Our leaders are zombies and wimps — but there's a stronger force fighting Trump

As Trump and his goons strip Americans of our constitutional rights, the silence of the nation’s leadership class is deafening.

I’m old enough to remember when, during the Vietnam War, university presidents utilized their bully pulpits to remind America of its moral center.

Today, university presidents are cowed. One college president recently told me point blank that “university presidents have no business speaking out on public issues.”

The chancellor of my own university, the University of California at Berkeley — the very place where the “free speech movement” began in 1965 — still hasn’t explained why Berkeley last week handed over to the regime the names of 160 students, lecturers, and faculty members who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Some are here on visas and terribly vulnerable. Others lack tenure and are vulnerable in different ways.

It’s not just university presidents who have become silent or complicit. Whatever happened to America’s religious leaders?

During prior crises of conscience, such as the struggle for civil rights, the voices of the nation’s religious leaders were loud and confident. They brimmed with moral authority. Today, we hear only the strident voices of the religious right.

What happened to America’s business leaders? They’ve never been especially reluctant to speak out on public issues.

For years Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, has acted as a self-appointed spokesperson for American business, sometimes reminding CEOs of their social responsibilities. This time? Utter silence.

Other CEOs have gone over to the dark side, competing to suck up to the tyrant-in-chief, eager to lavish him with praise, gush over his accomplishments, even hand him gifts of solid gold bullion.

The leaders of America’s legal community? “I want to keep my head down,” the senior partner of a large firm told me. “We have too much to lose.”

The leaders of the media? They’re busy consolidating their ownership over ever more of the nation’s media and dare not upset Trump’s FCC and toady Brendan Carr.

What of their responsibility to protect free speech? They’re far more interested in maximizing the value of their shares of stock.

And whatever happened to the nation’s political leaders? Where are their voices in this time of democratic crisis?

Most Republicans are zombies and most Democrats, wimps.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, won’t even endorse Zohran Mamdani for New York mayor — even though Mamdani is among the most popular young politicians with young voters.

We have to wait for Ted Cruz — Ted Cruz! — to sound the alarm about the FCC’s attack on freedom of speech?

The sad fact is that, like so much else Trump’s reign of terror has revealed, America’s leadership class no longer leads. It hides.

It has relinquished its obligations to the common good — to freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom from government arrest and imprisonment without due process, freedom to vote and participate in our democracy, freedom from arbitrary and capricious government decisions.

Instead, people in positions of significant responsibility have succumbed to greed, small-mindedness, insularity, and cowardice.

During a crisis like the one we’re now in, these so-called leaders have abdicated their moral responsibility.

It’s not all bad that America no longer has a leadership class.

True leadership doesn’t necessarily require high office. It doesn’t require a fancy title. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and countless others who have moved the world held no formal positions of power. They had moral power to tell the truth and mobilize others.

The disappearance of America’s leadership class at a time like this means that the rest of us have to be leaders.

We can no longer wait to be led by those with the power and authority to lead. You must lead, I must lead, all of us must lead. We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
• Robert Reich's new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.