Backlash at Yale to its negotiations with Trump shine a light on the danger of smaller authoritarian structures in civil society

As news started to spread of Yale’s leadership negotiating a deal with the Trump administration, the university’s faculty, students and alumni sprang into action to oppose any settlement. What the president and lawyers intend remains unclear. In the case of Harvard, it appears that Trumpists – and Trump himself, for that matter – might have been leaking about concessions being imminent partly to put pressure on the university. What is clear is that the Trump administration has embarked on a wide-ranging investigation of Yale, accusing it of discriminating against white and Asian students. But in any case, the battle over Yale’s response reveals a troubling pattern. Many of us had thought that the US possessed a robust civil society that could act as a counterweight to an overbearing government and resist authoritarian encroachments. What few reckoned with: its institutions themselves can be run in a fairly authoritarian fashion – universities being a prime example, with deleterious consequences for democracy as a whole.

The argument for the freedom-preserving role of civil society has been known at least since a French aristocrat travelled the US in the early 19th century in order to uncover why American mass democracy, unlike democracy in his native country, appeared stable and peaceful. Alexis de Tocqueville ended up singing the praises of how Americans are always associating with each other to discover and, if necessary, defend common interests. That wisdom still resonates in lived experience today, starting with birdwatchers and the PTA.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

A 2021 state law allows campus police to own military equipment for civilian safety – students fear it may be used to quash dissent

For many public colleges and universities in California, keeping their campuses safe includes owning military-grade weaponry: AR-15s, stun grenades designed to cause temporary blindness and sonic weapons that resonate so loudly they are known in the armed forces as the voice of God.

According to California state law, campus police can only own military equipment if the college believes there is no other way to uphold civilian safety.

Ron DeSantis’s Stop Woke Act suffers another legal setback, with the state accused of ‘puppeteering’

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A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education.

In a scathing order, judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said by a 2-1 majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment.