The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

The azaleas, daffodils and hyacinths are blooming; Passover and Easter celebrate rebirth. Spring blooms, however, are evanescent. We look for more lasting signs of hope, especially in the chaotic political world around us.

Dare we see this as such a sign? Harvard University has straightened its institutional backbone and is standing up to Donald Trump. So, too, is Boston-based law firm WilmerHale honoring the principle it embraced when its attorney Joseph Welch helped block right-wing Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunt in the 1950’s. We’ve had a winter in which major corporations and other institutions have cravenly bent their knees thinking they could buy exemptions from Trump’s retribution crusade. Now, in spring, just as the rhododendron and hydrangeas will follow the early blossoms, let us hope that other academic institutions, law firms and more will follow the examples of Harvard and WilmerHale.

Late Friday night the Trump administration asserted that this letter to Harvard was unauthorized. But it’s crystal clear that Donald Trump’s weaponizing the agencies of federal government is part of a larger strategy to chill the better impulses of those who disagree with him but are fearful for their own status, economic security and safety. This is thuggery. This is extortion.

Take Paul Weiss, the storied D.C.-based law firm that had gone after participants in the January 6th insurrection. Trump ordered cancellation of all the firm’s government contracts and stripped the firm of its security clearance but rescinded the order when it extracted a pledge of $40 million in pro bono work from Paul Weiss. It also had to alter its employment practices to drop diversity considerations. Since then, well over a dozen law firms have folded, offering hundreds of millions in pro bono work to appease the wannabe dictator. It will be providing such onerous and reputational high-risk tasks as defending the Constitutionality of Trump’s executive orders and policies up to the Supreme Court; whitewashing Trump officials and cronies in ethics, criminal and civil investigations; drafting emergency declarations with dubious legal bases, and assisting in the purging and restructuring of the civil service. Not the usual pro bono service. After Wilmer Hale, a handful are now refusing to get down on their knees.

The situation is the same in academia. Trump yanked $400 million from Columbia University, allegedly for not doing enough to stem anti-Semitism on campus, but it was clear it wanted the federal government to play a role in the university’s hiring, admissions, and curriculum practices. Columbia cravenly gave up its institutional powers and responsibilities, including hiring decisions and admissions, to protect the $400 million. Like the Paul Weiss capitulation, Columbia set a dangerous precedent in the academic world.

This week, Harvard University stood up to the bullies. After the White House froze $2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in government contracts to Harvard, Harvard said it would not bow to Trump’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Nor would it agree to a government-appointed auditor of its educational practices. So Trump directed the IRS to take steps to nullify Harvard’s non-profit status.

PBS is also threatened with serious cuts in its federal funding. At a gathering in Boston Wednesday evening to preview Ken Burns’s upcoming PBS documentary series on the American Revolution, the loudest cheers and sustained applause came when Burns referred to Harvard’s and PBS’s principled stands.

Let’s face it. Harvard’s $53 billion endowment makes it easier to withstand the slings and arrows of the President’s unconstitutional and despicable actions. Smaller institutions with little to no endowments are likely to find Trump’s revenge strategy an existential threat. They may well go out of existence, giving Trump the satisfaction of undermining academic freedom, rewriting history, destroying the soundness of the student learning experience, and reinforcing his authoritarian impulses.

Vampire-like, he has enthralled the GOP congressional majority to ignore its Constitutional responsibilities. Individual GOP members may roll their eyes in private communication with Democratic colleagues or share their disgust in Members Only elevators. But, on the floor of Congress and in town halls, they are controlled by their fears of being “primaried” and repeatedly assume the position of subservience.

It remains to be seen whether federal judges at the highest level will be similarly emasculated  or prove faithful to the language of the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. Dozens of suits have been filed, and there have been some successes in blocking executive orders and other actions, but the Administration is appealing those lower court findings. We hang in limbo as the lawsuits are playing out.

Ultimately, much of this litigation will play out before the U.S. Supreme Court, which last term gave Trump almost unbridled powers. Should the highest court rule against the President and his Administration, how will its decisions be enforced? Order the U.S. Marshals to make arrests? They are under the control of the now acutely partisan Department of Justice.

Trump supporters don’t yet feel any buyer’s remorse, and too many others have clung to the illusion of normalcy, as, little by little, the constitutional foundations of our democracy are eroding under the pressure of arbitrary, illegal tactics. Except for the willingness of some individuals and institutions to stand firm, we are sliding ineluctably toward a strong-man form of government and dark days for our increasingly fragile democracy. Harvard’s and WilmerHale’s defiance of Trump administration demands has sparked some others to resist, suggesting that academic freedom and institutional independence are not dead yet.

Some workers in corporate giants have quit in disgust. Others have begun talking seriously about resistance. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, fight fiercely, universities, law firms, and others. Be it Trump who has the might, nonetheless we have the will.