Is the Golden Age of American Science Ending?

Vannevar Bush - American scientist, inventor, and administrator

“…basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress.” – Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier

On November 17, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, recognizing the importance of scientific research in the American war effort, wrote to Vannevar Bush, Director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), requesting that he develop a post-war national science policy. Roosevelt sought recommendations on how America’s success in applying scientific knowledge to wartime problems could be carried over into peacetime. Bush was the right person to ask.

As director of OSRD, Bush oversaw the U.S. military’s research and development efforts during the war, which included important developments in radar technology, the mass production of penicillin, and the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt and Bush understood that the wartime partnership between science and government was crucial to winning the war. They also understood that scientific progress was essential to the future health, security, and prosperity of the United States.

On July 5, 1945, Bush presented his report, "Science: The Endless Frontier," to President Harry S. Truman. Bush contended that “[t]he most important ways in which the Government can promote industrial research are to increase the flow of new scientific knowledge through support of basic research and to aid in the development of scientific talent.” Moreover, the report noted, America’s research talent existed in its universities. Five years later, President Truman signed legislation that implemented Bush’s vision and created the National Science Foundation (NSF), thus laying the foundation for the present-day partnership between the federal government and America’s research universities.

Under this compact, the federal government funds basic scientific research at the nation’s colleges and universities—research driven not by profit motive or private corporate interests, but by curiosity and discovery. For the past 75 years, this system has worked immensely well for the United States. It has been the Golden Age of American Science.

Government-supported university research has been an integral part of U.S. science policy since the end of World War II. It has contributed to post-war economic growth and greatly enhanced modern American life, leading to biomedical and technological breakthroughs, including, among other things, the development of lifesaving medicines and surgical procedures, advances in commercial agriculture, the blossoming of GPS technology, and the evolution of smartphones. A recent report of the Federal Reserve of Dallas confirmed that nearly a quarter of American productivity growth over the past eight decades is attributable to non-defense government-funded research. Investing in science and innovation has improved the health and quality of life for all Americans. As noted by Karin Fischer in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The internet started as a defense-funded college network of computers. Google, a company now worth $2 trillion, spun out of a $4-million grant to Stanford to build digital libraries. Of the 356 new drugs approved over the past decade, 354 received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest supporter of biomedical research.

Even an area of science as seemingly blue-sky as quantum mechanics is the basis for the development of lasers, grocery-store checkout scanners, and the tiny semiconductor crystals that light television screens and computer monitors.

The partnership between the federal government and America’s research universities has allowed the United States to build the world’s most productive scientific enterprise and helped American higher education become the world’s leader in science, engineering, and medicine. American universities dominate global university rankings, produce the most Nobel laureates, and graduate more PhD’s in science and engineering than any other country. It is why American universities attract so many international students, many of whom choose to stay in the United States and become doctors, college professors, research scientists, and high-tech entrepreneurs. Four in ten doctoral students in the sciences are from overseas. Indeed, attracting talented international students is partly what makes American research the envy of the world. And it is why many countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have sought to emulate the U.S. model and compete directly with the United States for those foreign scholars.

Unfortunately, the past eight decades of U.S. scientific and research dominance will soon come to an end if the Trump administration has its way. By waging a war on higher education to score ignoble political points against transgender athletes, DEI programs, and a woefully misguided effort to combat alleged antisemitism on college campuses, Trump has wiped out billions of dollars in previously approved federal grants and awards to America’s top research universities. Although much of this unitary executive action is being litigated in federal court, the Trump administration has successfully eliminated or frozen funding for thousands of research projects. Trump has also ordered restrictions on awards from the NSF and NIH, cut funding on any projects he does not like, and clawed back research grants based simply on institutional affiliation, affecting thousands of grants to Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and other universities Trump believes are too “woke” and elitist for his tastes.

These funding cuts (made even worse by the arbitrary budget slashing of DOGE) are not only absurd and misguided, but they are moving with a swiftness and scale that will destroy and reverse America’s historically dominant role in science and education. It reflects an unhinged contempt for science and the institutions that conduct scientific and medical research. And it is being irrationally combined with Trump’s overzealous and racist immigration policies. The impact is already being felt on many American college campuses, with some of the most talented professors and international students transferring to more welcoming foreign universities.

Any question as to the impact on America’s research capabilities in the future can be answered by history. In April 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power in pre-war Germany, the German government ordered the dismissal of all civil servants and college faculty who were “not of Aryan descent.” All Jewish academics were terminated from their positions. As a result, German universities lost 15 percent of their physicists and 20 percent of their mathematicians, including physicists Albert Einstein and Max Born, chemist Otto Meyerhof, eleven future Nobel laureates, and a large segment of their most gifted researchers. Not only did many of these emigrated scholars help defeat Germany in World War II, but according to University of Munich economics professor Fabian Waldinger, the negative impact on Germany’s scientific and research establishment by the dismissal of Jewish scholars in the 1930s was nine times more destructive to the future of German science than was the wartime bombing of Germany’s universities, and it was felt for generations. (Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18, 2025, at 21).

Since the inception of the Nobel Prize, the United States has produced almost three times the number of Nobel laureates as all other countries combined, with the majority awarded in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology, and medicine. Do we really want this to change? What policies and values are the Trump administration promoting when it cancels university research grants in support of medical, health, and scientific research? Depriving a university of a federal grant in support of cancer research because it has not taken a harder stance against pro-Palestinian protestors or banned transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports makes no sense. There is no correlation between those things, and the harm caused is immeasurable. It does nothing to fight alleged antisemitism and, in fact, causes harm to many Jewish graduate students and professors. And it is a wrongheaded effort to implement destructive policies designed to reverse considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion in college decision making.

The harm caused by each grant cancellation is something the administration has apparently not even considered. Patients’ lives are at risk when clinical trials are disrupted. Graduate education is in turmoil. Even if the policy changes are reversed and the federal funding restored, one cannot simply flip the “on” switch for groundbreaking research projects that have been cancelled or halted midstream. As Karin Fischer notes in The Chronicle, “Grants must be rewritten, graduate students recruited and postdocs hired, labs rebuilt.” Even if the courts ultimately determine that these executive actions are illegal and unconstitutional, as they appear to be, the damage is already done.

In his 1945 report to President Truman, Vannevar Bush understood the importance of curiosity-driven research with people working on “subjects of their own choice.” He also understood that private investment alone could not compete with the powerful collaboration of a government-university research partnership, and that private companies would by necessity limit their R&D efforts to advance the companies’ profit-making endeavors. Curiosity-driven research that to the layperson’s eye may not have obvious application can yield breakthroughs that advance the national interest in profound and lasting ways. Take, for example, a couple of scientists in Yellowstone National Park collecting samples from its hot springs in an attempt to identify the bacteria growing in them. This may not at first seem worthy of federal funds until one learns that their discoveries contributed to more effective genetic testing, better forensic analysis of crime scenes, and innovative disease-fighting drugs. Similarly, NIH-supported research has transformed the American health care industry, improving the lives of millions of Americans and establishing the United States as a global leader in research for an industry that constitutes nearly one-sixth of the American economy.

By congressional mandate, decisions on what research is funded are to be based on the scientific and health needs of the nation, with research projects approved according to long-standing scientific principles and a rigorous, academic-based peer review process. This includes the processes by which federal agencies award, manage, and if necessary, terminate grants. Grant applications are highly competitive and require multiple layers of scientific review. Grant proposals take several months to complete and require detailed information about a project’s objectives, methodology, significance, and budget. Many grant applications require a great deal of time and institutional resources in support of the process.

Trump’s en masse termination of thousands of federal grants for his own political agenda is not only arbitrary and capricious but violates long-standing principles of science-based decision-making and threatens every aspect of the U.S. research foundation. His top-down directives eliminating the research projects at issue involve no individualized inquiry and cite no scientific justification. Many NIH-funded projects critical to understanding human health and disease have been cancelled. Trump’s mass terminations and funding cuts have disrupted research and shut down clinical trials testing potentially life-saving treatments for breast and cervical cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, HIV and sexually-transmitted infections, suicide risk and prevention, opioid addiction, Covid-19, alcohol-use disorder, and many other areas of vital concern to public health.

The Executive Branch has the right to pursue policy objectives that differ from previous administrations. But changes to government policy must be implemented pursuant to the law, established regulations, and the scientific principles that have always governed the funding decisions of the federal agencies that oversee and implement America’s scientific research. Trump’s unlawful and politically-vindictive approach is doing immense harm to the United States and the nation’s scientific-research capabilities. Indeed, this administration has put the future of the entire American research enterprise in jeopardy.

Science: The Endless Frontier is a powerful reminder that American scientific progress depends on the close partnership that has existed for 75 years between the scientific community and the federal government. This arrangement has provided tremendous returns on our investments in everything from public health and scientific exploration to engineering and physics, national security, environmental protection, and clean energy. Originating with a commitment to America’s postwar responsibilities and ambitions, the government-academic compact has set the standard for the world. It is a key reason the United States has always been capable of addressing the planet’s greatest challenges.

Science is not a static enterprise. Knowledge evolves. Universities are best designed to nurture and sustain life-saving, ground-breaking research. The purpose of science and research is to advance knowledge and improve the well-being of everyone, regardless of political affiliation. Investing in American scientific and medical research should never be a partisan exercise. The Trump administration’s massive cuts to federally funded research are causing widespread chaos, creating a lost generation of scientists and a major brain drain from America. It goes way beyond bad policy. It is completely and utterly stupid.

When Time Stands Still: The Joy of Bookstores

Old Rizzoli Bookstore, 57th Street, Manhattan (circa 2014)

Whenever I journey to a new town or city, one of my special pleasures is finding and spending time in a local bookstore. I love to while away the time tucked in rows of highly stacked shelves of books on history and politics, literature, religion and philosophy, and if time permits, art and music. It matters not whether the shelves are filled with new or used books, stacked in an orderly and well organized manner or chaotically piled in all directions. Perusing the shelves of a well-stocked bookstore is a uniquely enjoyable experience. Once ensconced in the cozy confines of a bookstore, my sense of time falls away.

I can spend hours of uninterrupted time in a good bookshop as I pull from the shelves any book that offers a fresh perspective on an interesting topic, a memoir by a famous editor or writer, a novel I have always wanted to read, or a book about a period of history I know little about. Any book that captures my attention is fair game. You never know what gems you might find. Every bookstore can surprise you with an unexpected treasure. A special few call you back again and again.

Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C.

In the mid-1980s, a few years after I moved to Washington, DC, to attend law school, I discovered Politics & Prose, a wonderful independent bookstore then owned by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade, two politically minded book lovers who had the crazy idea to start a bookstore full of books that they would want to read. When it opened in the fall of 1984, Politics & Prose was a small shop in a narrow, cozy, one-story unit on Connecticut Avenue. Its small inventory of books was dominated by serious nonfiction and its shelves were filled with high quality books worth reading. There were no romance novels or beach fiction. You were more likely to stumble across an esoteric university press title.

Along with a selection of classic English and American literature, the store was filled with political treatises and biographies, history, religion, philosophy, psychology, and art history. I wanted to read every book in the store. There was no wasted space, no coffee table books, games or puzzles. Only books full of good writing, challenging ideas, new and interesting perspectives. Within five years, the store’s inventory expanded to 15,000 titles and it moved across the street to its current, much larger location. The store became a community hub where top-shelf authors came to speak each night. It was staffed by doctoral students and people who knew and loved books. To this day, whenever I visit DC, I try to spend a little time there before heading home.

Bookstores are powerful spaces. A good bookstore shapes our thinking, influences our tastes, and contributes to our intellectual and spiritual development. It affects our thoughts, creative imagination, and understanding of the world around us. Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s first publishers and booksellers, believed that reading was an underutilized activity in the American colonies. Franklin believed the rise of bookshops and libraries made reading more fashionable, and he would later credit increased reading as one of the inspirations of the American Revolution.

As explained by Evan Friss in The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (Viking Press, 2024), Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, published in January 1776, helped radicalize the colonists in their journey toward independence. Friss, a professor of history at James Madison University, notes that Common Sense “argued forcefully for independence at a time when many were still undecided.” The pamphlet sold throughout the colonies and was read aloud in churches, coffee shops, and bookstores. Paine’s writing, “and that of other Enlightenment thinkers who promoted republicanism and attacked the monarchy and aristocracy, built an intellectual foundation for the Revolution, an event premised on a new way of thinking spelled out in books, pamphlets, and newspapers.” Printing and bookselling, writes Friss, thus “shaped education, intellectual life, and the means by which colonists consumed information and developed new ideologies, including revolutionary ones.”

The literature written and published during the Revolution not only inspired a nation, but it also led to the creation and growth of the modern American bookstore. With the help of Franklin and other intellectual leaders of the early American republic, books and bookshops became an important and influential force in American life. “Books hold ideas. Ideas hold power,” notes Friss. The bookstore developed into “a de facto public space, a meeting space, a communal space that wasn’t a house or church or political hall. In those cramped quarters, readers, writers, and literature gathered. It was intimate. It was far reaching. It was alive.”

The rise of the American bookstore also led to the art of browsing, lingering, and loitering among the rows of books. The pleasures of book browsing should not be undervalued. Browsing sometimes leads to sitting in a chair placed conveniently in the corner, close to the owner’s ten-year-old cocker spaniel sleeping on the floor a few feet away. Soon, you lose track of time as you become absorbed in the book that has caught your attention. This eventually gives rise to more browsing, and then to a conversation with the bookstore staff, before you wind up in the coffee shop next store with a newly purchased book in hand.

In many of the great independent bookstores across the United States, the owners and employees who stock the shelves and attend the front desk love books as deeply as the most avid readers. They know where each book is hidden away and have a knack for recommending just the right book at the right moment. People who love books love to talk about books, and it is these conversations that inspire new discoveries and innovative ideas. Bookstores have the power to alter lives. Their influence extends far beyond the shelves of the bookshop and into the lives and minds of readers, writers, and customers.

In The Bookshop, Friss introduces some of the great bookstores of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, including the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, which sat on the corner of Washington Street and School Street. It was owned by James Fields and William Ticknor, who published and sold books from their bookshop but did not always make good business decisions. In 1854, as the buyer for the bookshop, Fields rejected a manuscript for a story written by Louisa May Alcott. “Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can’t write,” Fields told her.

Fortunately, although Fields and Alcott remained on friendly terms, and Fields even loaned Alcott forty dollars, Alcott did not listen to Fields’ sage advice. After she published Little Women years later to great fame and fortune, she returned to Old Corner, handed Fields the forty dollars he had lent her, and said, “I found writing paid so much better than teaching that I thought I’d stick to my pen.” Fields laughed and admitted his error in judgment. He and Alcott remained friends.

Ticknor and Fields exercised better foresight in 1860 when they bought the rights to Harriet Beecher Stow’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel that sold exceptionally well and spread antislavery sentiment throughout the United States. Even in parts of the South, where the book was banned, Uncle Tom’s Cabin made the rounds through the enlightened souls who purchased the book by mail from bookstores in New York and Boston.

The Old Corner Bookstore ceased to exist when Ticknor died in 1864, and Fields sold the premises to another publisher. Today it is included on the Freedom Trail and the National Register of Historic Places. “It was once a literary jewel,” writes Friss, “a place where some of the greatest authors congregated, and a regular store . . . where books arrived, were put on the shelf, picked up, tasted, bought, read, and discussed. The Old Corner helped launch American literature and the American bookstore.” Sadly, on the historic site of Old Corner today sits a Chipotle, a reminder of the commercial priorities in American life.

A good bookstore can define a community. They are where ideas flourish and free speech thrives. The world is shaped by them. At successful independent bookstores, like Politics & Prose in Washington, Books & Books in Coral Gables, and The Strand in New York, speaking engagements by authors, book signings, group discussions, literary tours, and annual book fairs are part of the experience. Indeed, these events enrich the surrounding neighborhoods and allow the stores to become crucial community spaces, where people gather as much for social fellowship, and to converse and be educated, as to browse and buy books.

Owning and operating a bookstore is challenging. Bookstores are not the most commercially viable of enterprises. After all, a bookstore is one of the few places where patrons frequently linger for a long time without spending any money. They are low margin businesses that require large physical space, a combination that performs poorly in high-rent cities like New York, Washington, and San Francisco, even though enthusiastic readers disproportionately populate those cities.

Over the years, certain bookstores were less interested in making money than in pursuing a mission. Their purpose was to change the world. In 1967, Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York’s Greenwich Village was opened not to make a profit, but to function as a welcoming space and information center for the gay community. It soon became a political launching pad and hub for the gay rights movement. Drum & Spear, which opened in Harlem in 1968 as part of a wave of Black-owned bookstores, sought to promote books by Black authors, books about Black history, literature, and Black liberation, and books for Black children that would instill pride in their heritage and skin color. These were more than bookstores. They were intellectual centers of the gay rights and Black Power movements, safe places where the gay and Black communities, respectively, could think, talk, read, and thrive at a time when most bookstores catered to mostly straight white customers.

Oscar Wilde and Drum & Spear both accomplished their desired aims. And both became victims of their own success, as the books they sold eventually became available in the larger bookstores, or online, or in new and competing mission-driven stores. Neither store is open today but, in their heyday, they were spaces that inspired political change and influenced what people read. They impacted the lives of thousands of people and fomented positive changes in American society.

The Joy of Books, Hendersonville, NC

Even a modest used bookstore is a gem. My sister Linda recently gave me a gift certificate for The Joy of Books, a used bookstore in a narrow, confined space in Hendersonville, North Carolina, with a small but fine collection of books on history, literature, poetry, religion, and philosophy. On our last visit to Hendersonville, I picked out a two-volume biography of John Adams that Andrea wanted and had discovered on the library shelves of the bed and breakfast inn where we stayed, a book by historian Douglas Brinkley on America’s race to the moon in the 1960s (American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and America’s Race to the Moon), and Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe. But the most pleasurable part of the gift was in the experience of browsing, looking, handling, and sampling dozens of books before it was time to go.

From the nation’s founding and throughout American history, bookstores, small and large, successful and unsuccessful, have impacted American life. Bookstores are magical places full of discovery, where one can get lost in the pages and ignore the passage of time. They are community spaces, places where ideas are hatched, where democracy is born and nurtured, and where the world is changed and transformed for the better. As long as I am alive, I will love books and the gift of reading. And wherever I find myself, I will always search the streets for a good bookshop to browse, linger, and feel at home.

A Nation of Immigrants: Has America Lost Its Way?

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – Emma Lazarus

America is a nation of blended cultures, ethnicities, and religions – Black, brown, and white, Latino and Asian, African and Middle Eastern, European and South American, Jew, Christian, Muslim, and so much more. We are a country defined as much by our differences as our similarities. It is the beauty of this country and the source of our greatest tensions. But what makes us all Americans? 

Only those descended from Indigenous populations can claim direct links to this land of ours. For the rest of us, all our families at some point in time, even those who came over on The Mayflower, arrived in this country from somewhere else. What makes all of us American, the one thing that distinguishes us from everyone else, is our commitment to the U.S. Constitution and rule of law. The Constitution is the rulebook that guides and governs our daily life, and it is the document to which every person who becomes a U.S. citizen must swear an oath. And that—not values, morality, ethnicity, or personal history—is the only thing we all share, the one common denominator that makes us American.

Carlos Lozado of The Washington Post has explained that, to be an American, is a choice we must make every day:

We aren’t the land of opportunity or a nation of immigrants or equal before the law just because we say that’s what we are. Our leaders don’t respect our rights or derive their powers from our consent just because that’s how it is supposed to be. We become those things — we remain those things — only if we strive for them, without ceasing, and even then nothing is guaranteed. After all, the Declaration did not win independence; it only gave it a purpose.

It took a bloody and violent revolution and years of war and internal debate before the nation’s Founders agreed on the language in our Constitution and the rights enumerated in it. We rejected monarchy and created a governing system that consists of an elected Congress, an elected president, an appointed judicial system based on the rule of law, and a Bill of Rights limiting the power of government to restrict our speech, infringe on our religious freedoms, enter our homes without a judicial warrant, or deprive us of life, liberty, or property without due process. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “It is a republic, if you can keep it.”

Except for native Americans and African American families whose ancestors were brought here forcibly against their will, we are indeed a nation of immigrants, a land of destiny for millions of Americans who fled their homelands and landed on American shores in search of a better life. Although the darker forces of history, isolationism, and nativism have frequently thrown cold water on the idealized American myth that we are a land of refuge, since our founding and through the long arc of history we have in fact welcomed people from all over the world and provided them a chance to make it in America.

Americans have long prided themselves on the belief that we are a beacon of liberty, a light unto the nations, and that people from all over the world go to extreme lengths to arrive at our shores in search of freedom, liberty, and justice. At our best moments, we are a generous nation, a land of opportunity and new beginnings for anyone willing to work hard, play fair, and commit to the rule of law. It is, of course, essential that we protect our borders and enforce laws that regulate admission into the country. But for those seeking asylum from persecution in foreign lands, or those desiring to work in jobs most Americans refuse to do, the United States historically has offered an avenue to citizenship.

Sadly, as we celebrate the 249^th year since we declared independence from the British monarchy, the American ideal of a nation that symbolizes freedom from tyranny, and where the rule of law prevails, is proving to be more myth than reality. Under the Trump administration, we are no longer a welcoming nation. Immigrants and refugees are treated as less than human. Even the millions of immigrants who are here legally and are following all the rules, those who attend college or work and pay taxes and dream of one day becoming fully American, are at risk of being snatched on the street by masked ICE agents and put into a detention camp or whisked away on a plane to an unfamiliar foreign land. Although the administration claims that ICE is targeting only the worst-of-the-worst, the hardened criminals, this is a bald-faced lie, for the facts prove entirely to the contrary.

To placate the sadistic Stephen Miller, Trump’s man in charge of the mass deportation efforts, and to achieve his arbitrarily imposed quota of 3,000 detentions per day, ICE is now raiding construction sites, farms, and other workplaces that employ large numbers of immigrants, arresting and detaining the undocumented and fast-tracking deportation. These are people simply trying to live the American dream, who are working and providing for their families. They are not hardened criminals; most have no criminal record.

They are people like 19-year-old college student Arias Cristobal, whose family brought her here from Mexico without documentation when she was four years old. In May, Arias was mistakenly pulled over by a police officer in Dalton, Georgia, and arrested over her protestations. “I cannot go to jail,” she said, “I have my finals next week. My family depends on this.” Despite having committed no crime, not even a traffic violation, she spent exam week behind bars. Fortunately, a judge recently released Arias on bail and the officer who wrongfully arrested her has resigned from the police department. But the administration still intends to deport Arias and her father.

Arias Cristobal

They are people like the Tufts University PhD student from Turkey, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was physically grabbed by four masked ICE agents in plain clothes from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, while she was walking to meet friends for dinner. Ozturk, who was legally in the United States on a student visa, spent six weeks in a Louisiana detention center, housed in a mouse-infested cell with twenty-three other women. A federal judge ordered her released after determining that the government arrested her as retaliation for exercising her right to free speech – co-authoring a student editorial critical of the human toll of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts University PhD Student

They are people like 17-year-old Jose Adalberto Herrara, who was arrested on his way to work with his uncle when a Maine state trooper stopped the minivan they were in. Herrara had arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor at the age of twelve and, with the government’s assistance, eventually reunited with his family in Lewiston, Maine. He had no criminal record and currently sits alone in a New York detention facility, once again separated from his family.

Jose Adalberto Herrara

They are people like Andry Hernandez Romero, 32, a gay makeup artist who entered the United States last year in search of asylum after facing threats and harassment in his home country due to his sexual orientation. Romero has no criminal record and was one of 238 Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), notorious for its cruel and inhumane treatment, where prisoners are beaten and physically and psychologically abused in violation of international human rights standards. Once there, the prisoners have almost no hope of ever being released. Like everyone sent to CECOT, the government provided Romero with no hearing, no due process, and no opportunity to establish that he is not the “terrorist” and “gang member” the administration claims (without evidence) that he is.

Andrey Hernandez Romero

And they are people like Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old professional soccer player and coach from Venezuela. Berrios has no criminal record, and he followed the rules in seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border after fleeing from violence in his home country. The government has tried to claim that Barrios is a Tren de Aragua gang member based on his tattoos, which consist of a soccer ball topped with a crown to represent his favorite team, Spanish club Real Madrid. His other tattoos include the names of his daughters, Isabela and Carla Antonella, a map of Venezuela, a star, and a goalkeeper, his soccer position. Like Romero, ICE sent Berrios to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, where he has almost no hope of ever getting out. The United States Government charged Berrios with no crime and provided him with no due process, and now he has no ability or means to reverse the injustice that occurred.

Jerce Reyes Barrios and daughter

These are only five examples of the human lives impacted by Trump’s mass deportation efforts. There are thousands more just like them, as the government continues to round up seemingly everyone but the murderers and rapists, terrorists and gang members, promised by Team Trump. The problem for Miller and company is that, as explained by Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The U.S. population of undocumented immigrants doesn’t have huge numbers of hardened criminals – not surprising since study after study has shown migrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.” (See, e.g., American Immigration Council, “Debunking the Myth of Immigrants and Crime”)

The recently passed Big Ugly Bill – the cruelest and most immoral legislatively enacted budget in American history – commits almost $170 billion to unprecedented levels of immigration enforcement and border-related operations. The administration intends to hire thousands of new ICE agents and more than double the number of ICE detention centers (which financially benefits the companies that contributed large money to Trump and his inauguration). Another $46 billion will be spent on a major expansion of Trump’s border wall that is specifically designed to keep out the brave, the poor, and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

And then there is “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new ICE detention center in the Everglades, which can only be described as an American concentration camp. With a projected capacity of 5,000 beds, the camp will forcibly detain immigrants in improvised tents and chain-link cages that will put them on display. The migrants will endure south Florida’s extreme heat, disease-infested mosquitoes, and harsh swamp conditions. Expedited “hearings” will be overseen by National Guard members playing the role of immigration judge. As described by Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (Little Brown and Company, 2017): “This facility’s purpose fits the classic model: mass civilian detention without real trials targeting vulnerable groups for political gain based on ethnicity, race, religion or political affiliation rather than for crimes committed.”

Shame on Trump. Shame on America. The Statue of Liberty is but a lonely and forgotten symbol of a once honorable past. One day I hope Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and the president will be held to account, although I have for the first time in my life begun to lose hope that accountability is even possible in America today. Is it apathy? Are people simply exhausted by the sheer magnitude of this administration’s disregard for the rule of law, the norms of civil society, any respect for truth and facts? Or has America simply turned inward and given up on morality and compassion?

All my life I have loved America and have been proud to be an American. But pride is quickly giving way to mortification, for what is happening in our country today is enough to make one ashamed of being American. What I am witnessing – what all of us are witnessing – is a nation that has lost its way.

For at least the past 25 years, Congress, due mostly to Republican opposition, has rejected all attempts at enacting comprehensive immigration reform that addresses border security while providing a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Shamefully, early in 2024, Trump insisted that House Republicans reject a bipartisan solution passed by the Senate (and favored by conservatives) because he cynically wished to politically exploit anti-immigrant sentiment to help him win the election. And it worked.

“Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened American life,” wrote John F. Kennedy in his 1958 book entitled A Nation of Immigrants. Demonizing immigrants may be good politics, but it ignores America’s historic dependence on immigrants and devalues the very essence of what it is to be an American. Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts represent the worst elements of our character. “The American Dream may be slipping away,” according to Jon Meacham. “To recover the Dream requires knowing where it came from, how it lasted so long and why it matters so much.”

For the sake of America and the world, I hope that we will find a way to heal our divisions, respect the beauty of our rich cultural diversity, and demonstrate to the world that we are indeed a welcoming nation, and a kind one. I hope that one day soon we will regain confidence in our democratic heritage and the strength of our Constitution to allow us, in the words of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, to “believe in a government strong enough to use words like ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.” Changing times have always demanded that we embrace new values and viewpoints. The health and very existence of our democracy and the country depend on it. 

The Magic of Baseball on the Radio

Among my earliest baseball memories are listening to the radio on a warm summer evening, the smell of barbeque floating through the air as a ballgame is broadcast on a transistor radio sitting atop a cooler in the backyard grass. One such memory dates to the mid-1960s when I was eight years old and my family was spending a week at my grandfather’s house in Bath, Ohio. My Uncle Billy and Aunt Shirley lived down the street, and on a Saturday afternoon, Billy was heating burgers and dogs on a charcoal grill with a beer in one hand – he always had a beer in one hand as I recall – and a spatula in the other, while listening to his beloved Cleveland Indians play the Detroit Tigers on WERE radio, with Jimmy Dudley and Bob Neal doing the play-by-play.

I do not recall the outcome, but I distinctly remember the sounds of the game in the background as I stood with Uncle Billy as we talked about the Indians and other baseball related topics. I discovered then that there is something magical about listening to a ballgame on the radio while normal life goes on around you – flipping burgers on the grill, playing catch with my brother, driving in a car on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. It is a dimension of the game that is often underappreciated, especially today when all other aspects of life are so dominated by visual forms of technology.

There is also something romantic and very American about baseball on the radio, for it encapsulates not only the sounds of the ballpark on a summer evening but the memories and history of the game itself. Listening requires imagination, mentally visualizing the dimensions and layout of the ballpark as the announcers capture the flow and rhythm of the game.

When I listen to the play-by-play with no television screens nearby, I imagine myself in the stands with the entire ballpark before me, every player in my field of vision. I can see the third baseman scrape the infield dirt with his right foot between pitches, the center fielder glance into the dugout to check on positioning, the managers and coaches glaring intently at the field from the dugout steps. I imagine the opposing hitter dig his back foot in the batter’s box and wave his bat back and forth until becoming set for the pitch. I visualize the pitcher in his windup as the catcher crouches behind home plate, the umpire dressed in blue peering over the catcher’s shoulders. I see the white bases dotting the infield dirt, surrounded by the finely manicured green grass that paints the infield and blankets the outfield, a panoramic view of the ballpark that renders baseball into an urban oasis and place of refuge that soothes a weary soul.

A good baseball announcer brings the game to life while filling the time between pitches with tales of baseball history and interesting stories and backstories of the players, past and present, that make the game so memorable. Although for the past 21 years I have anxiously watched most of the Cardinals games on television (much to Andrea’s empathic concern), I still enjoy listening to the radio broadcasts whenever I am in a car or on my daily walk to Alverthorpe Park during an afternoon game. It is then I tune into KMOX radio and experience the companionship of John Rooney and Ricky Horton, two trusted friends who provide an articulate and fair description of the play accompanied by explanations of strategy and reflections and reminisces about their own baseball memories and other historic moments of baseball lore. It reminds me of the times past, when the flow and cadence of every professional baseball game traveled through the airwaves into the homes and storefronts of urban neighborhoods and rural landscapes throughout the United States.

As a young boy in central New Jersey who passionately, if unwisely, followed a team located halfway across the country, the only televised Cardinals games available to me were when the Redbirds played the Mets or Phillies, or the occasional few games every season when they were on the national NBC Game of the Week with Curt Gowdy. But during the late evenings on clear summer nights, if I finely tuned my transistor radio to the precise location on the dial, I could sometimes hear the comforting voices of Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on KMOX radio in St. Louis, one of the strongest radio signals in the country, announcing the play-by-play of a Cardinals game. Less precision was needed when the Cardinals played the Pirates, as I could more easily tune into the Pittsburgh station and listen to the distinctive voice of Bob Prince. As I lay in bed with my ear glued to the pocket size radio in my room, often in the darkness, I listened intently to the action and imagined the ballpark, the crowd, and the players on the field, as if seated on the third base side of the field several rows up from the dugout, with every player and element of the game in view. Even today, these remain powerful and impactful memories.

When in my younger years I played Strat-O-Matic baseball [see “Strat-O-Matic Memories: The Baseball Years”], a statistically-accurate board game that was based on each player’s actual performance from the previous season, I not only “managed” the Cardinals for 162 games each season but conducted the radio play-by-play of each game. But before you have me analyzed by a team of psychiatrists, you should know that Jon Miller and Bob Costas, both Hall of Fame broadcasters, did the same thing when they were kids. Inspired by these and other great baseball radio announcers, my play-by-play calling for each Strat-O-Matic game fed my imagination and brought the games to life.

In later years, when I lived in Washington, DC, and the only “local” team was the Baltimore Orioles, I frequently listened at night to Jon Miller who eloquently broadcast Orioles games during the Ripken era. The Orioles were a consistently good team in the 1980s and 1990s and Miller’s voice became a soothing presence, offering a respite from the daily pressures of life and work that dominated those days of early adulthood.

The best radio announcers, which for me include Jon Miller and Gary Cohen, along with the late greats Jack Buck, Harry Caray, and Vin Scully, add a poetic dimension to the national pastime. Scully, as the voice of the Dodgers, combined storytelling skills with his command of the English language, and he spoke with a warmth and eloquence that captured the hearts of baseball fans everywhere. Miller and Cohen (with the Mets radio network) are superb play callers with incredibly articulate voices and intelligent baseball instincts. Buck and Caray were probably the best twosome on the radio as the Cardinals announcers in the 1960s that lasted until Caray became the voice of the Cubs and Buck the trusted, masterful, and raspy voice of the Cardinals.

Radio announcers are good story tellers, and listening to a game on the radio connects me to the history of the game, to the memories of my youth, and to a distinctive piece of American life. With the crowd noise in the background, listening to a game is a more immersive experience, with everything taking place on the field reflected in the announcers’ words and descriptions.

When I moved to Philadelphia in the mid-1990s, before radio signals were delayed, I even brought the radio with me to Phillies games and listened to the Phillies announcers – Harry Calas and Richie Ashburn – describe the play while I watched the action on the field at Veterans Stadium. I was not alone in this, as other fans also had their radios tuned into the game while simultaneously watching and cheering the action. The radio broadcasts added to my enjoyment, providing an extra dimension of commentary and analysis that enhanced the sights and sounds all around me.

A good radio sportscaster informs the listener as to what is happening on the field while allowing the sounds of the game – the crack of the bat, the pitch exploding into the catcher’s mitt, and the crowd reaction – to come through naturally. As explained by journalist Gregory Barber in The New York Times Sunday magazine in August 2024:

Announcers are fond of painting metaphors, and their art is one of quick brushstrokes: calling fastballs from sliders while weaving in novelistic details that transform anonymous bench players into protagonists. . . . The game comes in and out of focus, just as it would if you could be in the stadium yourself. Certain moments nail your gaze to the field; others provide the opportunity to wander off in search of a kielbasa.

Baseball on the radio is a perfect way to absorb a game, whether lying on a hammock, cleaning a messy desk, cooking a meal, enjoying a long walk, or driving across the country. Last week, as Andrea and I drove home from visiting my mom and sister in North Carolina, I turned on the radio broadcast of the Cardinals-Brewers game and was immediately transported to Miller Park in Milwaukee, allowing me to pass the time for 2 ½ hours as I navigated I-81 and weaved in and out of truck traffic with the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah mountains in the distance. The Cardinals lost 3-2, and when Masyn Winn struck out in the top of the ninth with two runners in scoring position, I may have temporarily lost my cool – my memory fails to recall my recollection. But the broadcast was a pleasurable diversion to an otherwise long afternoon of highway driving.

I acknowledge that there may be more productive ways to spend one’s time. But baseball has been in my blood for over sixty years, and the Cardinals my passion for almost all that time. Win or lose, heartbreak upon heartbreak, the highs and lows of the game will continue to test my sanity more frequently than will ever be considered reasonable. When the cold, dark days of winter are upon us, and the completed pennant race becomes a distant memory, I will again long with anticipation for the start of a fresh season. Then, starting with the early days of spring training, baseball on the radio will restore me to a place where I belong and connect my past and present in a way that few things today can do. It will let me breathe again, through the remainder of spring and the long, hot summer, as the sounds and beauty of the game emanate through the radio airwaves like a welcome breeze.

Good Night and Good Luck - A Commentary on Our Times

George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck, Winter Garden Theatre

Once upon a time in America, the television news was brought to us by a group of respected journalists who we trusted to report the truth. We held these men (back then, they were mostly men) in high esteem, reporters such as Charles Collingswood, Eric Sevareid, Bill Downs, Howard K. Smith, Daniel Schorr, and most especially, Walter Cronkite. Acclaimed for their intelligence and mastery of the English language, they would later be described as “Murrow’s Boys” because their mentor, and the person responsible for their careers, was Edward R. Murrow, the most celebrated journalist of all. Murrow had provided live radio broadcasts from Europe during the Second World War and achieved legendary status with his eyewitness accounts of the London Blitz and, later, the American war campaign.

By the 1950s, Murrow, who frequently ended his dispatches with the phrase “good night and good luck,” had transitioned to television and hosted See It Now, a 30-minute news segment that focused on important and sometimes controversial issues. In October 1953, See It Now produced a segment on Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the Air Force as a security risk because he maintained a "close and continuing relationship" with his father and sister, whom the Air Force contended held “communist sympathies.”

The Air Force did not allege that Lieutenant Radulovich himself was a Communist or possessed “communist sympathies.” In fact, they acknowledged that Radulovich was a loyal American. But Radulovich’s father, a Yugoslav immigrant, subscribed to several Serbian newspapers to stay current on events in his former homeland. One of the papers was associated with the American Slav Congress, which the U.S. Government had once included on a list of Communist front organizations (this same list also included such organizations as the American Jewish Labor Council, American Women for Peace, Washington Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights, and the George Washington Carver School, just to name a few). As for Radulovich’s sister, Margaret, all that could be discerned was that she supported liberal causes, although she described herself as “apolitical.” But whatever evidence the Air Force had against these individuals was never publicly disclosed or shared with Radulovich or his attorney.

The Air Force said it would reinstate Radulovich if he renounced his family. He refused, and instead demanded an Air Force hearing so he could learn of the evidence against him and have an opportunity to defend himself. At the hearing before the review board, an Air Force attorney waved in the air a manila envelope, contending it proved the case against Radulovich. But whatever the envelope contained was never revealed, and no one was permitted to see its contents, including Radulovich and his attorney. Radulovich was stripped of his commission without ever learning the evidence against him.

When the Radulovich case came to the attention of Murrow and his team at See It Now, they sent a reporter and assistant producer to Dexter, Michigan, to interview Radulovich and his family members on camera. The filmed interviews showed each of them to be credible, law-abiding Americans of intelligence and reason. The See It Now team also interviewed Radulovich’s attorney, who stated, “In my 32 years of practicing ... I have never witnessed such a farce and travesty upon justice as this thing has developed into."

When the program aired on October 20, 1953, many viewers of the program began to question the unfair tactics employed by the government to accuse employees of being security risks based on seemingly flimsy and undisclosed evidence. During the episode, Murrow indicated that his team had offered the Air Force an opportunity to reveal whatever evidence may have been contained in the manila envelope. “Was it hearsay, rumor, gossip, slander, or hard, ascertainable facts that could be backed by credible witnesses?” Murrow asked. “We do not know.” Was it simply guilt by association? On that, Murrow added, “We believe the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, even though that iniquity be proved, and in this case it was not.” One month after the broadcast, the Air Force reinstated Radulovich, although by then his reputation had been forever tainted.

Last week, Andrea and I had the privilege of attending the Broadway production of Good Night and Good Luck at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, in which George Clooney plays the role of Edward R. Murrow in the play he co-wrote with Grant Heslov. The play depicts how Murrow, his co-producer, Fred Friendly, and their staff of reporters, writers, and assistant producers examined and investigated the Radulovich case and, later, the abusive Cold War tactics employed by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. It is a reminder of how important ethical and truthful journalism is to a free and vibrant democracy, and of how easily those freedoms can be betrayed by government officials with no dedication to fairness and due process.

Good Night and Good Luck portrays Murrow and Friendly resisting the warnings and pushback from William S. Paley, President of CBS, who worried about losing the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) as a sponsor and inviting the wrath of McCarthy and the government’s Cold War era suspicions. It effectively presents their struggle to insist on journalistic fairness in the face of outright lies and personal attacks by government officials. When Paley argues to Murrow in advance of the Rudalovich episode that their job is to report the news, not comment on it, and that See It Now must tread carefully and remain balanced, Murrow replies, “I simply cannot accept there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.”

In the play (and the 2005 movie by the same name), Murrow comes across as a model of journalistic integrity. Though he was rightly skeptical of the Air Force’s case against Radulovich, which appeared to be based on innuendo and suspicion rather than credible evidence, he merely outlined the known facts and highlighted the lack of evidence. Regarding the accuracy of the Air Force’s charges, he said simply, “We do not know.” Indeed, it was the government’s lack of transparency and denial of due process that should concern all Americans.

Following the Radulovich episode, Murrow and Friendly came into the crosshairs of Senator McCarthy. When a McCarthy aide hinted that the committee was investigating Murrow and his team, Friendly assembled the See It Now staff and said that if anyone in the room had any associations, past or present, that would hurt the program, it was imperative that they spoke up. One staffer offered to resign because his ex-wife had attended some Communist Party meetings before they were married, before he even knew her. Murrow interjected that this very thing was the problem with McCarthy. "The terror is right here in this room,” Murrow said. “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." He then added, “If none of us ever read a book that was ‘dangerous,’ had a friend who was ‘different,’ or joined an organization that advocated ‘change,’ we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.” 

Instead of capitulating, See It Now devoted a program focused on McCarthy’s excesses. The program aired on March 9, 1954. To avoid injecting himself or his opinions into the episode, Murrow let the viewers judge McCarthy by his own words from recordings and transcripts of speeches and congressional hearings. In one film clip, McCarthy falsely accused the American Civil Liberties Union of being a front for the Communist Party. In fact, as Murrow pointed out, no government or congressional agency had ever included the ACLU on its lists of alleged subversive organizations; it was an organization devoted to defending the Bill of Rights that had received letters of commendation from Presidents Eisenhower and Truman and General MacArthur. Numerous other clips and recordings showed McCarthy asserting unsubstantiated claims and falsehoods against people and organizations without proof or evidence, and without allowing the accused individuals an opportunity to defend themselves and their reputations.

The program highlighted the importance of informational and journalistic integrity over baseless fears of treason and disloyalty that defined McCarthy’s Red Scare tactics. Using McCarthy’s own words against him allowed Murrow to deftly interrogate the veracity of the senator’s words and accusations. At the end of the program, Murrow provided some needed perspective: 

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that Congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigation and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind between the internal and the external threat of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. 

Murrow made sure to provide McCarthy with an opportunity to respond and rebut any aspect of the program he felt was unfair or untrue. At the start of the broadcast, Murrow had announced that if the senator believes the program “does violence” to his words he will be provided an opportunity to come on the program and defend himself. When McCarthy subsequently demanded a rebuttal, he was given an entire segment to respond. Once again, McCarthy’s own words—he spoke for the entire 30-minute episode—did him more harm than good. McCarthy’s filmed response was so full of lies and false accusations, including his claim that Murrow had been on the Soviet payroll for decades, that it allowed Murrow in the next episode to provide a point-by-point rebuttal in a classic, just the facts manner. Murrow also noted that the senator had “made no reference to any statements of fact we made.” Not long after, the United States Senate voted to censure McCarthy, leading to his rapid political fall.

A scene from Good Night and Good Luck
(Photo credit: Emilio Madrid)

The play effectively follows Murrow’s example; instead of an actor portraying McCarthy, he appears only through actual film clips of his own words, leaving no room for directorial editorializing or the taking of artistic liberties. Although its focus primarily is on responsible journalism (Murrow’s remarks at the end of the play address his concern that the entertainment value of television was replacing serious news content), it is also an important reminder that freedom and liberty are not permanently guaranteed, and that our democracy is fragile and must be protected.

Good Night and Good Luck is an important play, as relevant and necessary today as any time in history. It is a compelling indictment on the abuse and misuse of government power. It lays bare the threat of authoritarianism, which flows directly from irresponsible accusations that someone is “disloyal” or a “security risk” or has “Communist” or “terrorist” sympathies based on undisclosed or unexamined evidence. And as we have too often observed in history, these threats are heightened by the dehumanization of immigrants and those perceived as “others.”

Watching the play in person, and for everyone in the theatre that afternoon, it was readily apparent that this was not simply a recreation of a segment of American history during the Cold War or an interesting but distant dramatization of past events. Every day for the past four months we have seen stories of legal residents being abducted and deported without due process, immigrants convicted of no crime being sent to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador where inmates are never seen or heard from again. We have seen university students being detained and deported for exercising protected First Amendment rights, accused of being “terrorists” and security risks based solely on their participation in lawful, non-violent protests or for writing critical editorials in a student newspaper. And we have seen law firms denied security clearances and government contracts because they dared represent clients who opposed the administration or hired the president’s perceived enemies.

All these events bear an uncanny resemblance to the Air Force’s treatment of Milo Radulovich and of the McCarthy hearings that accused hundreds of government employees of colluding with the Communist Party, often without disclosing the evidence, if any existed, in support of the charges. Accusations based on “secret” evidence with the accused provided no opportunity to challenge or rebut the alleged associations. These were the transgressions of McCarthyism and of Red Scare tactics abused during the Cold War, when hearsay, rumor, and innuendo were used to accuse people of being disloyal, or of associating with Communists or harboring sympathetic thoughts to Communist ideas.

Such transgressions are repeated every day in this administration. Except now the administration uses words such as “terrorism,” “antisemitism,” “invasion” and "treason" against students, elite universities, immigrants, and perceived political enemies to accuse its targets of endangering the nation. For example, after admitting in court that it had mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García, an employed Maryland resident married to a U.S. citizen, to El Salvador, and after being ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to facilitate his return to the United States, the administration insisted, without evidence, that Abrego Garcia is a gang member, a drug dealer, a "terrorist," and a human trafficker. And despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump has publicly insisted Abrego Garcia will never return to the United States.

The Trump administration has publicly and repeatedly branded the 238 Venezuelan immigrants whisked away to El Salvador as “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters” and “the worst of the worst.” But as Pro Publica and the Texas Tribune recently reported, the administration knew the vast majority had no criminal record and that “only 32 of the deportees had been convicted” of mostly “nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations.” Of course, immigrants who have committed crimes can be prosecuted and deported, but it must be done in accordance with our laws and constitution. And as an attorney for the ACLU has noted, “it does not mean they can be subjected to a potentially lifetime sentence in a foreign gulag.”

The administration has repeatedly disparaged Columbia University student Mohammed Khalil, claiming without evidence that he is “antisemitic” (Khalil has publicly condemned antisemitism and talked of alliance with his “Jewish brothers and sisters”) and sympathetic to terrorists (he has publicly criticized Hamas), to justify attempts to deport him and take him from his wife and newborn baby. Khalil’s crime was in exercising free speech and participating in non-violent pro-Palestinian protests on his university’s campus. As Philip Bump of The Washington Post writes, although “no evidence has emerged of any college student, native-born or immigrant, offering material support to Hamas,” the administration has instead suggested that Khalil’s activities were “aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Similarly, the Secretary of Education has falsely accused Harvard University of fostering a “pro-terrorist” environment, and over one million foreign students who attend American universities are worried and concerned about whether they will be allowed to complete their studies in the United States or have their visas unilaterally revoked.

Murrow warned in the March 1954 episode that, as Americans, we must “not walk in fear, one of another” nor be “driven by fear into an age of unreason.” He said that “if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine,” we will remember that we are descended from leaders who did not fear “to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” This is what freedom and liberty are made of. We ignore and neglect it at our peril. He ended the program with these words:

We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. ... We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Good night, and good luck.

A Plea for the Humanities

The humanities help nurture connections within and between diverse societies, offering pathways for constructive engagement. Learning about and respecting outlooks different from our own is crucial to our survival in the twenty-first century, moving us away from tensions created by ignorance and fear toward informed, sympathetic conversation between cultures. That does not mean forsaking our own identities and loyalties, but it does involve developing the capacity to see beyond them. – Richard Godbeer, Professor of History, University of Kansas

On June 4, 2009, President Obama gave a speech at Cairo University that sought to promote understanding and ease tensions between the United States and the Muslim world. Although it had been nearly eight years since a group of violent Islamic extremists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, the country remained at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and divided about how to respond to threats of terrorism and religious-inspired violence at home and abroad.

Obama had come to Cairo “to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.” Increased understanding between Islam and the West was essential for peace. “So long as our relationship is defined by our differences,” Obama said, “we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity.” Obama correctly noted that Islam was replete with teachings that promoted peace and condemned violence, and that most people of the Islamic faith opposed terrorism and had nothing to do with the violence inflicted on 9/11. 

The Cairo speech served educational and diplomatic objectives and was grounded in Obama’s knowledge and understanding of history, religion, and culture. Aided by his education and personal life experiences, he crafted a speech designed to lower tensions and provide historical perspective. Rooted in the humanities, the speech sought to counter the widening rift between Islam and the United States. 

As the previous eight years had demonstrated, a fundamental misunderstanding and aversion to a comprehensive understanding of historic, religious, and cultural dynamics led to a gross miscalculation in the War in Iraq and our response to the war on terror. It also contributed to Islamophobia, discrimination, and prejudice against Muslims within the United States. Obama’s speech, which incorporated his humanities-based education, exemplified how a broad understanding of history and religion, and experience with diverse cultures, leads to a deeper appreciation for differing perspectives and to better communication and judgment. 

America at its best is a nation that supports excellence, learns from history, promotes understanding between people of different religious and racial backgrounds, and engages other nations and cultures with appropriate humility. It is why an educational system founded on the humanities is so important to a free and vibrant democracy, and to American public life.

It is also why I find the Trump administration’s full-scale war on the humanities, the arts, and higher education in American life deeply troubling. Through a series of executive orders and other actions, Trump intends to disband the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), restrict the independence of the Smithsonian Institution, and defund libraries, museums, universities, public radio and television stations, and arts education in communities throughout the United States. Trump’s attacks on these institutions include censoring historical content on federal government and public museum websites, removing books on racial equity and gender identity from military academy libraries, eliminating public support for the arts in diverse communities, and canceling billions of dollars in funding for research at the nation’s top universities. He wishes to fund only causes he considers “patriotic” or that present a glorified perspective of American history and culture.

The administration has cited a variety of reasons for its actions, but rather than propose modest and evidence-based reforms designed to address a particular concern, Trump acts and talks as if he wishes to burn these esteemed institutions to the ground. I believe his actions will cause irreparable harm to the nation that even his supporters will come to regret. But rather than provide a detailed critique of why many of Trump’s executive orders are unconstitutional or grossly misguided, I wish only to explain why public support for the humanities is essential to an informed citizenry, and a free and vibrant democracy. 

The humanities include the academic study of philosophy, history, religion, languages, and the arts, and encompasses literature, poetry, writing, theater, music, and the visual arts. Aristotle believed that a study of the humanities was essential to excellence, and to perfecting of the self. Along with the sciences, the humanities formed the foundation for higher education. Without them our educational system would be nothing more than a series of vocational and professional schools in strict service to the economy. While such skills-based learning is important and necessary, the humanities are essential to a liberal education, with “liberal” in this usage derived from the Latin word liber, meaning “free.” The term itself recognizes that knowledge is liberating and explains why slave owners in early America deprived their enslaved subjects of books and education.

It is true that humanities education sometimes gets a bad rap. Critics contend the humanities provide “soft” knowledge with little utilitarian value in a competitive economy. In the movie Liberal Arts, a young college student asks the film’s protagonist, Jesse Fisher, what he majored in when he attended the same college ten years earlier. “English, with a minor in history,” replies Jesse, “just to make sure I was fully unemployable.” It is a common sentiment. When my father learned I was taking a course my sophomore year on Native American Literature, he cynically asked, “What kind of a job will that get you?” The course itself may not have added anything to my resume, but it is one of the few courses that I remember well to this day, for it helped me to better understand Native American culture and history and made me a better and more informed person. 

And while some might argue that having the time to spend on such pursuits reflects a life of privilege and too much leisure time, I counter that it was my humanities-based liberal arts education that developed my skills in speaking and writing, the art of persuasion, and critical thinking, all skills I needed as a lawyer and that are skills desperately needed in today’s world. 

In Man’s Search for Meaning, the Holocaust survivor, psychologist, and philosopher Viktor Frankl wrote, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” It is this search for meaning that most explains my interest in the humanities. As the years pass and I become older, the more fully I comprehend how important history and religion, philosophy and literature, art and music, and exposure to diverse cultures, languages, and traditions are to a fully engaged and exalted life. Good literature and the arts enrich our lives, help us better understand and empathize with others, leads to genuine human interactions, and guides us in our human quest for truth and understanding. 

It is why the power of an enjoyable book is so liberating, and why the joy of reading uplifts and enhances our lives. Marilynne Robinson, who wrote a defense of the humanities for The New York Review of Books, contends that an informative book “has a suggestive power far beyond its subject, a potency the affected mind itself might take years to realize.” She once talked with “a cab driver who had spent years in prison. He said he had no idea that the world was something he could be interested in. And then he read a book.” 

According to the 17th Century French Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Humanities and the arts contribute to the development of well-rounded human beings with an ethical core and a moral compass, something desperately lacking in the world today judging from the current crop of world leaders.

But why should we publicly fund the humanities? How one answers that question may depend on what sort of society and country one desires. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville perceived education and the humanities as rays of sunlight that spread democracy and enlightenment over the western world: 

From the moment when the exercise of intelligence had become a source of strength and wealth, each . . .  new area of knowledge, each fresh idea had to be viewed as a seed of power placed within people’s grasp. Poetry, eloquence, memory, the beauty of wit, the fires of imagination, the depth of thought, all these gifts which heaven shares out by chance turned to the advantage of democracy and, even when they belonged to the enemies of democracy, they still promoted its cause by highlighting the natural grandeur of man. Its victories spread, therefore, alongside those of civilization and education. Literature was an arsenal open to all, where the weak and the poor could always find arms.

Tocqueville believed that advancements in knowledge enhanced the general welfare of the community and promoted excellence. In an increasingly complex and evolving world, private means alone are inadequate. It is why public support for the humanities and the arts are historically important to a free and democratic society. Without public support, humanities and the arts would benefit only the privileged and affluent. The availability of public funds extends their reach to poor and rural communities, and thus benefits all of society. This is why grants from the NEH and NEA are so important, and why funding cuts to higher education restrict the aid available for lower income students.

Our nation’s founders, although flawed individuals, were highly educated and widely read men. These traits enabled them to inspire a national movement and draft the American ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. It is why the freedom of expression, and of the press, and the free exercise of religious belief and practice were so cherished and embedded into the nation’s founding documents. And it is why the courts have traditionally outlawed efforts to censor news reports or ban books, things free societies that value unfettered thought and creativity simply do not allow.

This is why the current attacks on our educational system and hostility to the humanities are so troubling. In free societies, governments do not dictate what universities can and cannot teach, and do not prohibit courses that express new theories and methods of study simply because they open new avenues of thinking about race and gender. Free societies do not whitewash history, suppress unorthodox religious expressions, or outlaw differing academic notions of gender identity or racial equity.

The United States remains a grand experiment. Tocqueville discernibly uplifted the humanities as essential to a free society, for they nurture and enrich a nation founded upon the right to pursue happiness. Concepts of beauty, eloquence, depth of thought, should belong to all of us. Our universities are among the best in the world because they are based on the concept of liberal education, designed to teach excellence, and enrich the whole person, and because we have supported them with needed funding while protecting their independence and autonomy.

Why should we support the humanities? Because core skills in the humanities help us develop skills in critical thinking, deep research, reading and comprehension, critical analysis, and problem-solving. Because without support for the humanities, education, and the arts, we are a less free, less democratic, less informed, and less vibrant democracy. Without the humanities, our lives are less fulfilled, and our world is a darker place.