In the event of any major violation, most people would be inclined to keep refreshing their news feeds, waiting fretfully for those in charge to decide what should happen next. But what if President Trump were to declare victory prematurely? What if his Administration were to flood the courts with specious lawsuits, attempting to slow or stop the vote count in various states? What if the results were undeniable, but Trump loyalists-in the legislature, in the media, on the streets-refused to accept them? “The ideal, obviously, is that there’s a clear result that is quickly and widely accepted,” Chenoweth said. The song ended, and Chenoweth, who speaks methodically and calmly about even the least calming subjects, walked through a few potential post-election scenarios. Chenoweth is an expert in civil resistance, a term that Chenoweth uses interchangeably with “nonviolent mass action,” or “strategic nonviolent conflict,” or “unarmed insurrection.” Most political scientists study how political institutions work Chenoweth and other scholars of civil resistance study what happens when mainstream political institutions break down and the people rise up.Įventually, three dozen participants joined the Zoom, some from the Boston area and others from the pandemic diaspora-Nashville Tunis Kenosha, Wisconsin.
As rectangles on the Zoom grid flickered to life, Chenoweth played “Freedom,” by Beyoncé (“I break chains all by myself / Won’t let my freedom rot in Hell”).
About a week before Election Day, Erica Chenoweth, the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, hosted an impromptu Zoom meeting for students, alumni, and colleagues-a free-form conversation in which people could ask questions, express anxieties, and try to gauge, from a comparative-politics perspective, whether the United States was totally screwed or just moderately screwed.
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