250 years ago, our founding fathers declared that we are “endowed by (our) Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Our founders charged King George with “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners,” “Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us” and “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” among countless other insults. To prevent such injustices from happening again, these founders had the foresight to create a republic, however imperfect, built on restraint, checks and balances and civil liberties.
President Trump seems to have learned little from this history: Today, our government is committing murder and betraying the founding ideals of our nation. While Brown has long been a place where students could explore freely through the Open Curriculum, not having core requirements assumes that students learn civics and history from broader society. This is not an assumption we can continue to make, and thus the Open Curriculum has become a luxury of an America past.
Last Saturday morning, two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year old Veteran’s Administration intensive care unit nurse, during a protest against ICE operations in Minneapolis. Pretti was detained while recording ICE agents, and when they found a concealed weapon on his person, two officers shot him in the back 10 times in the span of five seconds. Pretti was an American citizen, had a lawful concealed carry permit and no criminal record.
Hours later, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the shooting. Miller claimed that Pretti “tried to murder federal law enforcement,” and Noem that he was “brandishing” his firearm. But as contested by CNN and visible in video footage of the incident, these are clearly lies. The only thing Pretti was brandishing was his phone, which he used to lawfully record police conduct. He was shot while restrained, in a prone position and, at that point, disarmed. By accusing Pretti of criminal conduct, these officials are attempting to shift blame for the shooting from the state to its victim.
Our government is asking us, as Orwell wrote in “1984,” “to reject the evidence of (our) eyes and ears.” In doing so, it has adopted a Schmittian worldview where the government alone has the power to label the enemy, and the enemy could be you or me. Just as our government falsely labelled both Alex Pretti and Renee Good as domestic terrorists.
American democracy depends upon a democratic culture. Americans know that protesting is not a capital offense. We know that carrying a concealed weapon, as conservatives often remind us, is protected by the Second Amendment. When our lawmakers excuse police shootings because their victims are foreign, protesting or legally carrying a weapon, they are effectively arguing that the government can murder you without consequence. This should be an affront to the conscience of any decent American, including the vast majority who favor immigration enforcement but are appalled by ICE’s tactics.
We are hearing echoes of the twentieth century today. Our government’s official accounts have been flooded with Nazi-inspired imagery. They have suggested that deporting 100 million people — which presumably includes tens of millions of American citizens since there are not 100 million undocumented immigrants in the US — will lead to a peaceful state. They have posted an AI cartoon of an ICE officer handcuffing a crying woman and Christmas-themed deportation memes. This kind of dehumanization and rhetoric may seem excusable if you view it outside of its historical context. And it’s a far cry from “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The Open Curriculum was a fantastic idea. I think few people have benefited from it more than I have — during my time at Brown, I have taken courses in 17 departments, double-concentrated in both STEM and the humanities and learned a language. But I worry that its concept was better suited for an America that no longer exists.
The twentieth century was a time of unparalleled suffering, and from that suffering came consensus. As a world, we decided we were done with conquest and empire. We saw the deadly failure of fascism, communism and socialism, and so liberal democracy became the ideal. But in 2026, our leaders are returning to the old ways of thinking that led to this suffering, presumably because they have forgotten the horrors. Education allows us to remember so that history does not repeat itself.
As graduates of an elite college, Brown alums will have an outsized impact on the world. The University has a responsibility to educate these future leaders to not only excel in their concentrations but also to be good citizens. Every Brunonian should leave College Hill able to recognize the signs of authoritarianism, understand the value and development of democracy and the harms of unprincipled leadership in society.
These are lessons that become exceedingly clear when studying the Enlightenment, the Greek and Roman experiments in democracy, the American Revolution, the rise of 20th-century authoritarians and genocide. While having a civics requirement will invariably change the nature of our beloved University, I worry that by not acting, Brown will fail to prepare students to serve the world, as the times continue to worsen.
Our founding fathers sought a government without a king. As America approaches its semiquincentennial, perhaps today we have found ourselves an aspiring tyrant. I pray that we never lose our democratic ideals so that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, this “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Brown has a role to play.
Tas Rahman ’26 can be reached at tasawwar_rahman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Tas Rahman is an opinions editor at the Brown Daily Herald writing about issues in higher education. When he's not coding or studying biochemistry, you can find him hiking and enjoying the great outdoors.
