Here's the dilemma we find ourselves in. This is the usually clear-headed Noah Feldman tied in knots by an irrrational assault on universities. (It's from an article specifically about Harvard's travails.) How could it be "rational" to negotiate with an arbitrary persecutor? It's not, it's "only rational." But if that's the only rationality left us, we're in trouble.
Timothy Snyder has taught us other words for "negotiating a solution" to placate the threats of arbitrary power - a negotiation that not only doesn't work, emboldening the oppressor who will surely be back for more, but "teach[es] power what it can do."
Easy to say, perhaps, and actually different from what I want to be saying. What I fear is that arbitrary power will force morally impossible choices on institutions, communities and individuals, with the deliberate intention of destroying the bonds of trust which sustain us - and sustain solidarity and resistance and, indeed, self-respect. How do we keep these bonds strong?
