NYU Professor Warns of “Democratic Norms Under Siege” in the USA
Professor of Ethics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Michael Posner makes an impassioned call for “resistance” to the latest measures by the Trump administration. In an exclusive interview, Posner mapped out the latest challenges...and their complex roots.
When Michael Posner walked into the Bellon auditorium at HEC Paris this spring, he did not look like a man ready for battle. Soft-spoken, modestly dressed, and self-deprecating, the 75-year-old Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU could have passed for any other American academic on sabbatical in Europe. But within moments of taking his seat, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State under President Barack Obama was delivering a call to arms. “Every aspect of democratic norms that I care about,” he said with quiet intensity, “is being challenged.”
He wasn’t being hyperbolic.
In recent months, U.S. higher education has come under sustained political assault. The Trump administration’s second term has taken aim at U.S. colleges and universities with a campaign described by Columbia University’s former president Lee Bollinger as an “authoritarian takeover.” Federal contracts have been canceled, students have been arrested, and funding has been frozen for institutions that refuse to toe a hardening ideological line. On top of this, schools that allow pro-Palestinian protests, maintain DEI policies, or are slow to discipline faculty who dissent are now deemed suspect - or worse, un-American.
In this context, Posner’s visit to France last month - and his outspoken defense of academic freedom - felt like a strong moral intervention, going beyond the promotion of his latest book “Conscience Incorporated”. Yet as his own record reveals, defending democracy is never so simple. Especially when it comes to the contradictions embedded in America's projection of human rights abroad - or within the walls of elite institutions like NYU.
“We’re Going to Be Diminished”
Posner shared his thoughts a day after a roundtable with HEC students and faculty. “This is a moment for people like me in the academy,” he began, “to be encouraging people to speak out… to challenge what the US administration is doing.” Eight days after our exchange, over 100 university presidents signed a joint letter denouncing what they called “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with their institutions.
Indeed, the latest campaign launched by the Trump White House against American universities goes beyond previous waves of campus culture wars. The New York Times and the Guardian report that Columbia alone has had over $400 million in federal funds suspended, unless it agrees to discipline pro-Palestinian activists, reform admissions, and accept federal control over academic departments. Harvard University, meanwhile, has filed a lawsuit over a $2.2 billion freeze in federal funds. Since January, Washington has issued threats to 60 other schools, opened antisemitism investigations, and even jailed a protest leader under an obscure Cold War-era statute.
“This is not a normal political fight,” Posner said. “It’s an attempt to delegitimize the basic role that universities play in a democratic society.” He is far from alone in this view. Veena Dubal, general counsel of the American Association of University Professors, calls the climate one of “extraordinary fear.” Activists and legal experts warn that the administration’s coercive tactics may be illegal, but so far resistance has been tepid. “Universities are terrified of losing millions and millions of dollars,” Dubal told The Guardian. “There is a lot of self-censorship going on.”
A Culture of Fear -And Its Roots
Yet Posner’s analysis doesn’t begin in 2024. “Universities have become too reluctant to allow serious debate over contentious issues,” he explained. “It’s not just Trump. It’s become part of the culture of schools to be intolerant of fierce disagreement, and I think it’s come back to haunt us now.”
This intolerance, he suggested, took root well before Trump’s resurgence, through self-censorship, excessive sensitivity, and what some call “cancel culture.” The former lawyer blamed both faculty and administration for stifling rigorous debate. “Whatever the issue,” he said, “there’s been a sense of ‘oh my gosh, students are very sensitive, we have to constrain speech that’s emotionally evocative.’”
It’s a diagnosis that seems to echo criticism from across the board, and Posner insisted his beliefs are anchored in liberal values - not least of all the First Amendment. Yet his own record suggests a pattern of accommodation to power, even as he positions himself as a principled dissenter.
Human Rights in the State Department: A Mixed Legacy
From 2009 to 2013, Posner served as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under President Obama, answering to his direct superior, Hillary Clinton. “It was probably the high point of U.S. diplomacy and human rights,” he told us. “I felt that I was respected, that people were listening, even if I didn’t always win.”
But critics like Kenneth Roth, longtime head of Human Rights Watch, offer a different narrative. “Obama often treated human rights as a secondary interest - nice to support when the cost was not too high,” Roth wrote in 2012. He later detailed failures ranging from the expansion of drone warfare and mass surveillance to the failure to close Guantánamo and support for repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
When we discussed this with Posner, he defended his tenure. “There’s always a tension between political interests, strategic interests, economic interests, and human rights,” he said. “I won some, I lost some.” The current director of NYU’s Center for Business and Human Rights pointed to victories in Myanmar and Bahrain, as well as grants to promote democracy abroad. But on key controversies - such as U.S. support for India’s Narendra Modi (though “Modi at the time was the Governor of Gujarat and we denied him entry to the United States on this human rights issue.”), or the use of drones for extrajudicial killings - he demurred. “That was a different era,” he said.
Silences and Sessions at NYU
Today, the challenges are closer to home. Since the start of the Israel’s conflict with Gaza, Posner has been at the center of internal debates at NYU over how universities should handle the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“For better or worse, I became the person the university asked to convene and moderate conversations about Israel and Gaza,” he said. During the tenure of President Joe Biden, Posner oversaw 11 sessions with students, faculty, and trustees - all behind closed doors. “I made a point of not speaking publicly,” he explained. “Once it’s in the public, then you’re off and running into controversy.”
That decision to remain discreet may have shielded NYU’s administration - but did it protect academic freedom? In the past year, student protests have met with police intervention and administrative crackdowns. Asked whether Israel’s disproportionate response in Gaza constituted a human rights violation, Posner replied: “The Israeli response in Gaza - denying food and medicine and using disproportionate force - that’s a human rights violation. And so was October 7, 2023. My job is to explain both.”
The Student Debate: From Farm Dreams to Goldman Sachs
If there’s one place where Posner seemed most engaged during his Paris visit, it was during the two-hour conversation with HEC Paris students moderated by Charles Autheman. Autheman teaches business and human rights at the business school, as well as working as an international consultant for the International Labor Organization and other UN agencies. The discussion went beyond geopolitics to confront a central contradiction in Posner’s own career: How do you push for human rights from within institutions that often suppress them? (See our separate article fully devoted to this exchange).
Some students expressed despair. One asked how they could remain hopeful amid corporate complicity, political apathy, and ecological crisis. Posner’s answer, part realism and part rallying cry, was to focus on reform from within. “Don’t be afraid to go into a big, complicated company,” he said. “Learn some stuff. Get the tools to figure out how you can change those companies.”
That message felt tailored to the HEC online and in-person audiences. But Posner was also clear-eyed about the obstacles. “The first day you go to Goldman Sachs,” he told the students, “they’re not going to ask about your views on human rights. Let’s be real. But if you work your way up with these values in mind, you will see things that others don’t.”
Autheman discussed with him ways in which structural change could happen in businesses whose very models depend on labor exploitation or carbon extraction. In response, Posner emphasized that leadership, consumer pressure, and “incrementalism” could sway companies into more responsible business practices.
For a younger generation hungry for urgency, that approach might feel insufficient. But Posner framed it as the only viable strategy. “Change won’t come because governments say so. It won’t come from CEOs suddenly waking up. It’s going to come from the middle - from new employees, from students like you.”
Conscience, Incorporated - or Compromised?
Posner’s new book, “Conscience Incorporated”, prefaced by his former boss Hillary Clinton, attempts to chart a better path forward, indicated in its subtitle: “Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights”. Drawing on cases involving Nike, Coca-Cola, and Meta, it calls for corporate leaders to adopt sustainable human rights policies - not as charity, but as strategic business priorities. Students at HEC engaged him on the topic, and he encouraged them to seek change from within. “Every time a business student asks about climate or labor rights,” he told them, “it sends a signal… it begins to change the culture”.
The message resonated. But it also raised a question, left unanswered: can conscience be scaled within corporations whose profits rely on the very violations he condemns? More pointedly, can a respected figure like Posner - with ties to both state power and the C-suites of multinational firms - lead the charge?
Beyond Quiet Resistance
For all his rhetoric about resisting Trump, Posner’s institutional instincts remain cautious. At NYU, he defended the right to open dialogue - but avoided public alignment with student protesters. As Assistant Secretary, he fought for human rights - but within the bounds of strategic diplomacy. Even his book’s reforms are framed in the language of investor priorities, not radical transformation. The danger, as Columbia’s Bollinger warned, is not just repression - it is acquiescence.
Still, Posner was not blind to the stakes. “We will be diminished by what Trump is doing,” he confided in our interview. “It’s going to take time to undo. But I still believe our institutions can fight back.”
At Posner’s side are a growing body of observers and actors saying that if American universities are to defend themselves, they will need more than moderation. Actors like the 100-plus signatories of the April 22 letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, who say they “must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses, (and) must reject the coercive use of public research funding.” They continue: “Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.” A position which appears to take Michael Posner’s “incrementalism” that one step further.