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We all knew it was coming.

Authoritarian governments — of the left, right, and center — attack universities because they are influential centers of dissent. President Donald Trump and his allies, who never hid their intentions, are doing the same. Columbia was the first target. Left by other universities to fend for itself (Harvard remained silent), Columbia’s leadership capitulated. Emboldened by its success, the administration has moved on to Harvard.

This is not a policy fight. It is, in the words of conservative commentator (and Harvard alum) Bill Kristol ’73, an “authoritarian” offensive. Having weaponized the machinery of government, the administration is systematically deploying public agencies — from the Justice Department and the FBI to the IRS and the Department of Education — to weaken rivals and bully civil society into submission or silence. This is how elected autocrats consolidated power in Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Extortion has become the Trump administration’s modus operandi. In the case of universities, the administration threatens to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in research money, demanding that private universities allow the federal government to dictate how they govern themselves, discipline students, and define and regulate academic freedom.

The administration likely seeks to impose tight restrictions on student association and protest and implement measures that clearly limit institutional independence. Such demands attack Harvard’s core academic mission and the basic principles of a democratic society.

The Trump administration has cloaked its attack on Harvard in civil rights rules, justifying its attack on the grounds that Harvard has failed to combat antisemitism.Not only is this a pretext, pure and simple, but it is gaslighting.

Antisemitism is a problem, but it is not more acute — indeed, it is likely less acute — at Harvard than in most institutions in American society (including, for example, the Republican Party). And given Trump and his allies’ record of tolerating, flirting with, and even embracing various antisemitic figures, the idea that the administration cares about combating antisemitism is simply not believable.

Nor should one take seriously the notion that the Trump administration cares about civil rights when it is extralegally arresting and imprisoning students such as Tufts’ Rumeysa Ozturk for their political speech. Authoritarians always find pretexts for attacking universities. Harvard is clearly being targeted for political reasons. We suspect that the University leadership knows this.

Nevertheless, President Alan M. Garber’s Mar. 31 letter to the Harvard community embraced the Trump administration’s faulty premise that the issue is antisemitism. Apparently believing that apologizing and surrendering to authoritarian bullying will spare it more abuse, Harvard’s leadership is lending credibility to claims they know to be pretexts and inviting harm to the University. Rather than defending higher education and democracy, they are emboldening and strengthening their attackers.

At a moment when we desperately need civil society’s leaders to stand up to authoritarianism, Harvard’s administration has opted to stand down.

Harvard’s abdication of civic leadership will harm us in two important respects. First, the University is abandoning its own values to appease an authoritarian government. University leaders have repeatedly claimed to defend academic freedom but dismissed — under a pretext — the leadership of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, cut Harvard’s sponsorship of a public health program in the occupied Palestinian territories, suspended programming on peace in the Middle East, and taken a series of steps to restrict student expression.

These measures undermine academic freedom, the bedrock value of universities in a free society, thus threatening irreparable harm to the very thing Harvard claims to be defending. University leaders claim they have their own reasons for adopting these measures, but given how similar they are to the Trump administration’s demands of Columbia, such claims are not believable.

Second, Harvard’s abdication will also do harm beyond its gates. It will embolden the Trump administration, whose extortionary attacks are clearly working. It will also contribute to the erosion of our society’s overall capacity to resist Trump’s authoritarian offensive. As universities, law firms, CEOs, media outlets, and civil society organizations retreat to the sidelines, silencing themselves and curbing civic activism, America’s democratic defenses weaken.

Finally, Harvard’s surrender will likely have a demoralizing effect on the rest of society. If America’s most powerful and privileged institutions cannot — or will not — stand up to Trump, what can everyday citizens expect to do?

Last week, more than 800 Harvard faculty members signed a letter urging the Harvard Corporation to fight back against the ongoing attacks on higher education (in a telling sign of the times, dozens of faculty members expressed support for the letter but told us they were afraid to sign because they feared government reprisal). Hundreds of alumni have done the same. Students have expressed repeatedly in the pages of The Crimson and recently in protests on campus calling on the University to take a stand.

The authoritarian attack on universities has come for us. Harvard, like American society as a whole, has the muscle to push back. But our leaders appear to lack the will.

Alternative paths exist. Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber, whose university faces similar threats, has declared his determination not to comply with Trump’s demands. There is still time to correct a course that we will likely come to regret.

Future generations may well look back upon this moment and ask what we did when an authoritarian government came for our University and for our country. Efforts to appease authoritarians often fail, and history rarely remembers them well. Harvard’s leadership should listen to its faculty and the many students and alumni urging it to stand up for its values — and for democracy.

Ryan D. Enos is a professor of Government. Steven Levitsky is the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and a professor of Government.