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Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion - How to bring down a storied think-tank? Humiliation works.
On April Fool's Day, which feels like a century ago, someone who answered to Elon Musk reportedly gave the CEO of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars an ultimatum: quit or be fired. A loyal Republican, the CEO had served several terms in Congress and as an American ambassador abroad before heading USAID in the first Trump administration. Yet, in a moment, this man of considerable stature was reduced to ignominy. Neither of us was a direct witness to the Wilson Center drama, but the emotions and the signals colleagues at the center took from this power play evoked communist Poland and resonated with our long combined experience in that country. Authoritarian regimes use humiliation, intimidation and fear as a cudgel, tools of social control. The specific ways these blows are administered differ according to time and circumstances. In this case, it sufficed to humiliate the most powerful person in the organization. Wilson Center staff went proactively silent, even when approached by the press. This was not a lack of courage. Indeed, we believe it was a collective act of kindness. No one wanted to put their more vulnerable colleagues at greater risk while sensitive negotiations were underway to secure severance and health care for people who needed to buy groceries and pay rent. Silence seemed to be a virtue. And that is precisely what authoritarians count on. Uncertainty about the present and the future is what they exploit. Intimidation need not be explicit; indeed, it is often more powerful when victims must guess how far their tormentors are willing to go and are forced to act on limited knowledge. Here is the Polish, 1980s version of how it happens, as one of us, then a Fulbright Scholar in martial law Poland, witnessed. From the street sweeper to the head of a hospital, university, theater or government agency, everyone was forced to navigate a steady state of insecurity, uncertain what provocations could happen in the next day or hour. All of society was made aware that nothing was firmly guaranteed, neither jobs nor status, and especially not human dignity. One day, university presidents were fired. The next day, the regime demanded that professors sign loyalty oaths or surrender their jobs. A respected journalist who dared, in guarded language, to report facts suddenly found himself a taxi driver to support his family. The regime honored the law when it was convenient, flouted it when inconvenient. Poles called it 'uncertain tomorrow.' This is a lesson. Humiliation can be imposed in a variety of ways: required oaths, a shocking fall from grace and position, a strip search, a searched apartment, being forced to stand in line for hours for basic food staples or watching any of that happen to family, friends and colleagues. Whole books have been written seeking to understand how human beings respond to such conditions, whether they accept dependence or take the tougher road of refusal. We do not think our country is Poland under communism yet. At the moment, humiliation is not a feature of every contact with the formal organs of our government, as it was there. On the other hand, this is a new phenomenon for Americans who have, until now, been spared these specific systematic cruelties, hurled from official positions. Now, in a time that could be a turning point, we need to school ourselves to understand and resist techniques that Trump instinctively grasps, but most Americans may not. In this strange new world of unrecognizable features, societal slides can happen rapidly, facilitated by naivety born of inexperience and denial. It took days to reduce the Wilson Center from an internationally respected think-tank that reveled in its independence and intellectual leadership to a smoldering wreck, soon to be nonexistent. The pace of repeated indignities meant that, within days of April 1, new outrages relegated the Wilson Center putsch to obscurity. As we write, public attention has moved on. In this reality, what is at first unthinkable soon becomes routine. The struggles of the Polish people also offer an alternative of resistance and hope. What Poles sought from the Solidarity movement that coalesced in 1980 and set the stage for the new democracy that began to emerge in 1989 was, first among others, dignity — the antithesis of humiliation. The Poles had to dig themselves out of a deeper hole than is currently our challenge; first the Nazi, and then the Communist regime supported by a powerful, armed neighbor. Even so, they took to the streets. They pursued every possible means of peaceful opposition to confront oppression. At this momentous historical juncture, our assignment as Americans is to find ways to turn our humiliation into action, to reclaim our dignity. Ruth Greenspan Bell, according to her dismissal letter, is, until May 31, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Janine R. Wedel, a social anthropologist in the Schar School at George Mason University, is the author of 'The Private Poland' and 'UNACCOUNTABLE: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
How to bring down a storied think-tank? Humilation works.
On April Fool's Day, which feels like a century ago, someone who answered to Elon Musk reportedly gave the CEO of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars an ultimatum: quit or be fired. A loyal Republican, the CEO had served several terms in Congress and as an American ambassador abroad before heading USAID in the first Trump administration. Yet, in a moment, this man of considerable stature was reduced to ignominy. Neither of us was a direct witness to the Wilson Center drama, but the emotions and the signals colleagues at the center took from this power play evoked communist Poland and resonated with our long combined experience in that country. Authoritarian regimes use humiliation, intimidation and fear as a cudgel, tools of social control. The specific ways these blows are administered differ according to time and circumstances. In this case, it sufficed to humiliate the most powerful person in the organization. Wilson Center staff went proactively silent, even when approached by the press. This was not a lack of courage. Indeed, we believe it was a collective act of kindness. No one wanted to put their more vulnerable colleagues at greater risk while sensitive negotiations were underway to secure severance and health care for people who needed to buy groceries and pay rent. Silence seemed to be a virtue. And that is precisely what authoritarians count on. Uncertainty about the present and the future is what they exploit. Intimidation need not be explicit; indeed, it is often more powerful when victims must guess how far their tormentors are willing to go and are forced to act on limited knowledge. Here is the Polish, 1980s version of how it happens, as one of us, then a Fulbright Scholar in martial law Poland, witnessed. From the street sweeper to the head of a hospital, university, theater or government agency, everyone was forced to navigate a steady state of insecurity, uncertain what provocations could happen in the next day or hour. All of society was made aware that nothing was firmly guaranteed, neither jobs nor status, and especially not human dignity. One day, university presidents were fired. The next day, the regime demanded that professors sign loyalty oaths or surrender their jobs. A respected journalist who dared, in guarded language, to report facts suddenly found himself a taxi driver to support his family. The regime honored the law when it was convenient, flouted it when inconvenient. Poles called it 'uncertain tomorrow.' This is a lesson. Humiliation can be imposed in a variety of ways: required oaths, a shocking fall from grace and position, a strip search, a searched apartment, being forced to stand in line for hours for basic food staples or watching any of that happen to family, friends and colleagues. Whole books have been written seeking to understand how human beings respond to such conditions, whether they accept dependence or take the tougher road of refusal. We do not think our country is Poland under communism yet. At the moment, humiliation is not a feature of every contact with the formal organs of our government, as it was there. On the other hand, this is a new phenomenon for Americans who have, until now, been spared these specific systematic cruelties, hurled from official positions. Now, in a time that could be a turning point, we need to school ourselves to understand and resist techniques that Trump instinctively grasps, but most Americans may not. In this strange new world of unrecognizable features, societal slides can happen rapidly, facilitated by naivety born of inexperience and denial. It took days to reduce the Wilson Center from an internationally respected think-tank that reveled in its independence and intellectual leadership to a smoldering wreck, soon to be nonexistent. The pace of repeated indignities meant that, within days of April 1, new outrages relegated the Wilson Center putsch to obscurity. As we write, public attention has moved on. In this reality, what is at first unthinkable soon becomes routine. The struggles of the Polish people also offer an alternative of resistance and hope. What Poles sought from the Solidarity movement that coalesced in 1980 and set the stage for the new democracy that began to emerge in 1989 was, first among others, dignity — the antithesis of humiliation. The Poles had to dig themselves out of a deeper hole than is currently our challenge; first the Nazi, and then the Communist regime supported by a powerful, armed neighbor. Even so, they took to the streets. They pursued every possible means of peaceful opposition to confront oppression. At this momentous historical juncture, our assignment as Americans is to find ways to turn our humiliation into action, to reclaim our dignity. Ruth Greenspan Bell, according to her dismissal letter, is, until May 31, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Janine R. Wedel, a social anthropologist in the Schar School at George Mason University, is the author of 'The Private Poland' and 'UNACCOUNTABLE: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class.'
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Ideas die in silence: Trump has quietly killed the Wilson Center
Recently, a federal judge temporarily blocked one of President Trump's efforts to fire federal employees. Similarly, independent agencies, one after another — including, most recently, the U.S. Institute for Peace — have been successful in court in blocking attempts to dismantle congressionally chartered institutions. The one glaring exception is the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For reasons only he can explain, Mark Green, the president of the Wilson Center when Elon Musk's DOGE arrived, walked away without a fight. Founded by President Richard Nixon and supported by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Wilson Center was created to be part of the 'Republic of Letters.' It was a window into America's psyche at a time when the nation believed it would shape the world of ideas and win the global intellectual debate against communism. Great Republicans built the Wilson Center, and leaders from across the political spectrum sustained it. Admittedly, the work of the Wilson Center isn't quite as tangible as that of, for example, U.S. Agency for International Development. The destruction of the center, however, marks the end of an ambitious, decades-long project to shape public debate and support unique scholarship worldwide — the slow-motion death of ideas. The Wilson Center helped shape the intellectual trajectory of thinkers who are now viewed as among the greatest of all time. Mario Vargas Llosa reimagined Brazil's only historical famine, bringing Canudos to a global stage. 'The War of the End of the World,' among his other books, helped earn him the Nobel Prize in Literature — a recognition for Vargas Llosa, but also for the idea that scholarship can shape national memory. John Lewis Gaddis, already a Cold War historian of note, decided that the Wilson Center would house his exploration of different perspectives on that long struggle. With the Cold War International History Project, he searched high and low for primary-source documents behind the Iron Curtain that would enlighten and educate Americans on how others saw and explained the same events — altering our understanding of the Cold War and challenging our impulse to navel gaze. The Wilson Center saved lives — literally. When Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program and a renowned Iranian American scholar, was held in solitary confinement in Iran's Evin Prison in 2007, the center mounted a campaign to free her. President Lee Hamilton reminded the world of who she was and what she meant — to the U.S., to Iranian scholarship, to human dignity. A year later, the ayatollah himself relented and Esfandiari was freed. The center wasn't just where great thinkers came to work — it was where many staged their launch. When a young Tom Friedman returned from the Middle East, where he was the first Jewish correspondent for the New York Times in the region, he found a home at the center. There, he wrote 'From Beirut to Jerusalem,' the book that set the stage for a new era of foreign affairs journalism. Decades later, a 20-something Ben Rhodes honed his craft at the center. Hired by Hamilton, he worked on the 9/11 Commission and Iraq Study Group Report. In the years to follow, Rhodes would come to reinvigorate American foreign policy and American values a few blocks up the street — at his desk inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, as an Obama speechwriter and a deputy National Security Advisor. And then there were the women of the center: Gloria Steinem; Madeleine Albright, when she was still a scholar, not yet a diplomat; former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who served as the center's president; and Nina Jankowicz, one of the most vocal and visible intellectuals against disinformation. Each left her mark and carried forward the Wilsonian ideal that scholarship and public service are not opposing callings, but one and the same. The Wilson Center's demise under a second Trump administration was never a foregone conclusion. It operated primarily on private funding, costing the government a negligible amount. What's more, the center has never been one to go gently into the dark night. In 1998, the House slashed its budget to the brink of closure, but the Senate stepped in. Ideas prevailed. And yet, this time is different. Without a leader to defend it in court, as many other congressionally chartered institutions have done, the Wilson Center is slowly being dismantled and picked for parts. Other think tanks in Washington are attempting to keep the center's scholarship alive by absorbing some of its programs. The private funding that supported it — tens of millions of dollars — will mostly end up in the Trump administration's coffers, because donors are too afraid to ask for it back. Those donors who paid for programming that can no longer be implemented and asked for their unused funds back have been refused. With the dismantling of the Wilson Center and the threats to universities across the country, the future of American scholarship is now uncertain. The impact of unrecognized talent, policy unpursued and unshared ideas will be felt most acutely in the coming years. But this much we do know — the Wilson Center's quiet dismantling is not just the story of one institution's fall, but a warning about what we lose when we stop defending the spaces that nurture inquiry, elevate dialogue and believe in intellectual leadership. The lesson of the Wilson Center is that American global and intellectual leadership won't end in a dramatic way, all at once. It will fade away into the background, unsupported. Ideas die in silence. And this time, silence won. Jana Nelson is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere. She worked for the Wilson Center as an intern, research assistant and consultant between 2008 and 2010. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Ideas die in silence: Trump has quietly killed the Wilson Center
Recently, a federal judge temporarily blocked one of President Trump's efforts to fire federal employees. Similarly, independent agencies, one after another — including, most recently, the U.S. Institute for Peace — have been successful in court in blocking attempts to dismantle congressionally chartered institutions. The one glaring exception is the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For reasons only he can explain, Mark Green, the president of the Wilson Center when Elon Musk's DOGE arrived, walked away without a fight. Founded by President Richard Nixon and supported by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the Wilson Center was created to be part of the 'Republic of Letters.' It was a window into America's psyche at a time when the nation believed it would shape the world of ideas and win the global intellectual debate against communism. Great Republicans built the Wilson Center, and leaders from across the political spectrum sustained it. Thank you for signing up! Subscribe to more newsletters here Admittedly, the work of the Wilson Center isn't quite as tangible as that of, for example, U.S. Agency for International Development. The destruction of the center, however, marks the end of an ambitious, decades-long project to shape public debate and support unique scholarship worldwide — the slow-motion death of ideas. The Wilson Center helped shape the intellectual trajectory of thinkers who are now viewed as among the greatest of all time. Mario Vargas Llosa reimagined Brazil's only historical famine, bringing Canudos to a global stage. 'The War of the End of the World,' among his other books, helped earn him the Nobel Prize in Literature — a recognition for Vargas Llosa, but also for the idea that scholarship can shape national memory. John Lewis Gaddis, already a Cold War historian of note, decided that the Wilson Center would house his exploration of different perspectives on that long struggle. With the Cold War International History Project, he searched high and low for primary-source documents behind the Iron Curtain that would enlighten and educate Americans on how others saw and explained the same events — altering our understanding of the Cold War and challenging our impulse to navel gaze. The Wilson Center saved lives — literally. When Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program and a renowned Iranian American scholar, was held in solitary confinement in Iran's Evin Prison in 2007, the center mounted a campaign to free her. President Lee Hamilton reminded the world of who she was and what she meant — to the U.S., to Iranian scholarship, to human dignity. A year later, the ayatollah himself relented and Esfandiari was freed. The center wasn't just where great thinkers came to work — it was where many staged their launch. When a young Tom Friedman returned from the Middle East, where he was the first Jewish correspondent for the New York Times in the region, he found a home at the center. There, he wrote 'From Beirut to Jerusalem,' the book that set the stage for a new era of foreign affairs journalism. Decades later, a 20-something Ben Rhodes honed his craft at the center. Hired by Hamilton, he worked on the 9/11 Commission and Iraq Study Group Report. In the years to follow, Rhodes would come to reinvigorate American foreign policy and American values a few blocks up the street — at his desk inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, as an Obama speechwriter and a deputy National Security Advisor. And then there were the women of the center: Gloria Steinem; Madeleine Albright, when she was still a scholar, not yet a diplomat; former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who served as the center's president; and Nina Jankowicz, one of the most vocal and visible intellectuals against disinformation. Each left her mark and carried forward the Wilsonian ideal that scholarship and public service are not opposing callings, but one and the same. The Wilson Center's demise under a second Trump administration was never a foregone conclusion. It operated primarily on private funding, costing the government a negligible amount. What's more, the center has never been one to go gently into the dark night. In 1998, the House slashed its budget to the brink of closure, but the Senate stepped in. Ideas prevailed. And yet, this time is different. Without a leader to defend it in court, as many other congressionally chartered institutions have done, the Wilson Center is slowly being dismantled and picked for parts. Other think tanks in Washington are attempting to keep the center's scholarship alive by absorbing some of its programs. The private funding that supported it — tens of millions of dollars — will mostly end up in the Trump administration's coffers, because donors are too afraid to ask for it back. Those donors who paid for programming that can no longer be implemented and asked for their unused funds back have been refused. With the dismantling of the Wilson Center and the threats to universities across the country, the future of American scholarship is now uncertain. The impact of unrecognized talent, policy unpursued and unshared ideas will be felt most acutely in the coming years. But this much we do know — the Wilson Center's quiet dismantling is not just the story of one institution's fall, but a warning about what we lose when we stop defending the spaces that nurture inquiry, elevate dialogue and believe in intellectual leadership. The lesson of the Wilson Center is that American global and intellectual leadership won't end in a dramatic way, all at once. It will fade away into the background, unsupported. Ideas die in silence. And this time, silence won. Jana Nelson is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere. She worked for the Wilson Center as an intern, research assistant and consultant between 2008 and 2010.
New York Times
29-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
‘A Great Emboldening': Trump Inspires Wannabe Authoritarians Everywhere
When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. convened democracy summits at the White House in 2021 and 2023, he pointedly disinvited President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a man he had once described an 'autocrat' who deserved to be driven from office by voters. On Tuesday, President Trump offered a much rosier assessment of the Turkish president, even as protesters filled the streets following the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, Mr. Erdogan's chief political rival. 'A good leader,' the president said of Mr. Erdogan during a meeting of his ambassadors at the White House. He made no mention of the arrest or the protests. Since taking office 66 days ago, Mr. Trump has turned a central precept of American diplomacy on its head. He is embracing — rather than denouncing — fellow leaders who abandon democratic principles. The longstanding bipartisan effort to bolster democratic institutions around the globe has been replaced by a president who praises leaders who move toward autocracy. And Mr. Trump's own actions — taking revenge against his political rivals, attacking law firms, journalists and universities, and questioning the authority of the judiciary — are offering new models for democratically elected leaders in countries like Serbia and Israel who have already shown their willingness to push the boundaries of their own institutions. 'There's a great emboldening,' said Rosa Balfour, the Europe director for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'What Trump says reverberates strongly here. But also what the United States does not do. It does not punish or condemn any attempt to undermine rule of law or democracy. There are no repercussions.' Jane Harman, a former member of Congress and former president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, noted that Mr. Erdogan and other leaders around the world had been 'drifting away' from democratic principles for years. In 2016, a faction in Mr. Erdogan's government attempted a coup to overthrow him. Since then, he has tightened control of the presidency by attacking the media, political opponents, the courts and other institutions. 'This has become a very different world, but I don't think Trump started it, and I don't think Trump is going to end it either,' Ms. Harman said. And she noted that in at least a few places, Mr. Trump's return to power had prompted some voters to question the authoritarian leanings of candidates and parties. 'Think Germany,' she said, referring to recent elections in the country. 'The far right has risen in popularity, but it didn't win. And the backlash to Trump might have been part of the momentum that held it back.' Mr. Trump is not the first president to tolerate less-than-democratic actions from allies when they deemed it necessary. Mr. Biden offered a fist-bump to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, even as he blamed him for the murder of the columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Mr. Biden also worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who has increasingly cracked down on dissent in his country, and — at times — with Mr. Erdogan. But Mr. Trump's election has coincided with actions by elected leaders that appear to depart from the kind of democratic principles that America stood for. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no longer needs to contend with Mr. Biden's opposition to a long-planned overhaul of the courts, which many Israelis view as an attempt to control and politicize the judiciary. In 2023, Mr. Biden told reporters that Mr. Netanyahu 'cannot continue down this road' of judicial changes. Now, with Mr. Trump in office, the Israeli leader faces no such pressure. This month, he fired the chief of the country's domestic intelligence agency, a move seen as undermining its independence. Later, the cabinet approved a vote of no confidence in the country's attorney general, prompting fresh accusations that Mr. Netanyahu is curbing the independence of the justice system, purging officials he considers disloyal. On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu's allies in Parliament voted to give themselves more power over the selection of the country's judges. The vote came after the prime minister gave a speech echoing Mr. Trump and saying that the action meant that 'the deep state is in danger.' 'The U.S. is not going to put any pressure whatsoever on Netanyahu to respect the democratic institutions of his own country,' Ms. Balfour said. 'Netanyahu feels that he has impunity in that respect.' In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic has spent years attacking the media and other political opponents. Last month — as Mr. Trump dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development — Mr. Vucic sent police to raid organizations in his country, some of which had received money from the now largely shuttered American agency. Authorities in Mr. Vucic's government cited Mr. Trump's actions in the United States as justification for moving against the organizations, including the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability and Civic Initiatives. They quoted Elon Musk, the multibillionaire who is running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, who claimed, without evidence, that USAID was a 'criminal organization.' Two weeks after the raids in Serbia, Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, traveled to Belgrade, the country's capital, to interview Mr. Vucic for his podcast. In the interview, Mr. Vucic complained that he, like the American president, is opposed by 'an entire liberal establishment from Washington and New York and L.A. going against you.' He said the raids of the nongovernmental organizations were designed to root out corruption and financial mismanagement. Mr. Trump Jr. fawned over Mr. Vucic, describing what he called 'an embrace of common sense, an embrace of law and order, of a shared national sense of identity.' He criticized protesters angry about Mr. Vucic's recent actions. 'I'm sure the media will cover them only one way,' Mr. Trump Jr. said. 'And now there's seemingly evidence that they are all tied in some form to the same left-wing actors here in America. That same propaganda machine.' The president's son is not the only one echoing his father's language. Last week, after Mr. Erdogan's government jailed the mayor of Istanbul, one of Mr. Trump's senior diplomatic envoys spoke positively about Turkey's leader during an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. 'Really transformational,' Steve Witkoff said of a recent telephone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan. 'There's just a lot of good, positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation.' Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, said Mr. Trump's words and actions — and those of his surrogates — are being watched by other leaders. She said the president's lack of condemnation of Mr. Erdogan following the arrest of the Istanbul mayor would have been noted by authoritarian-leaning presidents and prime ministers. 'The moves of Trump in this same direction,' she said, 'embolden foreign leaders who know the U.S. is now an autocratic ally and there will be no consequences for repressive behavior.'
