In light of the IRS’s reported move to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status under political pressure from Trump—how can activists effectively protest this kind of authoritarian overreach?
What strategies work best for defending academic freedom and resisting authoritarian uses of bureaucratic tools like tax law?
These days, protest feels more labyrinthine than ever, its subjects hidden within thick layers of bureaucracy, rules, and grey regulatory language. The IRS descending upon Harvard like some abstract authoritarian specter reminds us how quickly familiar terrain can fade into a murky twilight zone. Bureaucracy loves nothing more than predictability; it disguises itself as neutral, the quiet hum of paperwork, rules and policies made safe behind their blandness. And yet, beneath this bureaucratic neutrality, there is an acute ideological force—potent, sleek, and dangerous precisely because it is considered harmless.
Traditional forms of protest—marches, speeches, banners raised beneath the sky—have a strange beauty, an eternal pull. But against this new form of authoritarianism, whose weapons hide in the fine print of laws and the tedium of tax codes, older tactics begin to falter. Protests can no longer simply aim at policy reversal or immediate outrage. Bureaucratic machinery knows what to do with marching crowds, with the roar of thousands that quickly fades away into a headline, forgotten.
Micah White writes that effective protests must embrace innovation, must remain unpredictable, mutable—alive with the sort of creativity that makes bureaucrats uneasy. This is a battle at the level of consciousness, he argues, and here the immaterial plane becomes crucial. If we can aim an idea straight into the heart of the world's army, metaphorically persuading them to drop their guns, surely we can also illumine dim bureaucratic halls to expose the hidden forces at play. The battle for academic freedom—this skirmish over Harvard's tax-exempt status—is fundamentally a battle of stories, of competing imaginations and contradictory narratives.
Creativity, symbolic disruption, satire, irony—these are powerful tools now. We need pop-up teach-ins around government buildings, sudden, unannounced symbolic funerals mourning free speech, staged in city centers and public squares—a solemn undertaker ringing a solitary bell. Imagine generating memes and short viral videos, floating them onto platforms no one expects to see activism inhabit—LinkedIn, Instagram. This isn’t merely attention-grabbing; it is a necessary reshaping of the narrative itself, cracking open the mythological neutrality of administrative actions to spill forth the deeply ideological manipulations lurking inside.
A novelist friend of mine once told me the power of stories lies in making the abstract painfully human. Bureaucratic abuses thrive on their abstraction, their safe distances. It becomes our task, then, to shrink this distance, to give this faceless machine a face—a face that people recognize, that they see in their mirrors, homes, schools and lives.
We cannot face such bureaucratic maneuvers on worn-out battlegrounds alone. Unlikely alliances—between technologists, artists, journalists, lawyers, even thoughtful business leaders—must be cultivated. Once these disparate voices unite, they speak with an undeniable authority. Imagine joint letters by ideological adversaries, statements from prominent educators, essays from technologists exposing algorithmic bias. Imagine running relentless Freedom of Information requests, legal guerrilla campaigns, exposing hidden political machinations beneath dry administrative memos. Suddenly, ambiguity itself—a tool long deployed by bureaucrats—becomes a new sort of weapon. The tactical use of documents, procedures, their own tedious language turned against them.
But our activism must also extend to anticipating potential constitutional manipulations—the Guarantee Clause or other vague clauses ripe for authoritarian misuse. Predicting and publicly exposing these future plays before they happen is vital, teaching the public how subtle shifts in constitutional interpretations signify dangerous shifts in democratic norms.
But perhaps the most important pivot is internal, psychological—what Micah White terms spiritual rebellion. The IRS attack against Harvard demands activism that reshapes not merely opinions but human imagination itself. Shift the narrative, yes, but also change the very framework within which those stories resonate. Art exhibits, film series reflecting on historical abuses—placing bureaucratic overreach alongside the dark shadows of McCarthyism—offer emotional and historic resonance. Mental activism, epiphanies crafted and ignited, transforming people’s shared view of supposedly neutral institutions.
To maintain our resourcefulness and prevent infiltrations, these actions might necessarily become shorter, more intense—flashpoints punctuating an otherwise quiet landscape. Quick strikes under the glare of media attention, lingering just long enough to cast hard, unflattering shadows on bureaucratic maneuvers, then vanishing before authority knows how to react.
And yet victory cannot be measured in immediate policy reversals or public concessions. Our victory lies in shifting what people believe, what they can imagine about the institutions they trust. With this approach, we should regularly measure public perception—polls, surveys, easily digestible reports—to visibly highlight shifts in attitudes. We must unveil concrete alternative visions—detailed, intellectual articulations of how governance might look beyond the authoritarian bureaucratic trap. Whitepapers, policy proposals, radical transparency—because critique itself is never enough.
We make institutions accountable not just by marching before them, but by penetrating their language, their metaphors, by turning their complex, dense narratives into clear moral visions. We win not by changing a single policy tomorrow—but by forever altering what's imaginable today.