Episode Summary In a generic sense, everyone knows that politics is about power. But when you look at how America’s two major parties use the power that they have, there’s no question whatsoever that Republicans understand power politics while Democrats have a much more passive attitude toward it. This has been true since at least 1964 when a dedicated group of reactionaries took over the Republican party and installed their extremist candidate Barry Goldwater and proceeded to systematically cancel and remove anyone who stood in their way. Now during the second administration of Donald Trump, his extremist administration is pulling all the levers of power it can to cancel budgets, cancel people, and threaten anyone who stands in its way. In response, congressional Democratic leaders have mostly resorted to writing strongly worded letters which obviously isn’t cutting it. But what can be done? Karen Attiah, my guest on today’s episode has been thinking and writing a lot about power and why it’s necessary to protect freedom. And she has direct experience at what actual canceling looks like, having been fired from the Washington Post for accurately quoting the late Charlie Kirk. This came after she had a course canceled by Columbia University following her speaking out against Israel's genocide in Gaza and in favor of racial equality. Since the Columbia incident, Karen has started Resistance Summer School, a new effort to teach the history of democratic rights movements which she started after Columbia University canceled a course she was teaching after the university was targeted by dishonest attacks from far-right activists trying to censor students and instructors. And since being fired by the Post, Karen will be redoubling her writing efforts on Substack, so be sure to subscribe. This is the exactly correct response to authoritarianism. Dictatorship is not inevitable, but it wants you to think that it is. The American people did not stand for Disney’s suspension of its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, and after millions of people canceled their subscriptions, it had to reinstate him. Important Note: Our conversation was recorded September 10, 2025, before Kirk was shot at a public event in Utah so we do not discuss her reaction to it. The video of this episode is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content —After centuries of intellectual dominance, liberalism has become uninterested in defending itself —Far-right media will attack the broader left for any reason, even completely fabricated ones —Trump beat Harris because Republicans have an ecosystem while Democrats have a coalition —JB Pritzker’s tough response to Trump’s authoritarian acts and his progressive policies are pointing a better way for Democrats —Americans want big ideas, even if they’re terrible ones —Republicans treat politics like viral marketing, Democrats don’t —History shows that right-wing activists never believed in free speech and that ‘cancel culture’ panic was only about seizing power Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 10:30 — Universities' lost touch with the people is why many keep folding to authoritarianism 16:48 — The political right understands what power can do much better than the political left 22:01 — How living in Texas made Karen not suppose that reactionaries were serious about their ideas 31:01 — Liberals stopped explaining their ideas in an easy to understand way 39:18 — Democratic and other left leaders underestimate the power of religious community and knowing 47:09 — The personal, cult magnetism of Donald Trump 52:23 — There's little need to reach out to right-wing leaders, but some of their followers can be persuaded 59:56 — Fascism isn't inevitable, but you have to have a vision and a realization that power matters Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So you've got a number of interesting things you are doing lately, but one of them is you've got a class that was canceled by the actual cancel culture of Donald Trump from Columbia University that you are teaching independently now. So why don't we start off with you telling us about that. KAREN ATTIAH: Sure. Yeah. It's been such a wild time on so many, in so many levels. Yeah, probably most people might know me as a journalist and a columnist and editor for, the Washington Post, but deep down inside have always wanted to teach. I've always wanted to be an academic. Actually, I ended up a journalist, but but yeah, most people might not know. My background is actually in international affairs, so I went to Columbia as a graduate student and wanted to basically like work in the UN or World Bank or maybe, diplomatic service, that sort of thing. But that experience really made me question a lot about our systems, particularly our international affairs development systems. And while I was a grad student at Columbia School [00:04:00] for International and Public Affairs, I definitely questioned like, wait a second. Why aren't we learning anything about how race intersects with development and how we see the world, how people relate to one another? And I definitely was aware that what we were being taught was a very, very, very, not only Western centric, but a very kind of American centric view of the world. And I was going to school with people from all over the world. So I just saw that as a gap. And so ever since then, I was like, man, I would love to be able to teach. What I didn't get taught as a student, so probably in the pandemic. Yeah. Columbia was like, Hey would you teach specifically with the School of International Public Affairs was like, Hey, would you like to come teach? And I, I kind of did the Heisman on him, kept them at arms distance for a little bit because I, I was like, I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready. But I was working on a syllabus on race and journalism. So I developed a syllabus for about two years or so before I finally said yes. Before I said yes to the dress, I guess, and decided to teach in 2020 for the spring of 2024. So a bit of context to that. I decided to come up with a course that explicitly looked at the development of kind of our ideas about race. Like all the way from. So 12th and 13th centuries to today, right? And looking at how this has always been a mediated process. So part of how, at a very basic level, how we develop ideas about who is us and who is them, who is like us and who is not, is through what we read, what we watch through photographs, all that stuff. So I basically explained to my students particularly when it comes to American media development of American media, that there's always been a link [00:06:00] between the relationship particularly of white colonists and European colonists and settlers with writing about non-whites without including them. And there's, there's evidence and, and really great work done about how. These early colonial papers actually made a lot of money pedaling stereotypes basically. So I ask a lot of my students, I'm like, huh, this sounds familiar, right? So fast forward a couple of months, of course went well and over-enrolled great reviews. And then I got a text message saying that my class was not going to be renewed for 2025. And obviously I was crushed. I mean, I never quite got a reason actually, whether it was. I mean, my costs over enrolled. I was also quite vocal about what I saw as Israel's assault on Palestinians during the time of the encampments and the protests that were happening at Columbia. So, and just in general, Matthew, I mean, I, I think I knew I, I cover race, I write about race. I've written about the attacks on critical white race theory and anti DEI, all of these sort of bogeyman attacks on anyone teaching about, and in particular the history of different racial groups. So I think I always kind of had a, I don't know, a bit of a, a, a, not a cloud per se, but just an, an awareness of the political climate, even at a place like Columbia. Right. I'd covered. Anti CRT efforts in Texas, in Oklahoma. And in my, the back of my mind, I think I always knew they're going to try to push this campaign all the way to the [00:08:00] top. And of course, as we've seen, it's reached the Ivys, right? So I think yeah, they canceled the costs. I was told to be quiet about it basically. So I sat on it for a couple of months, didn't say anything. People were like, you're going to hurt your career. Do you want to teach again? Don't, just wait, wait it out. And, then I saw, after Trump's victory and then I saw the attacks on DEI, I saw the, the pressure on campuses to basically, stop any programs on diversity, on DEI stop, anything that could be considered anti-white, basically, if we're going to be-- SHEFFIELD: Or pro Palestinian. Yeah. ATTIAH: Or pro-Palestinian. All of that to me is connected. I don't see these things as, separate issues at all. So yeah, earlier this spring, I just was like, wait, why am I sitting around waiting for permission to basically do, at the heart of what teaching is, me talking to a group of people, like at the heart of it, it's like we all teaching and education is, is just gathering a group of listeners, having a speaker and transmitting, communicating to them. And I'm like, I don't need telling me to do that. I, I can gather people under a tree, like, like, so yeah, I put it on in Bluesky., Would anybody be interested in, in taking this version of this course? And honestly, I would've been happy with 20 people. I would've been happy with 30 people. And something lik
