So You Want to Change the World: Building an Activist Career Amidst Disruption and Opportunity
Bennett Freeman
Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
February 21, 2025
Thanks to Tom Laqueur for that generous introduction. Tom was a young Assistant Professor of History whose honors historiography seminar inspired me as a student here more years ago than either of us are eager to acknowledge. It is a privilege to be introduced by (the still young) eminent Emeritus Professor whose teaching and writing has inspired generations of students and scholars.
Thanks to IIS co-directors Professor Susan Hyde and Professor Daniel Sargent— along with IIS Program Manager Claudia Gey and Events Manager Morelia Chihuaque— for inviting me back to IIS. I am also delighted to be here with professors Carla Hesse and George Breslauer, along with other friends and colleagues, classmates and housemates, and above all with Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students who are the focus of this discussion.
I joined Daniel and Susan on a panel here at IIS four months ago on October 22 to address “The Election and the Stakes for U.S. Foreign Policy.” As Vladimir Lenin said (perhaps apocryphally), “There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.” The last four and a half weeks since January 20 feel that way as we have witnessed domestic political and geopolitical disruption unfold with the velocity and ferocity of a blitzkrieg.
Many believe that this disruption is debasing American constitutional democracy and destabilizing the international community. Last weekend, the returned occupant of the Oval Office channeled Napoleon by saying that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” His second-in-command evoked the Wild West by telling the Munich Security Conference that “there’s a new sheriff in town” in a Valentine’s Day speech that shocked our European allies. There are conservative Republicans who are as alarmed by this disruption as there are progressive Democrats—from Liz Cheney and John Bolton to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.
New administrations claim mandates of varying legitimacy to drive new agendas. But some legal experts warn that the “shock and awe” aggressive use of executive power of the last month is already becoming a “constitutional crisis,” a “coup veiled by chaos” or even “regime change.” Looking abroad, some observe that we are at “the end of the postwar world” and that “a new world order is emerging,” and ask if the U.S. is “switching sides” with “the betrayal of Ukraine.”
My purpose today is to find hope for those of us— whatever our nationality, party affiliation or our policy views— who are committed to defend liberal democracy and liberal internationalism in the face of a polarized United States and fragmented world.
Liberal democracy must be safeguarded by the rule of law and accountable institutions; dedicated to civil rights and liberties; strengthened by diversity and inclusion; anchored by responsible parties mostly of the center-right and the center-left; and guaranteed by the peaceful transfer of executive power between presidents and prime ministers, without fear of self-proclaimed dictators or kings.
Liberal internationalism must be guided by international law, standards and norms; committed to human rights covenants and instruments; protected by international humanitarian law; grounded in respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity; and upheld by the common understanding of states that their national security and economic prosperity depend on this rules-based order.
Both liberal democracy and liberal internationalism have been undermined by inconsistencies and indeed hypocrisies, including by the United States. But both remain the best hope for individual liberty and security, a world of freedom at peace, a humanity of greater equality and opportunity.
But hope now begins with a fight.
Accepting the democratic election result on November 5 must not mean acquiescing in the demise of American democracy.
Reforming government must not mean defenestrating the apolitical civil service and dismantling entire agencies that provide vital services that support tens of millions of lives and livelihoods.
Refocusing foreign policy must not mean treating allies as adversaries and rewarding aggression with appeasement.
Asserting leadership in the international community must not mean that might makes right where “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” as Thucydides described (in the Melian dialogue) the rationale of the imperial and imperious Athenians for besieging an island state.
Resistance is emerging in the courts and on the streets if not yet in Congress—and it will gain momentum. Only this morning, Goldman School of Public Policy Professor Robert Reich outlined “ten reasons for modest optimism.” The stock and bond markets are signaling nervousness over tariffs and other inflationary pressures. At the same time, our European allies are resisting that new sheriff in town by scrambling to support Ukraine and to take greater responsibility for their own security without relying on what has been the steadfast U.S. commitment to NATO.
I want to turn to a less immediate but even more important question: At this moment and place, can we still aspire to change the world in the best Berkeley activist tradition? Is there hope amidst despair, opportunity amidst disruption?
As my old friend Geoff Mulgan told me earlier this month, we can start by building a “campsite amidst the ruins.” I can see the glow from one such campsite and it has a name: Berkeley.
Berkeley students, faculty and alumni have carried the torch for liberal democracy and liberal internationalism for three quarters of a century. We stood for academic freedom in the face of McCarthyism and loyalty tests in the 1950s. The Free Speech Movement, together with the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s and early 1970s, made Berkeley the global epicenter of student protest. Berkeley remains synonymous with democratic dissent, intellectual skepticism, and scientific innovation. Fiat Lux: those lanterns illuminate the campsite that is this campus.
Amidst this polarization at home and fragmentation abroad, what lodestars and lessons can guide us? What paths can take us forward as we think about our lives, our work, and the progressive change we want to contribute to the world?
Several lodestars and lessons have guided me in ways that may inform and inspire others.
Lodestars
First, I found lodestars in history as a student.
I was drawn to the interdisciplinary French Annaleshistorians Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and to the English historians Christopher Hill, E.P. Thompon and Eric Hobsbawm. Studying riots and revolts, rebellions and revolutions taught me that history is made not just from above but from below by those confronting economic and political power. I was thrilled by the Peasants Revolt of 1381 in late medieval England that foretold centuries of struggle against corruption, exploitation, and repression. I found my heroes in the Levellers whose Putney debates in 1647 during the English Revolution pointed toward a future liberal democracy based on freedom of expression and popular sovereignty. The American Revolution remains my greatest inspiration. Let us hope that its promise of democracy and equality remains our nation’s lodestar as we approach our bicentennial next year under dark clouds of autocracy and oligarchy.
Second, I found lodestars in historic events in my lifetime.
The civil rights movement in the United States and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa were foremost among the causes—along with the antiwar, environmental, women’s liberation and gay rights movements— that galvanized those of us who came of age in the Sixties and Seventies. Berkeley students were among the vanguard of the Freedom Riders and the Freedom Summer of 1964. Berkeley students added moral pressure to the moment led by Black activists and ordinary citizens in the south and across the country. The visit here of students from the frontlines of the Soweto uprising in 1976 inspired a decade-long campaign that culminated in “the UC Berkeley protest that changed the world” in 1986 and the divestment decision finally taken by the University of California. The struggle for racial justice and equality continues in both the United States and South Africa. Let us hope that these struggles overcome obstacles in both countries.
Third, I found lodestars in the global community of human rights defenders.
I have been privileged to support human rights defenders ever since serving as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the last two years of the Clinton Administration. I recall with sadness 25 years later the courageous cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian human rights advocates. I remain inspired by the labor and human rights activists I have worked with over the years: Uzbeks and Uyghurs; Cambodians and West Papuans; Nigerians and Liberians. Front-line defenders have the courage to risk and give their lives to defend their communities: at least 300 were killed in 28 countries in 2023; nearly 3,000 were killed globally over the previous decade. Let us hope that the human rights standards and institutions built since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 can endure the erosion of support of democracies and the actions of autocracies that are emboldened to act with even greater impunity.
Lessons
I have learned lessons from my work, as well as from recent history in my lifetime.
First, both Interests and values matter but values matter most even as we weigh difficult trade-offs to advance the progressive change that we seek.
My career has been an effort to find points of convergence between pragmatic interests and idealistic values. As Manager of Corporate Affairs at GE beginning 40 years ago this month, I later developed a successful strategy that combined support for massive U.S. assistance for Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall with the company’s need to expand Export-Import Bank funding to compete with European and Japanese companies for economic reconstruction contracts. As the chief speechwriter for Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the first Clinton Administration, my team and I wrote American foreign policy for the early post-cold war world that melded our national and economic security with support for global democracy and human rights. As Senior Vice President for Sustainability Research and Policy at Calvert Investments, I made the case to multinational corporations that respecting human rights was essential both to diminish operational risk and to demonstrate ethical responsibility. But for me the late Sir Geoffrey Chandler, a retired Shell senior executive turned Amesty International activist, settled the tension between interests and values: “To hell with the business case, it’s about doing the right thing.”
Second, progressive change is neither linear nor inevitable but attainable through commitment and determination, persistence and perseverance.
I am wary of generalizations, let alone platitudes, but there is no “end of history” as declared with democracies and market economies ascendant at the end of the Cold War. As seismic as the domestic and foreign policy shifts have felt in the last month, the proverbial tectonic plates of history are not yet reset. There may be no destiny, but we have agency. Amidst setbacks and retreats, hope persists and the fight resumes. That is the story of activism. The interplay between resistance and progress is the story of both the human rights and the climate justice movements—and of other progressive causes that are now under attack. The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass put it eloquently for the ages in 1857: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Third, progressive change happens in multiple directions: pushed from the top-down and the bottom up by individual leaders and mass movements; driven from the inside and the outside.
Once again, the civil rights movement and the struggle against apartheid demonstrate that such complex dynamics produce historic achievements. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have been enacted without both LBJ and MLK; not without both bipartisan support in Congress and what John Lewis called the “good trouble” that nearly cost him life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” at the start of the first march from Selma to Montgomery 60 years ago next month. Likewise, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Steve Biko and other leaders channeled the injustice of apartheid and in turn inspired the resistance of those Soweto students and countless others in the townships and the countryside. I must respectfully disagree with the great cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead who wrote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; it’s the only thing that ever has.” I believe that we also change the world by organizing collective action that small groups may initiate and coordinate, but yield to marchers, workers, voters, and ultimately to democratic institutions.
Fourth, there are innovative opportunities for progressive change working across sectors and sometimes strange bedfellows more accustomed to confrontation than to engagement.
Over the last 25 years, I have had the chance to work with others to develop two major multi-stakeholder initiatives and standards for corporate responsibility and accountability for entire industries. Using the convening power of the U.S. State Department and the UK Foreign Office to bring together most of the largest American and British oil and mining companies together with major international human rights NGOs in 2000 was not easy. But we found common language around human rights safeguards for company security arrangements in conflict zones and the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights became the global human rights standard for the extractive sector that now includes nearly 40 committed companies. Co-founding and building the Global Network Initiative with internet companies and telecoms together with human rights NGOs, academic experts and responsible investors was less improbable but nonetheless challenging beginning six years later. But we found common language around substantive principles, implementation guidelines and accountability metrics for freedom of expression and privacy online in the face of government demands for user data. My approach has emphasized dialogue and consensus to reach positive outcomes with some of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world. But both the extractive and tech companies came to the table not due to some ethical epiphany but to critical scrutiny. I have learned (turning again to Frederick Douglass from 1857) that “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Hope
Those lodestars and lessons that have guided me are personal but draw on the experiences and examples of so many others. It is up to us to follow lodestars and learn lessons that are personal but draw on the universal. It is also up to us to find paths of hope connecting our individual contributions to collective actions that can change the world.
Students at Berkeley and elsewhere are now asking if there are realistic paths in the domestic or international arenas and in the public, private or non-profit sectors for those who want to drive progressive change and build activist careers— whether to protect labor and human rights, to alleviate inequality and poverty, or to diminish the climate crisis and promote a just transition to a sustainable lower carbon world. Let me address briefly both the damage already sustained and further threats to each of these three agendas, but also point to visible, hopeful signs of resistance.
First, the new Administration has launched an assault against commitments and institutions dedicated to promoting democracy and human rights that have been cornerstones—however shaky at times—of American foreign policy and diplomacy for half a century. The U.S. has withdrawn once again—as it did in 2017—from the UN Human Rights Council and is now missing from critical processes and votes to hold members states accountable to international standards. The National Endowment of Democracy—an institution proposed in 1982 by President Reagan that has been revered by democrats and reviled by autocrats around the world for four decades—has been forced to suspend grants to hundreds of civil society NGOs. Now at stake is the survival of the NED’s two twin pillars: the National Democratic Institute and the National Republican Institute (affiliated respectively with the Democratic and Republican parties); the Solidarity Center and the Center for International Private Enterprise (affiliated respectively with the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce). The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (widely known as DRL) remains under threat, following the firing early this month of over 60 contract program officers working to support civil society in countries with authoritarian governments.
But urgent, confidential discussions are underway to mobilize bipartisan support—including from remaining Reagan Republicans—to defend the NED and DRL Plus, Corporate America will not get a free pass to dilute commitments to labor and human rights. This spring a new mechanism will be announced to track, report and therefore deter any backsliding by major American companies on policies and practices intended to protect workers, communities, and human rights defenders.
Second, the new Administration is putting USAID through a “wood chipper” with devastating consequences for assistance that has been vital to countering malnutrition and enabling food security; fighting disease and supporting public health; providing clean water and improving sanitation; responding to natural disasters and financing climate adaptation; alleviating humanitarian crises and contributing to post-conflict reconstruction; diminishing poverty and empowering women. These investments in a more stable and secure world reflect and reinforce the soft power of an America that understands that our values and interests converge.
But resistance to the evisceration of USAID—including the abrupt suspension of contracts with implementing organizations and layoffs of employees in Washington and missions abroad—is mounting. Last week on February 13, Oxfam America, the American Foreign Service Association, and the American Federation of Government Employees filed a lawsuit “to defend USAID and U.S. foreign assistance” with “life and death consequences for millions around the world.”
Third, the progress made by the previous Administration to transition to a lower carbon economy has come under attack. The new Administration is again starting the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, freezing funds for wind power and other clean energy, cancelling tax credits for EVs, relaxing pollution regulations, and eliminating climate justice programs to diminish disproportionate impacts on communities of color. Climate denial is now official.
But this morning brings us rays of hope. A new survey reports that 85% of companies “plan to stick with climate reporting plans even if regulatory requirements change.” At Stanford today, there is a discussion on “Backlash, Burnout and Backsliding” focused on countering these trends.
As a lifetime optimist by disposition and conviction, it is hard to be optimistic now about advancing these three agendas or other progressive causes—or to be optimistic about the near future of liberal democracy and liberal internationalism. But while realism is essential, there is no hope without idealism and no change without activism.
“We are free to change the world…
Let me return to the question that I posed earlier: can we still aspire to change the world in the best Berkeley activist tradition? My answer is unequivocal: we can; we must; we will.
As a Berkeley freshman beginning nearly 50 years ago in October 1975, I became familiar with Hannah Arendt, the German-Jewish refugee from Nazism turned New York intellectual who died that December. An historian and philosopher, political and social theorist most famous for The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, her books and ideas were part of the Berkeley discourse. But only recently, I came across this simple but powerful sentence:
“We are free to change the world and start something new in it.”
That is our challenge now—our responsibility and our opportunity— in this historic moment of disruption. There is no more critical time nor better place to start than on this campus—on our “campsite” amidst ruins both distant and close. We must keep those lanterns illuminated.