Speak Up. Now.

Donald Trump isn’t trying to silence Mahmoud Khalil. He’s trying to silence you.

Mahmoud Khalil was arrested over the weekend by government agents, reportedly without a warrant, and put in jail. There is no pretense that Khalil committed a crime. There is not even a pretense that Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, broke rules around immigration. He is being held because he was an outspoken leader of Columbia University campus protests against the Israeli war in Gaza. He was arrested for speech critical of the government. We know this because Donald Trump said so in his Truth Social postings. The White House X page, an official voice of the President of the United States, chillingly threatened that “this is the first arrest of many to come.”

The First Amendment was written precisely for this purpose. If we can be arrested for assembling to speak on political causes or for telling the government that we disagree with their action, then we no longer live in a free country. As with other rights enumerated in the Constitution, this right is not restricted to citizens of the United States. Unless the courts are willing to abdicate their duty completely, Khalil will be set free.

But, in the long run, as unjust as this action may be, the freedom of one person or even the rights of non-citizens is not what is at stake. Khalil was not imprisoned because Trump wanted to take away his freedom. He was imprisoned in order to take away freedom from all of us by causing us to question whether we should speak out. Trump is warning critics to be quiet. In the same way he singled out Columbia University for attack by stripping it of federal funding and then releasing a list of other universities in his sights with the intention of silencing them, he is singling out a former Columbia student, not because he cares about this student in particular, but because of the cascade of compliance he hopes will begin.

Chalk (banned in an act of anticipatory compliance) on Harvard’s campus (3/11/2025)

There is no doubt that such fascist tactics will be partially successful in stifling dissent. Indeed, I have first-hand evidence that they already have been. Friends and colleagues are scrubbing their social media accounts out of fear of retribution. Conversations have gone to Signal, rather than email, for the same reason. It’s been reported to me directly that the Harvard Gazette, the official mouthpiece of Harvard, has intentionally changed its coverage in order to signal a campus climate relatively friendly to Trump and his allies in Congress. Think about this: a newspaper and a university, institutions which are supposed to represent the essence of independent thought that characterizes a free society, are changing their speech to please the ruling regime.

But Trump isn’t just silencing individuals or institutions, he is silencing entire classes of people by raising the stakes for speaking out. If you were in the United States on a visa or a green card, why would you risk speaking out now? As I mentioned, there is little doubt that Khalil will be set free, but he will pay a tremendous cost while the courts decide his fate: He may spend months in prison. He will likely miss the birth of his child by his 8-month pregnant wife. His family will suffer. The logic of repression is not that a tyrant uses violence to silence everyone directly. It is that they use violence to make examples of a few, with the others knowing that they may be next, and then choosing to self-censor. This is exactly what the White House is signaling with their disgusting Tweets.

And, as repressive regimes do, they are strategically choosing the targets of their example-making. They know that campus protests are mostly unpopular. They are exploiting the American abhorrence of bigotry by wrapping their actions in protection against anti-Semitism. They are associating Khalil’s actions with terrorism so that people will be reluctant to defend him. Authoritarian regimes strategically pick off those around whom there is a stigma—in 1930s Germany it was Communists and Jews, in 2000s Russia, it was Muslims—because they know it will make us less likely to come to their defense. In a sense, Trump is hoping we will all be partners in his repression by making the decision to not come to the defense of those with whom we may disagree.

There is no ambiguity in what is happening. These are the actions of a repressive fascist regime, and they are happening right now in the United States. As an American, if you have ever looked out across the world to places like Russia and China and wondered what it might be like to be afraid to speak your mind, you can stop imagining because you are now experiencing the machinery of censorship firsthand.

So, now we have a choice to make. If you are a citizen of the United States, the time to speak up is now. Donald Trump is trying to silence you. He is trying to take away your liberty. When some people in this country are already afraid to speak, which is now the case, he has already taken part of that liberty away.

Call your Representative. Call your Senator. Organize a protest. Most importantly, speak up publicly so everyone can hear it. This is the only way to counter the attempt to silence you. If you have a megaphone so that other people can hear—perhaps because you are a CEO, a college President, a professor, a principal, a leader of a local club, somebody with a significant social media presence or even a small one, or even if you will just be joining friends at your local book club this week—speak up now and tell them that you will not be silenced.