Even the Daily Mail is reporting on a course at Butler University that explores the election of Donald Trump and strategies for resistance. It is ironic that the article (and the conservative blog posts it is based on) views the offering of such a course as somehow against the spirit of inclusivity. If I may (in the spirit of inclusivity) offer a Star Trek analogy on Star Wars day, the inclusive United Federation of Planets has to develop strategies of resistance against the Borg, because the Borg wants to assimilate everyone else and impose a monolithic existence on everyone. The only way to defend inclusivity is to resist those who attack it. There is nothing ironic or self-contradictory about doing so.
Butler University was founded by an abolitionist who admitted people of all skin colors and genders to the university, and so the very creation of Butler University is a “strategy of resistance” against the ideology that Donald Trump and his supporters represent. It is a particularly good “strategy of resistance,” I’d say, as it is still going strong after more than a century and a half, and training students in ways that they can keep resisting discrimination, hatred, violence, and injustice in its varied forms. And I am proud to be a participant in that heritage and that effort.
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