A friend of mine was unceremoniously fired from Felician University in 2023–one of sixteen people fired on a single day–after 23 unrelenting years as an English comp instructor to students with an average SAT verbal score well below 500. I described her in a letter of recommendation, without exaggeration, as “the most dedicated college instructor I had ever encountered” in two+ decades in the profession. Her office was across the hall from mine, and every now and then I’d eavesdrop on her efforts. I couldn’t imagine putting even half the effort into teaching that she did.

No reason was given for her termination, apart from the fact that the University wanted to “focus on STEM.” No better way to do that, I guess, than to eliminate instructors in English composition. She was then obliged, as a condition of receiving a severance package, to sign a non-disclosure agreement: the latest in academic administrative tactics. What better way to promote “transparency” than an offer of concealment or immiseration? As of 2025, Felician retains its legal status as a “university” despite lacking a Department of English. Amazing what’s legal in this country, and what isn’t.

After Felician, my friend decided to become an ESL instructor for the local refugee population–Haitian, Venezuelan, Afghan. This was through a local group which I’m guessing received some federal funding. That lasted a year and a half. It ended the other day, care of our new nationalist overlords. 

Neptune, by the way, is a small town on the Jersey shore. There are no gods there, and no temples. Just sacrifices. 

For as long as I can remember, the primordial cliché of the anti-immigrant crowd has been: “Learn the language!” This comes from people incapable of speaking any language beside their own, and sometimes only half capable of that. I have no experience teaching ESL, but if I did, the first word I’d teach my students would be “betrayal”–the one word in our language that names something dependably real. 

Back in 2021, I wrote a post here about the “JBMDL Afghan Account,” the name of the medical accounts outsourced to the revenue cycle firm I work for by a local hospital system. The patients in question were the Afghan refugees who’d been housed at Joint Base McGuire Fort Dix Lakehurst, a nearby military facility, in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. There were high hopes for the future that lay before them in this, the land of opportunity. I wondered out loud what their fate would be. Now I know. 

You’ll notice a certain parallelism here. Felician used its leverage to shut my friend up. The Trump Administration used its leverage to shut the migrants down. The next time you find someone going on and on about the evils of the Trump Administration, ask them whether they regard those evils as sui generis, or whether they regard them as something with deep roots in our culture. If they say the former, you can rest assured that you’re in the presence of someone who, as far as knowledge of our society is concerned, has spent the last several decades on the planet Neptune. Trump is simply the cashing-in on a society steeped in dishonesty, brutality, bigotry, and unscrupulousness. He couldn’t have become president for a second time if the ground hadn’t been prepared for him ahead of time–well ahead of time. 

If you think Trump is something new and unprecedented, it’s because you’ve been walking around with your eyes closed. “When the crimes pile up,” Brecht wrote, “they become invisible.” They’ve been invisible. When the crimes finally become visible again, it’s because the perpetrators have swept the first batch under the rug, and started over. That’s where we are now. Easy to understand once you learn the language.

Thanks to Sarah Schulman for the Brecht quote.