As a martial arts instructor, one question I get is: When is it okay to fight? 

There is a legal answer to that, but the real question I hear is: When do I know for sure? 

I want students to be able to defend themselves. But the choice about when to do so is an individual one. Your metric for when it’s appropriate to engage in self-defense might be different from mine; you might pursue other ways to de-escalate a confrontation. 

Once, years ago, I successfully talked a man out of mugging me outside George Howell’s in the early hours of the morning. I’m proud of this, not for bullshit macho reasons (I hope), but because the situation ended with nobody hurt even though I would have been within my rights, I think, to simply start swinging. If someone else in the same situation had fought the guy, I wouldn’t have blamed them. (To be clear: the smart thing to do is to just hand over your wallet, always.) 

But I want my students to have options. I want them to see nonviolence not as a default but as a situational-dependent choice, and not a neutral one. 

***

Others have weighed in on this before, so I will be blunt: 

Emerson College should remove its statement on political neutrality as soon as possible. 

I won’t rehash other arguments. What I want to add, full-throatedly, is this: there can be no neutrality under a Trump administration, based on his stated objectives. 

Here is the end of Emerson’s neutrality statement, the important part: “By maintaining institutional neutrality and mutual respect, Emerson College will remain an open, supportive, and inclusive space for community members of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, religions, national origins, abilities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and beliefs.”

Yet the simple truth is “institutional neutrality” and “mutual respect” cannot co-exist under a new Trump administration. Disrespect and violence are central to the administration’s vision—not just against students but against Emerson itself. 

Consider the LGBTQ+ community at Emerson. In our recent Emerson 360 survey, nearly a quarter of students responded that they were bisexual, 13% as queer, 4% as gay, and 7% as lesbian—all well above national averages. The percentage of the Emerson population that is transgender (3%) is also double that of the USA as a whole (around 1.4%). Emerson is happy (and justified) to use this part of campus culture to attract more LGBTQ+ students. 

But that is not a neutral stance when Trump has said he would enact measures on “day one” to, as Michael Knowles said, “eradicate” LGBTQ+ people. If such measures are taken, will Emerson have to remain “neutral” about such “political” moves? 

If Emerson won’t shift on “neutrality” to take a hard stance to protect its students, what about self-protection? JD Vance has floated measures to curtail universities’ independence, citing Hungary’s autocratic Viktor Orbán as someone with “smart” ideas for colleges: force schools to choose “survival” or, basically, far-right ideological teaching. Does Emerson’s statement of neutrality mean it is ceding its right to self-advocacy? Will we simply crumple if, for example, Vance wants to dictate hiring practices? 

You might think that other Emerson documents already speak on these measures. The School of the Arts DEI statement, for example. And our hard-working Office of Equal Opportunity seeks to prevent identity-based violence. You might think, “Well, these other offices show we are politically neutral, but of course we can’t allow attacks on students’ identity.”

But there is nothing to say that those offices themselves won’t be attacked under a Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation has (vaguely) argued that DEI initiatives are part of “woke” ideology and are intrinsically “discriminatory.” Removing schools’ ability to censure, for example, hate speech seems part of the right’s current agenda. If a student uses a racial slur and then opposes the school’s response based on political grounds, citing the statement of neutrality, what will we do? 

These hypotheticals may sound like fear-mongering, but they are not outside the realm of possibility. 

What we do know for certain is that a statement of political neutrality will limit the college’s ability to respond—and resist. 

The statement of neutrality was made as a band-aid in response to the pro-Gaza-ceasefire student protests last academic year. Let’s grant for argument’s sake that such a response was appropriate to that situation. 

Even if that is true, the problems of a second Trump administration are issues of a different order. There is one thing that all Jewish students (regardless of political view) and pro-ceasefire protesters have in common: they are potentially both targets for the violence of an antisemitic, racist Trump administration. 

We cannot hold “mutual respect” for our minority students—Black, brown, Asian, Jewish, Palestinian, trans, queer, immigrant—and remain neutral when a mainstream political agenda is the eradication, the literal death, of that student body. 

***

When do I know for sure? 

When I was almost-mugged, nobody was around. I was waiting in the dim pre-dawn for the coffee shop to open; I was a very anxious young man, early for everything by hours. The man who wanted my wallet had followed me for two blocks. He was bigger than me (most men are). But he was also visibly nervous and visibly unarmed. 

But what if someone else was there, waiting with me? What if it was a student of mine? What if the man had a knife? What if he wasn’t some desperate guy just trying to make money, but someone intent on violence for its own sake? 

I can’t tell you when it’s time to quit talking and throw down. Knock-down, drag-out, et cetera. But I can tell you it’s not time to disarm ourselves. 

A good martial artist can afford to be restrained. But when a fight is unavoidable, you want to have a range of possibilities at your disposal. 

In a fistfight, neutrality isn’t neutral. 

And when our students are under attack? 

Buddy, we’re in a fucking fistfight. 

Peter Medeiros is Senior Affiliated Faculty with Emerson College, teaching with WLP and the Popular Fiction MFA program. His most recent work is “Hydroplaning,” featured in Giganotosaurus.