“Resistance is futile.”
If you’re a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan like me, you’ll recognize this famous catchphrase, spoken by the Borg, a collective that forcibly assimilates species into their hive mind. It signifies the perceived hopelessness of opposing an overwhelming force, representing a “surrender or be destroyed” ultimatum.
It is one of the most chilling lines in modern storytelling. The Borg didn’t argue. They absorbed. They didn’t persuade. They assimilated. The message was simple: surrender is rational. The system is too large. The individual is too small. History moves in one direction.
Lately, that sentence doesn’t feel fictional.
I spent the week in Washington, DC, at an international education conference a few blocks from the White House. The conversations were thoughtful. Strategic. Measured. Visa backlogs. Escalating conflicts. Elections. Policy reversals. Political rhetoric that shifts by the week. Students wondering whether they are welcome. Institutions recalibrating in real time.
But unlike other years, the conversations carried something heavier.
An undercurrent of frustration.
Anger.
Anxiety.
Understandably so.
The headlines do not pause long enough for reflection. One crisis bleeds into another. Globally, Ukraine. Gaza. Iran. At home, polarization. ICE raids. Public trust in institutions slipping year after year. A new escalation somewhere before the last one has even settled. Language hardens. Stakes rise. Pressure builds.
It is relentless. It is exhausting.
And I feel it. I suspect many of us do.
The constant churn. The sense that every effort is swallowed by something larger. The quiet questions that creep in before the first cup of coffee: does any of this matter? Is it worth caring this much? Does pushing back change anything at all?
It isn’t indifference.
It’s fatigue.
The kind that sets in when the world feels permanently on edge. The kind that does not make you abandon your values, but does make you wonder whether those values can meaningfully shape what happens next.
In that fatigue, a phrase that once belonged to science fiction begins to sound less like fiction and more like logic.
Resistance is futile.
And that is precisely where we misunderstand what is happening.
We have been trained to imagine resistance rising from below. From citizens. From activists. From students. From ordinary people pushing against entrenched systems. We narrate history as friction at the margins and stability at the center.
We have misunderstood where resistance actually lives.
The loudest resistance is not coming from the people.
It is coming from power.
The power that resists scrutiny.
The power that resists limits.
The power that resists vulnerability.
The power that resists the inconvenience of being accountable to those it governs.
Across continents, across ideologies, across governments that claim wildly different moral visions, the reflex looks familiar.
In the United States, political authority consolidates while speaking the language of protection and strength.
In Ukraine, invasion redraws borders while civilians carry consequences decided far above them.
In Gaza, devastation cycles through generations while leaders on all sides speak in absolutes.
In Iran, authority tightens its grip while claiming moral guardianship.
Different histories. Different actors. The same instinct.
——
When Power Resists
When authority feels threatened — politically, reputationally, institutionally — its first instinct is rarely openness. It is consolidation.
Governments double down on messaging.
Institutions tighten communication protocols.
Leadership narrows access.
Boards retreat into executive session.
Public language becomes more scripted.
It’s the reflex of self-protection.
And it happens long before genuine yielding — before accountability, reform, or structural change — is even considered.
You see it in politics:
Criticism increases → rhetoric hardens.
You see it in universities:
Public scrutiny rises → leadership centralizes messaging.
You see it in corporations:
Scandal breaks → legal teams take over.
——
When Preservation Becomes Priority
In rooms this week devoted to global exchange and education, I heard careful conversations about mitigation, stability, pipeline preservation. None of it is malicious. Much of it is rational. Institutions are built to manage risk. Over time, that management hardens into insulation.
Order begins to matter more than openness. Preservation more than principle. Control more than accountability.
That posture makes people measure their words. I hear it in the careful ways colleagues describe what they cannot say publicly.
I’m reminded that power rarely has to forbid speech outright.
It simply creates conditions where silence feels prudent.
Funding structures. Governance boards. Political scrutiny. Public optics. Visa dependencies. Career trajectories.
None of these need to threaten explicitly. They only need to make the cost of candor clear.
That is how resistance shifts.
Not through force.
Through caution.
Through fatigue.
Through the gradual narrowing of what feels safe to say.
International education should be an antidote to that instinct. It exists to expand perspective, to cultivate empathy across borders, to expose students to complexity rather than shield them from it.
Yet even here, the gravitational pull of preservation is strong. Students become enrollment targets. Mobility becomes a transaction. “Global citizenship” becomes language that feels aspirational while policy shifts quietly redraw who is welcome and who is not.
Power, even when well intentioned, resists the messiness of real human lives.
And this resistance does not belong only to governments.
Universities do it. Corporations do it. Media ecosystems do it. We do it.
Any time we choose institutional safety over moral clarity, we participate. Any time we flatten nuance into talking points because the alternative feels risky, we reinforce the reflex. Any time we convince ourselves the machinery is too large to question, we internalize inevitability.
That is how fatigue becomes surrender without anyone ever saying the word.
History, however, is stubborn.
Empires do not erode because citizens question them. They erode because power resists adaptation. Because authority grows allergic to accountability. Because leaders mistake insulation for strength and control for legitimacy.
When power resists humanity long enough, it does not become invincible.
It becomes brittle.
The phrase meant to intimidate the individual ultimately applies to power.
If resistance feels futile today, that feeling is not accidental. It is because power benefits from that fatigue. It thrives when citizens narrow their courage to fit the mood of the moment. When educators scale back ambition to match policy. When institutions quietly align themselves with the political climate rather than challenge it.
Fatigue may be understandable.
But surrender is not inevitable.
So let’s continue building what matters.
Let’s continue teaching complexity.
Let’s continue defending access.
Let’s continue insisting that dignity is not negotiable.
Not because we will overpower institutions tomorrow.
But because history is clear about what happens when power resists humanity for too long.
In the end, that resistance proves futile.
Power is never permanent. Humanity is.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
