Fighting back: Noted historian details how Americans can beat back Trumpism

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Tokyo, Japan, for the second stop on his Asia tour, October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

As both a staff writer for The New Yorker and a history professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts outside Boston, Jill Lepore often uses the past to shed light on the present.

Trump, as a historian, is highly critical of President Donald Trump. But during a conversation with the New York Times' David Leonhardt published in Q&A form on October 27, Lepore laid out a variety of ways in which she thinks the messaging of Trump's opponents falls flat.

Lepore called out the excesses of the "woke" movement, arguing that "belonging has been a key term of the left even while punishing people for their views."

"The backlash against wokeism is largely about people being really tired of everyone telling them they don't belong because my ideas are not your ideas," Lepore told Leonhardt. "So I think it's a little hard, honestly, to reclaim belonging, because I think it’s so associated with H.R. language. I'm all about it. I believe in it, but I think the word has really, sadly, become politicized…. I'm just kind of bristling a little bit at the word because so much of what came out under that banner was shaming people for their various non-woke views."

Lepore argued that at Harvard, the "woke" movement alienated at lot of people.

Lepore told Leonhardt, "This entire campus became incredibly prosecutorial to the public shaming stuff. I just think it's silly to deny that that existed, that it didn't harm a lot of people, that it wasn't wildly out of control on many occasions."

The Harvard historian/New Yorker staffer also criticized Democrats for their "love trumps hate" messaging, which she described as a "depraved, cynical manifestation of a complete failure of political imagination." And she stressed that liberals, progressives and Democrats will need to show "determination" in the months ahead.

"I think forms of tyranny succeed by destroying your determination, by destroying your imagination — your ability to picture the end of something," Lepore told Leonhardt. "I often say to my little one that the reason I'm a historian is because I like to know how things began. Because if I can imagine how they began, then I can imagine they're going to end. And I think that's one of the great gifts of history: Most forms of tyranny do come to an end."

Lepore continued, "Feudalism, imperialism, fascism — dismantling these systems has required years and years and years of very hard work and determination. I'm not sure they always required hope, but they did require determination and imagination."

David Leonhardt's full interview with Jill Lepore for the New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).

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