. Certainly chaos as a function of time has had an upward slope. Trump’s tariffs have wreaked havoc with the economy, and while, as Paul Krugman pointed out yesterday, the economy has proved remarkably resilient, the “hits keep coming.” Pete Hegseth plays tin soldier with the height-of-stupidity war with Iran, meanwhile deconstructing our military in astoundingly rapid fashion. Trump desecrates the people’s White House and other DC institutions, launches attacks on national parks, and has the US Mint issue a coin with his likeness on it. ICE, more quietly but more perniciously, continues to round up and deport immigrants and increasingly has its sights set on US citizens that it deems are in its way. Republicans in Congress could not possibly be more feckless, such that even the slightest show of resistance garners substantial media attention. And SCOTUS increasingly gives Trump carte blanche, completely oblivious to what is actually happening on the ground and completely hypocritical in its majority rationale. (Part of jurisprudence is supposed to be prudence, which the Court now sorely lacks.) The list could go on and on.

Most serious, most dangerous for the long run, though, is Trump’s multi-front assault on voting rights, all rationalized on the back of the fraudulent claim that non-citizen voting is widespread, when in fact it is exceedingly rare. Never mind that Trump’s own DHS has twice tried to produce evidence without success. The Red Scare of today is the irrational fear among voters on the right that someone not a citizen is going to enter a voting booth. Many right-leaning voters believe that an election is tainted if even one non-citizen votes. In a February poll, 72% of GOP voters favored “doing everything possible to stop illegal immigrants from voting” over “ensuring that eligible citizens are not denied the ability to vote.” Never mind that the draconian measures — drastic restriction of mail-in voting; DOJ, FBI and very likely ICE and military at polling places (in violation of the law); punitive voter ID regulations — would disenfranchise millions of voters, possibly including them. I hope that now that the realities of voter suppression are more real, the number would be different today — but clearly we have work to do. 

And the chaos around voting is part of Trump’s goal. The chaos itself is a voter-suppression tactic. Trump’s sole goal is to maintain power, and he knows full well that a free and fair midterm election most likely will not achieve that and could subject him to yet another impeachment. 

That’s Trump. But why are so many people — an overempowered minority, but a substantial number nonetheless — still in thrall to such an obviously tyrannical person?

Across the board we are witnessing a phantasmagorical-fascistic ideology run completely amok. 

In this respect, I found this recent post by Ruth Ben-Ghiat to be telling: “Origin Stories: How Trump Broke the GOP.” Part of the story is that while, yes, Trump had to break the GOP, the GOP was in fact ripe for this kind of breakage:

The Republican party, and the robust media universe that supported it, were ready for a far-right, rule-breaking, and polarizing personality like Trump. A 2012 assessment by the political scientists Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann captures key elements of an illiberal move that by 2016 had primed Republicans to accept Trump’s candidacy:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

By the time Trump started his candidacy, the Republican party was a party of white supremacist zealots, gun-rights extremists, and leaders like McConnell who had long approved of subverting voting rights and other bedrocks of democracy. This is why Trump’s many actions that promised a decidedly anti-democratic future for America were not deal-breakers: the retweets of neo-Nazi memes, the dark allusions to having his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, shot, and much more.

(For another chilling take, see this book review in The New York Times: “What the Third Reich Can Teach Us About America Today“)

I want to offer words of hope, but it’s not easy. Perhaps determination and even faith are more appropriate. We can draw inspiration from the people who are standing up; from the polling that points toward, ceteris paribus, large Democratic gains in the midterms; from the emergence of a new generation in the Democratic Party that is refusing to be cowed. We the People can save our democracy. But we have to know that the hits will keep on coming. We have to not let the chaos chill our resolve.

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Ode to Canada (Dan Little)

Posted on September 1, 2026 by Daniel Little

Here’s a quick reaction to a weekend trip to Ontario — the only real democracy in North America at present. It was delightful breathing the free air and respectful diversity present in Ontario!

https://undsoc.org/2026/08/28/ode-to-canada/

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In full: Tiananmen vigil activist Chow Hang-tung’s mitigation after guilty verdict in national security trial | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

Posted on August 29, 2026 by Daniel Little

https://hongkongfp.com/2026/08/28/in-full-tiananmen-vigil-activist-chow-hang-tungs-mitigation-after-guilty-verdict-in-national-security-trial/

This is a remarkably courageous statement by a Chinese democracy activist about one-party rule, tyranny, and democracy. Worth reading from beginning to end.

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Der Untergang

Posted on August 26, 2026 by Daniel Little

This is a deeply insightful and deeply scary assessment from Paul Krugman. He seems to have trump’s psyche exactly right here. A world of pain for our country and our democracy!

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/der-untergang?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=fzsj7

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An Unsettling Glimpse Into the GOP’s Future

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Daniel Little

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/08/james-fishback-republican-young-voters-florida/688366/?gift=wJKU4MSSbaZAFRm84mZhDxhBxHCoeNcaWViKi1icpoo

Deeply worrisome indication of the influence of extremist racism and anti-Semitism among conservative young people — consistent with the Young Republican chat streams discovered last fall. And the article comments that young Republican staffers in Congress appear to frequently share these attitudes.

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New University of Michigan President: Hope and Questions (Gary Krenz)

Posted on August 18, 2026 by gdkrenz

The University of Michigan Board of Regents has announced the selection of C. Cebele Raver as the next president of U-M. A formal vote will be taken on September 1. Raver, a developmental psychologist, is currently provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Vanderbilt University.

I’m breathing a sigh of relief, as I did a few months ago when the Board selected Kent Syverud — who then, sadly, had to withdraw following a diagnosis of brain cancer. Compared to the previous two searches, which resulted in one unsatisfactory appointment followed a few years later by a disastrous appointment, the selection of Syverud and now Raver suggests that the Regents have finally gotten into the right ballpark. There is much that is promising about Raver. Vanderbilt is an academic peer, albeit a private one. As provost, she expanded its academic programs and solidified its academic standing. She is herself a highly accomplished researcher. And, it could be good to have again a social scientist at the head of the University, following a string of biological and biomedical scientists. She has in many respects shown herself to be a strong leader and administrator, one who engages in good faith with faculty even on matters of difficulty and dissent.

So, I am hopeful. But I do have some questions.

Vanderbilt has been relatively accommodationist when it comes to Trump 2.0, declining to engage in confrontation with the Administration. (One important exception: Raver signed onto the lawsuit opposing Trump’s efforts to cap indirect costs on NIH grants at 15%.) Vanderbilt has actively cultivated relationships with Washington rather than treating Trump as an adversary. It was one of nine universities chosen by Trump to participate in the so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” and unlike seven others, it refused to reject the compact. It did not sign the compact, but it did treat it as a basis for ongoing dialogue with the government (as did UT-Austin). And, it is worth noting that Vanderbilt has an official “institutional neutrality” policy — something that I find problematic, for reasons that I can go into another time. While the university has been staunch in its defense of academic freedom and freedom of speech, I’m not sure it has as capacious a view of their scope as I do.

Though, I must say, while Raver strongly supported Vanderbilt’s ejection of pro-Palestinian student protestors from the administration building, with the arrest of some and ultimate expulsion of three, she also publicly defended the university’s decision to permit a weeks-long Pro-Palestinian encampment. Unlike at U-M, there was no forcible removal of the encampment; it simply dissipated at the end of the academic year.

So, what to make of all this? Raver is not the architect of these approaches and policies, but it seems clear that she has actively supported and enforced them. In some ways, Vanderbilt’s approach to Trump 2.0 is not unlike U-M’s — although it has been more visible. U-M has largely flown under the radar and has not suffered much in the way of direct assault by Trump & Co. — though it has, sadly, been preemptively accommodating on some very important matters. Are we to take Raver’s appointment as a signal from the Regents that what’s coming will be more of the same? Is that to be hoped for under these difficult circumstances, or is it the slow erosion of fundamental U-M values?

To be sure, a person’s performance as provost is not a pure predictor of performance as president — and what we get might not be what the Regents think we are going to get. The roles of president and provost are quite different. Raver will surely evolve and develop her own leadership philosophy as she learns U-M. And, though it seems unlikely she will be a Robben Fleming — also appointed president at a very challenging time — perhaps she will prove to be a leader of genuine vision and courage. Godspeed to her.

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