The university after the election

Wesleyan president Michael Roth on resisting the attack on education and the job of preserving the seeds of democracy for the future

Plenty of pundits will be doing post-mortems on the reasons for Kamala Harris’s electoral loss and unpacking the trends that returned Donald Trump to the White House, but here at The Ink we think it’s already time to begin planning for the future of the pro-democracy fight. We’ve asked some of the most thoughtful people around to reexamine their presuppositions, abandon their priors, and imagine how they’ll continue the fight for democracy in the years ahead.

When we last spoke with Wesleyan University president Michael Roth back in May, he was one of the few campus leaders in the United States willing to engage with student protesters against the war in Gaza as political actors, taking their rights and responsibilities as seriously as those of the rest of the university community and understanding peaceful protests and encampments as an exercise in democratic speech, not a criminal act.

This week, Roth has reaffirmed Welseyan’s commitment to “protect and nurture the seeds of a democratic culture” following Donald Trump’s reelection and in light of the incoming administration's promised attacks on higher education. We reached out to Roth to talk about how the election has changed his thinking, his plans to defend the freedoms of his students and faculty, and the work educators need to do to reintegrate universities into American culture and political life and participate more fully in the practice of democracy.

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You wrote that after the election, the job is to continue "Wesleyan’s commitment to an education based in boldness, rigor, and practical idealism. I think that’s largely right, but I wonder beyond that what the election result has called into question for you, whether it’s made you rethink how that job has been done thus far, or how it changes now?

Yes, the election reminds me that what we have taken to be campus communities are in many respects very isolated from the rest of the country. This is not the country’s fault; it is our fault! At Wesleyan, we are an educational institution that prides itself on going beyond conventional borders, which means (at the very least) that we are non-parochial. But we are sometimes so parochial!

Last week I was instructed to say “LatinE” when talking to people the press refers to as Hispanic or Latino. This was supposed to be an improvement on the disastrous attempt to impose “LatinX” on people. Today we read about Latinos voting in greater numbers for Trump.

Why were many on campus focused on finding the right label, LatinE? The new book We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi offers some clues. Many in my university world are concerned with symbolic capital, but people outside of that world are concerned with real capital – with the economy. This is a small example of the way in which we in universities get over-invested in our minor, symbolic differences, sending signals to one another, while most vulnerable to economic pressures are trying to find strategies that will improve their day-to-day lives.

In The Student: A Short History, I’ve written that in the modern period being a student is learning to practice freedom. When we create opportunities to practice freedom, we must do so in a way that is relevant to people beyond the university. We must make connections to people with a much wider range of concerns than those that dominate elite cultural spaces. This is essential for democracies. I want universities to play a role in protecting and nurturing democratic cultures. How do we get there from our contemporary silos of petty politics and narrow disciplines? There are already many in education who are eager to do so. We must activate and support their energies.

During the spring protests against the war in Gaza, you’d written and spoken so clearly and directly on the importance of recognizing students’ right to protest and their identities as political actors, and engaging with their ideas in a real way. And you were one of the few people in your position to do so. What do you think changes about student protest in 2025, when the climate for political speech and action might be very different? How do you think campus leaders should react, or engage with student activism? How do you think they will? Will you act or think or write differently, knowing what you now know?

Student activists at Wesleyan are not happy with me because we have reminded them again this fall of our time and place restrictions. That “reminder” includes disciplinary procedures. I advocated for a more political campus this fall because I wanted students to participate in the elections. Many did, but others were focused on performative protests that helped no one. 

Trump has promised retribution against his enemies, and he has in the past shown little patience for protesters. We must remind the new regime in Washington (and governing bodies of various institutions) that there is a basic democratic right to protest. Protesters will need the rule of law, and so it is a big mistake to pretend that there are no rules that apply to demonstrators. It will be even more important, I think, to engage with activists in building connections to new coalitions of voters and in building the foundations of democratic practices that might energize new coalitions. Civic engagement should help young people build a healthier democratic culture. That’s not just to protest against things, it's building things together.

As Eboo Patel has pointed out, many university activists and their teachers are very good at criticizing things. Of course, sometimes that’s important. But we need builders, people who will help create and nurture new coalitions. Right now, we don’t need more people who are good at showing how different we are from one another, or how things always already fall apart. We need pragmatic translators and builders who can inspire people to put new things together.

You spoke out in the context of serious and concerted pressure from lawmakers to police higher education using those protests and the anger around them as a tool. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on how universities can learn from what happened and find a way to continue the mission you’ve outlined now that the people and organizations behind that pressure are more organized and powerful.

This will be a great challenge, and I think we must respond at least with the following: defending the most vulnerable among us (e.g., immigrants, the poor, people of color, trans people) against organized governmental scapegoating; protecting academic freedom – freedom of speech, of inquiry, of association; enhancing belonging, intellectual diversity, and pluralism. We must remind political leaders that the greatness of American higher education is built on diversity, academic freedom, and belonging. American higher education has often been an engine of discovery that feeds the culture and the economy while providing pathways of socioeconomic mobility. We can do that again!   

As for the mission itself, you wrote earlier today that “we must strive to make education and democracy protect and nurture one another.” Come 2025, what do you think the role of the university as an institution will be going forward, beyond its walls? I would guess the students who come to Wesleyan and the faculty who teach there are already committed to that ideal. Do you think the universities have a role to play in politics in the coming era and what does that role look like?

I believe that higher education should be a repository of the “seeds” of democracy. We should protect those seeds during times of authoritarianism, and we should help them grow in ways that enhance the ability of our citizens to flourish. I am talking with my colleague Khalilah Brown-Dean about creating a civic laboratory in which we can cultivate democratic practices. We must not lose the seeds! Wesleyan can help create a network in this regard.

Universities must remain “safe enough spaces” for practicing democracy in ways that bring people together rather than pull people apart. We have a responsibility to educate students who can productively participate in the public sphere, and we should teach them some of the better practices for doing so. It’s the least we can do if we believe, as I do, that democracy is threatened by populist authoritarianism. There is work to do!

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Photos by Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images; Michael Roth photo courtesy Wesleyan University