Civil Disobedience in 21st-Century America

Henry David Thoreau’s (1817-1862) essay "Civil Disobedience," written in 1849, made the convincing case that a person is morally obligated to disobey unjust laws of the land.

Thoreau’s exhortation has stood the test of time. He advocated fearlessness in the face of tyranny and injustice. The two issues that engaged him were the immorality of slavery and the war President James Polk waged against Mexico. 

Thoreau showed his courage by not paying taxes to the U.S. government. It landed him in jail, and even though it was only for a night, it helped make his point that unless one was true to one’s conscience and stood up for one’s principles, life was not worth living. As Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” He also wrote, “There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority were derived, and treats him accordingly.”

Two historical figures who continued Thoreau’s legacy, Gandhi in India (1869-1948) and Martin Luther King (MLK) in the United States (1929-1968), used nonviolent resistance to bring down the Colonial British Rule and expose the world to the cruelty and barbarity of racism, respectively.

These nonviolent movements were not driven by naive pacifists but by people fearless in their convictions, and even though violence was used against them in the most murderous way imaginable, the people prevailed in the end.

We face a similar situation in 21st-century America under President Trump, who has unleashed a vicious and violent assault on the foundational values and critical organizations of America, including the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and protest, funding basic research, revoking visas of and deporting international students from our campuses, instigating reckless trade wars, attacking healthcare, social security, climate change, environmental protection agency, national park service, national institutes of health, internal revenue service and many more.

Trump and his enforcers are not only deporting immigrants without due process of law, they are also abducting innocent Americans in broad daylight and locking them up in inhuman prisons here and abroad. Those who have seen videos of these abductions on social media are compelled to ask if America is turning into a failed republic where lawlessness rules under a despotic president whose thirst for vengeance and skill as an extortionist are visible to anyone without blinders.

Threat, intimidation, and divide and conquer are Trump’s weapons of choice. Several well-known but spineless law firms and cowardly universities like Columbia caved to Trump’s threats, surrendering their self-respect and principles to a president whose main goal in life is to ensure not only that the executive branch dominates and overwhelms the legislative and judicial branches but also unquestioningly his illegal commands.

Harvard, the world's leading university and 140 years older than the United States, forcefully said ‘no’ to Trump’s threats to dismantle departments promoting diversity and freeze federal funding. As Harvard president Alan M. Gerber said, "No government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which area of study they can pursue."

Other institutions should take a cue from Harvard, not sacrificing principles at the altar of expediency, when Trump and his arrogant acolytes threaten to curb academic freedom and hinder the quest for truth.

So, who will continue the legacy of MLK in 21^st-century America, the America of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Manhattan Project, to name only two awe-inspiring milestones from our history, and save our nation from Trump?

The two who currently offer a ray of hope are Bernie Sanders, the 83-year-old Independent senator from Vermont, and his 35-year-old Democratic protégé, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) of New York.

Recently, the two completed their “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour, comprising seven events in five days. The turnouts were exceptional, including deep-red states. About 150,000 Americans, angered by Trump's brazen abuse of the law, mass layoffs, the closing of humanitarian and essential services, and arbitrary deportations and abductions, attended. Los Angeles, California — 36,000; Coachella Valley, California — 35,000; Salt Lake City, Utah — 20,000; Nampa, Idaho — 12,500; Bakersfield, California — 4,450; Folsom, California — 30,000; and Missoula, Montana — 9,000.

What Sanders and AOC have demonstrated is that a majority of Americans are upset and angry with the reckless and destructive policies of Trump. They are eager to support worthy and competent leaders who can defeat Trump and the supine Republican Party in the midterms in 2026 and in the presidential election in 2028.

Americans have rejected the current, mostly old and feckless, Democratic leadership. They are looking for new, young Democrats with fresh ideas to take on Trump and the Republican Party. Ironically, an 83-year-old is drawing huge crowds, irrespective of party affiliations, to save America from Trump and his unelected and incompetent cronies. There’s a reason why. Bernie Sanders is not a prisoner of political correctness. He is fearlessly stating the truth, which is that America is turning into a cruel and lawless country under Trump. Unless we force a change in how our country is governed, this nation will degenerate into a kakistocracy and ultimately collapse. 

However, the stark truth is that Sanders is in the twilight of his career. An octogenarian has no chance whatsoever of becoming the next president. Same goes with AOC. She is young but Americans will not rally around a woman, especially one of color, to defeat Trump. That's the brutal reality. Democrats must field a young, white male with a reasonable reputation to take on Trump for a realistic chance of defeating him. 57-year-old Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, was a viable candidate but his recent bizarre podcasts with infamous right-wingers have diminished his prospects. He may recover but the field is open for the right Democratic candidates to emerge, hopefully in the next few months.

We have surmounted existential threats to America before, most notably a Civil War (1861-1865) that took almost 700,000 lives. What we need now is this: At least 5% of the United States population of 340 million, that is, 17 million Americans, must mobilize in all 50 States to defeat Trump and his unjust, inhuman, and immoral policies. Bernie Sanders and AOC are showing us how this can be done. The 50501 website ("Fifty Protests. 50 States. 1 Movement.") is one of the platforms we can use to mobilize across America.

May we awakened Americans do everything we can to save our nation from a dangerous demagogue through mass rallies, lawsuits, strikes, boycotts and other potent forms of protest, from sea to shining sea.

Retirement Reflections of a Community College Teacher

 

While lifelong learning is everyone's aspiration, time and age make lifelong teaching impossible. That being the case, I will retire as a Math Faculty member from San Jose City College at the end of the spring semester. After 15 years, I leave with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the opportunity to nurture eager knowledge seekers and see them bloom. Few things in life can equal the satisfaction of seeing students find their academic footing and face life with confidence and creativity.

I came to teaching late in life after spending three restless decades at various hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley. “An aim in life,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, “is the only fortune worth finding.” It is possible to go through an entire lifetime without finding one’s “fortune.” I am grateful I found mine after years of wandering in the technological wilderness.

Here are some personal observations on teaching and learning related to community colleges and the challenges they confront moving forward.

First, community college students, many first-generation from low-income families, hunger for affirmation of their worth. They are like dormant seeds waiting for rain and expect us to be that rain. While they understand that teachers require rigor and excellence from them, they also expect such expectations to be tempered by compassion and some occasional humor.

Here’s an example. Maria looked lost on the first day of my statistics class. I saw fear in her eyes, even tears. She emailed me after two weeks that she was behind and couldn’t even understand Measures of Center. “Should I drop your class?” she asked.

After a little thinking, I replied, “Don’t drop. Let’s meet during office hours and see what we can do.”

We met twice weekly over the next several weeks, going over problems step by step. “It’s not easy,” I told her. “I had the same difficulty you are facing when I was learning this.”

Slowly, Maria began making progress. She took charge of her learning. One day she stunned me by disclosing, “I had a brain aneurysm three years ago and am still recovering from it. But it’s finally clicking in my brain.”

Maria received a well-deserved “A” in my class and is currently majoring in psychology at a local university. Miracles occur at the intersection of “Highly demanding” and “highly supportive” for both students and teachers.

Second, students engage if they see the relevance of what they learn in the classroom to what they experience in their lives outside the classroom. Should they buy that laptop warranty (probability and statistics)? How do doctors put the brakes on a pandemic (exponential growth of viruses versus exponential decay via vaccines)? How does math relate to English, physics and other disciplines (real-life problems span disciplines) that reveal their synergy? Relevance and connections deepen intuition and imagination and help students appreciate the power and beauty of their subjects.

Third, we owe it to our students to bring fresh insights and perspectives into our teaching even if we have taught the same material a thousand times. This requires keeping up with the latest developments in our changing fields. How do we capture patterns with mathematical formulas, whether the patterns are in sunflower spirals or the emergence of underground cicadas? How can we differentiate True Positives from False Positives in clinical tests while taking into account the Base Rate? How does math relate to democracy, elections, birthrates and healthcare? We must reflect in our teaching the dynamic nature of knowledge.

Fourth, student affirmations inspire teachers too! We also need to know from time to time that we are igniting the curiosity of students and instilling in them the joy of learning. Every semester, I get an email or two from students that make my spirit soar. One recent missive reads: "I've been working on my psychology course and found myself repeatedly returning to concepts you taught us. Even though we focused on statistics, the way you explained numbers and analyses as tools to understand the world around us has had a lasting impact on me."
A single vote of student confidence per semester can be enough vindication for a teacher.

Now to challenges, specifically two. First is the one posed by the Genie in the Bottle, also known as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its even more powerful version, Artificial General intelligence (AGI), capable of doing almost all cognitive tasks a human can do. Ask any question and tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s CoPilot and Google Gemini give sophisticated answers, albeit with errors that, with newer versions, become fewer. Having difficulty with a particularly pesky algebra or calculus problem? No problem, ask AI. “What effect does climate change have on human and animal migration? Illustrate with specific examples.” Rejoice, AI will create the whole enchilada for you!

Preventing students from using AI is as futile as King Canute commanding incoming tides to halt. The question is how to use AI to complement critical thinking and genuine learning among students without short-circuiting the process. Recently, the California State University (CSU) system (23 campuses, 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff) and the University of California (UC) system, (9 campuses, 295,000 students and 265,000 faculty and staff), launched initiatives with leading Silicon Valley AI companies to train students and faculty in the best use of AI tools. California’s Community College (CCC) system, the largest in the nation with 116 colleges, about 2 million students and 91,328 faculty and staff, is pursuing similar goals. CCC’s Academic Senate has urged Chancellor Dr. Sonya Christian to establish a centralized CCC AI Commons to provide access to generative AI tools and resources for students, faculty and staff, to be modeled after CSU’s centralized AI Commons (https://genai.calstate.edu)

These initiatives are likely to go through several iterations before a coherent, consistent and ethical use of AI in education emerges. But the process has begun and that’s progress.

The second challenge is more daunting: The Trump Administration’s war on education. Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) programs, a hallmark of community colleges, are being dismantled. There is pressure on colleges and universities to revise curriculums to reflect a more conservative agenda. The threat of mass deportations has unsettled CCC’s estimated 100,000 undocumented students, including those protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). To counter the threat, colleges are stepping up efforts to provide legal protection to students and their families. My college, for instance, like most CCC’s, is offering free legal and mental health services to allay the uncertainty, anxiety and fear of students.

On the eve of retirement, two opposing thoughts occupy me. The first is sadness at the enormous damage the Trump administration is inflicting on education in general and our colleges and universities in particular. The second is my faith in the resilience and power of our institutions to protect the vulnerable and the marginalized and to sustain the freedoms that define our democracy. There may be a few defeats and setbacks initially, but I am confident our institutions will come through with their values and principles restored.