On this episode of Start Making Sense, Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, talks about refusing to submit to the president, and Adam Hochschild explains Woodrow Wilson’s attacks on his critics.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after signing a proclamation in the Oval Office at the White House on April 17, 2025, in Washington, DC.(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
JD Vance said it most clearly: For the Trump people, “The universities are the enemy.” That’s why Trump is cutting billions of federal funding and making impossible demands that threaten dozens of universities. But universities have begun to resist. Michael Roth comments—he’s the president of Wesleyan, and was the first university president to speak out against Trump’s attacks.
Also on this episode: Trump is not the worst president when it comes to constitutional rights and civil liberties; Woodrow Wilson was worse. Adam Hochschild explains why—starting with his jailing thousands of people whose only crime was speaking out against the president. Adam’s most recent book is American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.
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In June, Trump sent more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to occupy Los Angeles and terrorize the immigrant population. But by the end of July, almost all the Guard and the Marines were gone. Bill Gallegos explains how that happened and what other cities can learn from it.
Also: Bob Dylan fans have been puzzled and troubled by his Christmas album ever since he released it in 2009. To help figure out what Dylan was doing, we turn to Sean Wilentz. He’s author of Bob Dylan in America, and he also teaches history at Princeton. (Originally recorded in January, 2005.)
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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.