With the 2024 election in just over a week, progressives are debating whether Kamala Harris deserves their vote. Among young voters at Princeton and other institutions where activism is common, these discussions have been heating up.
The Vice President’s position on Israel’s war in Gaza, along with her willingness to embrace Republicans like Dick Cheney, has tempted many to vote third party. As these people see it, the Biden-Harris administration’s failure to break new ground on progressive policy proves that voting for Democrats as a “lesser of two evils” has failed.
However, policies promoted by Trump, and especially his running mate J.D. Vance, have the potential to make activism — both on and off college campuses — much more difficult in the future. For this reason, as disagreeable as they may find Harris’ policies, campus progressives should strategically vote for Harris because her administration will provide an environment conducive to further advocacy.
Progressives have a point about the inaction of the Biden administration on Gaza and the Democratic Party’s continued tendency to push toward the center despite the popularity of left-wing policy. They rightfully point out work is needed to push the Democratic Party toward progressive, populist policies like Medicare For All that we know to be both popular and effective. And Democrats who don’t have reservations about Harris must not dismiss or demonize these progressives for being disillusioned, especially given the tragic effects of the administration’s unabashed support for Israel.
But, as members of a university community that prides itself on free inquiry and serves as a launching pad for activism, we also must not diminish the threat of a potential Trump-Vance administration.
A common argument used to support sitting out the election or voting third-party is that a far-right government would generate progressive, activist momentum. To some extent, this view is understandable: activism, after all, did surge during the Trump administration.
But the stakes have changed. It is easy to forget how much Trump’s rhetoric has devolved since the end of his first presidency — especially given how bad it was during that period — but it has.
What were once implicit nods to authoritarianism have become promises to become a dictator for his first day. Allies like billionaire Elon Musk have promised “temporary hardship” under a second Trump term, implying mass upheaval or a period of martial law. It is simply disingenuous to argue that such an administration would be a more motivating environment for progressive activism — on the contrary, it promises to make activism potentially very dangerous.
Among progressives — and other groups — there’s a sense that threats like Trump’s are abstract and not to be believed. But the former President has no reason to obey any guardrails anymore. If he’s elected after inciting an insurrection and being convicted thirty-four times, Trump will undoubtedly take that as a mandate to lead with a harsh fist. And, with a shift in Republican leadership and Trump’s inner circle over the past eight years, the so-called moderates who tamed his impulses in his first term may not be around to do so this time.
And this is a problem that would affect students at institutions like Princeton specifically. Vance has signaled that he and Trump must “attack the universities,” specifically liberal arts and diversity programs, because he believes them “on the wrong side of some of these culture war issues.” These sentiments pose a direct threat to academic freedom. As one of the nation’s most prestigious universities — and one that is regularly attacked unfairly by conservatives— Princeton would likely be one of the first in line.
And the future that Trump and Vance have in mind for student protesters is draconian: at one point, Trump suggested that they should be deported. As progressives have rightly pointed out, restriction of free speech is an existing problem on campus. In the past year, the University has cracked down on protests in wake of pro-Palestinian activism, most notably by banning protests on Cannon Green. Under pressure from the federal government — which Project 2025 would ensure — universities certainly wouldn’t make these restrictions more lenient.
Of course, it sounds unbelievable that institutions like Princeton would obey Trump and deport students for activism. But major institutions are already symbolically caving to Trump. For the first time in forty years, the Washington Post — owned by Jeff Bezos ’86 — is refusing to endorse a candidate in the race, suggesting a misapprehension of the threat Trump poses to democratic institutions like newspapers. There is more unabashed support for Trump than ever before. Who knows how our educational institutions would react under pressure from a new, emboldened Trump administration — or whether they could withstand legal challenges aimed to significantly curb free expression on their campuses?
Clearly, this is not a matter of which presidential administration will inspire more activism. It’s about whether activism will be listened to or whether it will be silenced, sometimes violently. Under Harris, we can be sure that progressive organizing on and off university campuses will be possible in its current form. Under Trump and Vance, we cannot.
Even comparing the Trump and Biden administrations, this distinction is clear. When Black Lives Matter protesters took to the street after the death of George Floyd, Trump called for the National Guard to “dominate” them. Under Biden, youth protests arguably led to the largest climate change legislation in history in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Of course, some progressives will still feel insulted by the idea that they must vote for Harris, and understandably so: the American political system is forcing us to make a decision we shouldn’t have to make. Some would still complain this is a false binary, since a protest vote isn’t exactly a vote for Trump. But in an election where the result could be decided by hundreds of votes in key states, voting for anyone but Harris would only help Trump.
Perhaps we should take a lesson from what Angela Davis said last week when she visited campus. Sometimes — to ensure that the conditions for organizing in the future are possible — we have to do something that makes us feel terrible. For certain progressives, that may be voting for Kamala Harris.
Shane McCauley is a first-year from Boston, MA, who intends to major in one of the social sciences. He can be reached at sm8000 [at] princeton.edu.
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