Colleges and Universities around the United States are on break (or about to be) for students observing Easter. Usually, these mid-semester lulls are a chance for students to recharge, and for their professors to catch up on grading in preparation for the end of the spring semester. This year, however, we are all wondering how many empty seats we will return to. Surely you have already lost international students whose visas have been revoked, if you have not, just look at the news: Utah Tech University is hosting an early graduation for international students because so many are being forced to leave, graduate students are being abducted and sent to prisons across the country, and some may be disappeared to a concentration camp in El Salvador.

Donald Trump’s attack on higher education and international students (especially those who are non-white) is unprecedented and situated in a context that already lacked even the guise of sympathy. Students are about to graduate, about to receive grades, some are working on dissertations, or scrambling to salvage data from projects that have been defunded. Will they receive credit for the courses they had almost completed before their visas and/or legal status was rescinded? Will they graduate? Will they get to say goodbye to friends, colleagues, and mentors before they are forced to leave? Disrupting dreams and relationships is already cruel, but the timing seems intentionally vindictive.

I am a political scientist by training, and as any social scientist will likely point out, we are stuck in the thorniest of collective action problems. If we speak out, what will the consequences be for ourselves, our students, and our institutions be? Even if we successfully mobilize as a guild, what will the effects be? To solve broad social problems such as this, mass collective action is needed, but our moment is both one of great risk and uncertain outcome. When risk is high and outcomes are uncertain, mass collective action is difficult in ways that transcend the ‘free rider’ problem.

What does collective action even look like, what power do faculty members, faculty senates, and national associations have? I am new to the professoriate and faculty exert less control over their institutions than I anticipated. Certainly, my expectations of what we do outside of the classroom were naïve, there is a romanticization of this profession that is only natural in graduate school. Yet, I can’t help but feel we can do more. What does more look like? Is it petitions? The concrete effects under these circumstances seem unclear. Is it resolutions passed in faculty senates in support of international students and colleagues? These may be helpful, but I am not certain they will do much to stem the tide.

I believe colleges and universities need to do deep planning about operating inside of a disintegrating democracy [1].

Schools should make partnerships with institutions in other countries to facilitate students finishing their degree with minimal disruption if forced to leave; professors should have plans in place to help students complete their semesters through distance learning; but most of all, we should be loud in our opposition. Schools that capitulate to Trump’s demands should have massive faculty revolts: votes of no confidence, protests, clandestine networks of support to replace lost services for a diverse student body. In other cases, there should be deeper collaboration between faculty and staff to ensure students and colleagues are supported. Departments should reduce tenure requirements (or pause tenure clocks) so that faculty can organize against authoritarianism, so that we can do everything possible to rescue higher education and communicate the value of our profession. Is it hyperbolic to assume that this could be the end of higher education if we do nothing, that every school will be as denuded as Columbia? [2]

We may not know what the end of our resistance will look like, but the outcome of inaction is certain. Empty chairs. Empty chairs where students used to be.

[1] Are we even a democracy? According to the Center for Systemic Peace’s polity data, the United States ceased to be a democracy in January of 2025 after the Supreme Court granted broad immunity to Presidents.

[2] If it isn’t that, surely the disappearance of people without due process to a concentration camp is the crossing of the Rubicon?