Prof. Richard Abel, Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA and 2007 Burns Chair at CUNY Law, discussed his three new books on resistance to autocracy during the Trump administration. During his four years as president, Trump violated the most basic precepts of liberal democracy: seeking to overturn elections, issuing illegal executive orders against immigrants, corrupting the criminal justice system to protect his cronies, and undercutting the efforts of scientific experts to control the Covid-19 pandemic. Prof. Abel’s talk, introduced by Burns Chair Vince Warren, discussed these abuses and, importantly, the forms of resistance they provoked.
