The Trump Files, which I published in 2022, traces the arc of a presidency. This presidency did more than test the norms of governance. It actively sought to dismantle them. The Trump Files is an Account of the Trump Administration’s Effect on American Democracy, Human Rights, Science, and Public Health. The book links the Trump administration’s actions to broader historical and philosophical frameworks. By placing Trump’s rise in the context of authoritarian movements and anti-intellectualism, the book moves beyond the day-to-day chaos to address the deeper structural challenges facing American democracy.
Trump’s second term, especially his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” shows not just policy. It signifies a worldview: one that thrives on division. This worldview diminishes empathy and undermines the idea of a shared public good.
An unfortunate example of a lack of empathy was seeing Trump and Noem (Secretary of Homeland Security) inside an immigrant detention center. Trump named it “Alligator Alcatraz.” Trump said he’d like to see facilities like ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in ‘many states.’Built in 8 days by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, it flooded the day it opened. Captured and likely crime-free, immigrant men, women, and children will be tossed into metal cages for several weeks or more. In the middle of a swamp filled with snakes and alligators, these people will suffer immeasurably. Swamps do flood. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is denying that it had an agreement for the migrant prison with the governor of Florida.
As I consider these developments, I am drawn to the damage they have done. I am also drawn to the deeper values that must be recovered and defended.
My professional life has been centered on humanistic psychology for over forty years. It also involved the international, student-led collaboration called the Global Thinking Project. These weren’t simply academic pursuits. They were expressions of a belief system that is, at its core, liberal. It is a belief in the dignity of every person. It emphasizes the importance of dialogue. It recognizes the power of education to transform both individuals and societies.
Humanistic Psychology: Education as Liberation
Humanistic psychology affirms that each person is a whole, meaning-making being with the capacity for growth, self-reflection, and empathy. It resists reductionist or authoritarian views of human nature. Similarly, liberalism resists systems of control that flatten identity and erase dissent.
As a professor of science education, humanistic psychology deeply influenced how I taught and mentored future teachers. I believed—and still believe—that science education should be more than a delivery system for facts. It should be an invitation to wonder, to question, and to connect. A classroom grounded in humanistic principles encourages students to explore scientific phenomena. It also encourages them to understand their role in the world as critical thinkers and compassionate citizens. In the GTP, we enabled the students to be citizen scientists.
1975 I traveled to Estes Park, Colorado, to attend my first Association of Humanistic Psychology (AHP) annual conference. More than 3,000 people participated in the conference at the YMCA of the Rockies. It’s the largest YMCA in the U.S. The conference was a life changing experience. I attended future meetings and actively participated in the AHP-Soviet Exchange Project beginning in 1983. Francis Macy, Anya Kucharev, Paul van Ward, and Tom Greening led the project. I became director of the exchange project in the late 1980s, which led to the creation of a partnership between the Soviet Institute of Pedagogical Sciences and Georgia State University. The Global Thinking Project emerged from this collaboration.
I encouraged my students to view science as a human effort. I advised them not to focus narrowly on content standards or test performance. It is shaped by history, culture, ethics, and the environment.
I emphasized curiosity, cooperative learning, and personal meaning-making. In doing so, I tried to create spaces where students felt empowered to speak and to fail. They could also grow and envision new futures. These futures were for themselves, their communities, and the planet. In the 1970s, I taught courses on humanistic education. This was for graduate students who were teaching in the Atlanta area.
In 2025, educational institutions face political attacks for encouraging independent thought. They also face attacks for exploring controversial ideas. This approach becomes more than pedagogical—it becomes political. It becomes a defense of education as a liberating and humanizing force.
The Global Thinking Project: Dialogue as Democracy
The Global Thinking Project emerged during ideological confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Yet we built bridges, not walls. We brought students together to study the environment. They lived in each other’s homes and discovered their shared hopes for the future.
Our tools were simple. They included email, sensors, questions, and courage. The outcome was profound. It was a generation of young people who learned that cooperation is not naïve. It is necessary.
This project was not mine alone—it was the work of many visionary educators and citizens. I honor my colleagues and co-creators:
- Dr. Julie Weisberg, Agnes Scott College, whose commitment to transformative learning shaped the heart of our pedagogy.
- Dr. Jennie Springer, principal and administrator, who brought the project into schools with warmth and wisdom.
- Mr. Gary Lieber, an Apple engineer, made possible the first telecommunications link between students in Georgia and Russia.
- Dr. Ted Colton, Georgia State University, taught demonstration lessons on inquiry science in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
- Mr. Sergei Tolstikov, one of the original Russian teachers at School 710, Moscow, provided intense support for the project for over a decade.
- Fran Macy, who brought deep ecological and peace-building values into the project through his leadership and global sensibility.
- Mary Lou Foley, whose devotion to intercultural education helped students and families embrace one another across boundaries.
- Dr. Alexander Orlov, a Russian pioneer, brought us into the center of humanistic psychology in Russia.
- Dr. Galina Manke is from Moscow School 710. Her leadership as our Russian coordinator ensured that the GTP was grounded in mutual respect and collaboration.
- Dr. Roger Cross, who introduced and coordinated the project in Australia, demonstrating its global reach and educational power.
- Dr. Ramon Barlam and Mr. Narcís Vives, who led GTP in Spain, blending technology, environmental education, and democratic citizenship in innovative ways.
- Dr. Wayne Robinson, whose technological leadership as GTP’s coordinator helped bridge continents and classrooms through early networking innovations.
- Sara Crim is an inspired teacher from Walker County, Georgia. Her creative integration of GTP principles into her curriculum brought global learning to rural students. She did this with joy, rigor, and heart.
We did not just connect schools—we connected souls. Together, we created a model of liberal internationalism, rooted in dialogue, environmental inquiry, and lived empathy.
Liberalism in the Shadow of Authoritarianism
To be a liberal in 2025 is to resist not only policy but also cruelty. The Trump Oligarchy is the most cruel U.S. administration in my lifetime. it is to insist that facts matter. Science is not a partisan tool. People deserve care, whether they are American, Ukrainian, transgender, undocumented, or just young and trying to learn.
What the Trump regime calls “woke,” we call human. What it labels “globalist,” we recognize as connected. What it frames as weakness, we see as the courage to care.
The Global Thinking Project taught students that understanding others is not weakness—it is the first act of peacemaking. We live in an age where the Trump regime weaponizes isolation and intolerance. The GTP stands as a defiant testament to liberal values, which are made real through education, cooperation, and courage.
Present Day Liberal Thinkers
Here I want to recognize the work of the following women and men who are enabling us to find the resources and mental support to put up a fight against the terror unleashed daily by the Trump regime.
Liberal Thinkers Fighting Against Authoritarians Connection to Global Thinking-Humanistic Psychology
| Heather Cox Richardson | Our exchanges challenged Cold War narratives, embodying the liberal tradition of citizen diplomacy and historical resistance to government overreach. |
| Ruth Ben-Ghait | The project created an antidote to authoritarian isolationism, building trust across borders. This countered state control of thought and culture. |
| Yascha Mounk | The work modeled democratic pluralism by facilitating dialogue between two very different systems, resisting the erosion of liberal-democratic exchange. |
| Timothy Snyder | Like Snyder’s call to resist tyranny through action, the work reflected personal responsibility to defy propaganda and connect person-to-person. |
| Robert Kagan | While he speaks of restoring liberal institutions, the exchanges embodied citizen-level institution building, rooted in shared human values. |
| Anne Applebaum | Where elites often accommodated autocracy, members of the project pushed back, building democratic trust across ideological fault lines. |
| Robert Reich | The humanistic vision emphasized dignity over domination, and psychological liberation over fear, a deeply liberal response to authoritarianism. |
The Work Continues
This afterword is not a conclusion. It is an affirmation that the values underpinning the work of many educators worldwide—empathy, inquiry, cooperation, and justice—are not relics. They are resistance, renewal, and the lifeblood of democracy. Remember that resistance to authoritarians is not an American problem; it exists in many countries.
In the end, the story of Trump’s presidency is not only about what one man did to a nation. It is also about what millions of us have done—and continue to do—in response.