Courage and Cowardice Are Both Contagious, and Harvard Holding the Line Became the Turning Point
Courage is not an individual trait but a social phenomenon: people look at what those around them do. The biggest change in Trump's second term is that the people around him went from resistance to surrender, and Harvard's refusal to sign a deal made resistance possible again.
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The argument · timestamps estimated from transcript position
Courage is a social phenomenon, not an individual trait
Weisberg's core argument is that courage and cowardice are both contagious and highly situation-dependent. He does not believe human nature changed dramatically between 2016 and 2024; what changed is the signals people receive from those around them. Trump's second term is more dangerous partly because he controls the government and his own team more firmly — in the first term there were still large numbers of officials he had appointed resisting from the inside, while in the second term there are almost none. When people look around, what they see is not others standing up but others giving way.
— Jacob WeisbergThe courage of 2016 was actually following the crowd
Mounk offers a demystifying reading: the people who looked brave in 2016 were in fact following the social incentives of their own small circles. At the time the political incentive was to accommodate Trump, but the social and cultural incentives of their circles were to oppose him, so people stood up. Eight years later those social and cultural incentives have flipped, and the people who looked brave back then are no longer brave. Weisberg agrees with the mechanism but adds that you cannot entirely erase the element of individual moral choice — it is just that true moral heroes, like Mandela and Havel, are extremely rare.
— Yascha MounkBrad Karp surrendered in five days
Paul Weiss is the law firm most deeply tied to the American liberal legal tradition, involved in civil rights cases since Brown v. Board of Education, and Karp himself was recruited by Ted Sorensen. Trump threatened to bar the firm's lawyers from government buildings, revoke their security clearances, and sue them on discrimination charges. Weisberg points out that all of this was illegal, that the firm had every right to represent its clients, and that if it sought an injunction it would almost certainly have won — firms like Jenner & Block that chose to fight won quickly. But Karp chose to negotiate at the White House, reaching a deal five days after the executive order, promising free pro bono services, abandoning discrimination, and apologizing for things it had never done. It was a very public, very rapid surrender that sent a signal to the entire legal profession.
— Jacob WeisbergMegyn Kelly went from being bullied to being a bully
In a 2015 debate Kelly challenged Trump over his comments insulting women, and Trump unleashed Steve Bannon and others to threaten her; she needed full-time security, her children needed security, and people showed up in her building lobby to intimidate her. She held out for a while, then reached a truce with Trump. Weisberg's psychological explanation is this: Kelly wrote in her memoir about being bullied as a child, and she vowed never to bully and never to side with bullies, which explains why she resisted Trump so fiercely at the time. But the tragedy is that she herself became a bully, and her show now spends every day viciously mocking transgender people, gay people, and minorities. Weisberg sees this as Trump's effect on the coarsening of political culture — bullying became a way to succeed.
— Jacob WeisbergGeorge W. Bush's silence is an abdication of moral responsibility
In his book Weisberg holds people to their own principles: law firms should defend the rule of law, journalists should defend journalistic principles, businessmen should defend free markets. George W. Bush represents the non-MAGA Republican tradition; after 9/11 he explicitly defended Muslim Americans and pushed PEPFAR, which is estimated to have saved 25 million people worldwide. He privately loathes Trump, painted an ugly portrait of Trump that he has never shown anyone, and did not vote for Trump in 2016. But he adheres to the tradition that former presidents do not criticize their successors. Weisberg argues that if he had spoken publicly at key moments — in 2016, after January 6, and in 2024 — he could have had enormous influence. This is the sin of inaction, different from the sins of action of others in the book, but equally an abdication of moral responsibility.
— Jacob WeisbergAnti-Trump open letters actually backfired
Mounk reflects on the open letters he helped push while involved with Protect Democracy — joint letters from the national security establishment and former state attorneys general — which got a great deal of media coverage, but which he now thinks accomplished almost nothing. The actual effect was to make many people feel that all these professionals were in fact partisan actors, and that their claims of neutrality and objectivity were just a way of doing politics. The intent was to persuade conservatives that this was an issue conservatives should care about too, but instead it reinforced the idea that the only political divide in America is whether you like Trump, that all these people are on the other side, and that I should distrust them wholesale.
— Yascha MounkHarvard didn't sign because Trump's price was absurd
Harvard at one point looked like it would reach a deal, even though it had the law on its side and could win in court. The government had the power to restrict foreign students and cancel funding, and even with a $50 billion endowment, Harvard did the math: if it fought the government for four years, it might not survive, or it might survive badly damaged, and it wasn't worth it. But the Trump administration's demands were too absurd — it wanted oversight of whom Harvard appoints as professors, whom it admits, and what it teaches — and Harvard could not sign. As Trump's approval ratings fell and universities kept winning in court, Harvard gradually reached a point where it did not have to sign. Weisberg says that if Democrats take the House in the midterms, he would be extremely surprised if Harvard signed a deal.
— Jacob WeisbergYale became the next target, but resistance now has a cost
The government turned to Yale, wanting another conspicuous surrender. The New York Times front page reported that Yale was about to reach a deal, based on allegations of racial discrimination against white and Asian students at its medical and law schools, and that Yale was prepared to pay a fine, sign, and carry on. But there was a huge backlash — counter-pressure from faculty, students, alumni, the Connecticut legislature, and Senator Richard Blumenthal. Yale president McInnis now sees that signing has a cost and not signing has a cost, but signing also has a cost. Weisberg agrees with Mounk's judgment: the incentives on the other side are now markedly stronger than a year ago, which makes giving in harder.
— Jacob WeisbergIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think courage and cowardice are social phenomena in the sense that they're contagious and very context dependent.
Jacob Weisberg6:30
what looked like courage with regard to the Trump administration was actually being a follower, being a fellow traveler, within your own milieu.
Yascha Mounk10:15
To be good at politics, Yascha, is to be good at convincing yourself of the things that it's useful for you to believe.
Jacob Weisberg24:30
I think it's a sin of omission, which is different from the sins of commission in the book, but I do think it's an abdication of moral responsibility.
Jacob Weisberg33:00
the actual impact was for people to say, the only real political division in America is whether you like Trump or not, and all of these people are on the other side, so I should just distrust them generally.
Yascha Mounk41:00
There's a cost and a price to not making a deal, but there's also a cost and a price to making one.
Jacob Weisberg48:30
Figures
| Pentagon cloud computing contract value | $20 billion | 3:15 |
| Average annual pay of a Paul Weiss partner | $7 million | 17:45 |
| Size of the Harvard endowment | $50 billion | 48:30 |
| Estimated number of lives saved by PEPFAR | 25 million | 33:00 |
| Trump's approval rating | fluctuating between 32% and 50% | 10:15 |
Glossary
- Profiles in Courage
- A 1956 book by John F. Kennedy telling the stories of eight senators who sacrificed political advantage for principle.
- PEPFAR
- The global HIV/AIDS aid program launched by George W. Bush in 2003.
- vibe shift
- The phenomenon of the overall rightward turn in American cultural and political atmosphere after 2024, in which resisting Trump is no longer rewarded.
How to listen
Founders, investors, and policy researchers focused on the resilience of the American political system and institutional resistance strategies; anyone in the workplace who wants to understand why smart people surrender under pressure.
The opening literary discussion of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage can be fast-forwarded; jump straight to the mechanism analysis at 06:30.