When the Ground Shifts, We Migrate

It feels, lately, like we are stuck.

In higher education, as with many other arenas in the country, much of what we have come to understand about higher education, the guardrails, the red lines, has shifted. Budgets have tightened. Public trust wavers. Political scrutiny intensifies. Expectations expand while resources contract. Faculty feel it in shrinking tenure lines and expanding teaching loads. Staff feel it in vacancies that are never filled and responsibilities that multiply quietly. Students feel it in rising costs, housing insecurity, food insecurity, and a job market that offers promise and precarity in the same breath. Many of us feel the unwelcome constant threat of uninvited actors on our campuses.

It is hard to know what to do. It is increasingly difficult for faculty, staff, and administrators to reconcile the sense that we should be doing something “different” against a sense of obligation to continue to “do our jobs.”

Social media and professional networks amplify the tension. Some voices call for bold disruption. Others call us to recognize that there is honor in staying the course as a form of resistance. Joy is resistance, cultural affirmation is resistance, Love, not hate, is a form of resistance. So we feel stuck. But we can’t afford to do nothing. Paralysis is not an option

Maybe we simply keep moving. I personally find comfort in this notion. The ground moves beneath our feet, and we are tempted to change direction. But maybe we should just keep walking. Maybe we ought to simply opt for movement because staying still is no longer viable. The metaphor of migration offers a useful frame for this moment. The beauty of both the work I do with our university’s resource center, which supports students with different immigration statuses, and my fascination with nature, particularly migratory animals, inspires me. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving.”

Many of Earth’s children choose movement as a form of survival. We are compelled to respond to the struggle with movement. To resist in higher education right now is to understand migration not as a choice, but as a condition.

We know, for example, that migration rarely begins with enthusiasm. It begins when the odds are stacked against you. You do not wait for perfect conditions. We move because you must. The path forward is uncertain, and yet the call to move remains. Like migration, the call to keep moving requires sheer will. There is courage required to continue teaching with care when the public narrative questions your integrity. There is discipline required to lead with compassion when cynicism would be easier. There is humility required to admit you do not have all the answers and still show up. That kind of sheer will is not performative. It is quiet and persistent, and makes a difference. For faculty, it looks like doubling down on our commitment to facilitate growth and learning for our students. To revise that syllabus again, to freshen up your lecture notes, to review your exams and assignments. To staff, it looks like taking one more student meeting, running a new healing circle or intergroup dialogue, and continuing to make plans for awards, recognition, and graduation ceremonies. To continue to show up for our students in the manner we know best because celebration and belonging matter, especially when morale is fragile. For faculty and staff, we also make space to acknowledge the social and political context students are living in.

Migration teaches us that survival is rarely about the heroic individual. Alone is never enough. Few survive these journeys entirely alone. Migrants travel in caravans, families, and loose networks of mutual aid, understanding that collective movement offers protection and the possibility that individual effort cannot. It is often about sheer numbers. Resistance in these times will not come from believing that any one of us is uniquely equipped to save higher education. No single faculty member will “save” an institution. No one administrator can shield a campus from every political or economic headwind. No staff member can single-handedly meet the full spectrum of student needs. But I see that what we can accomplish collectively is special and heroic. There is power in numbers, not only because they amplify voices, but because they redistribute fear. Fear is lighter when carried together. A single faculty member pushing back against impossible demands is vulnerable; many doing so together reshape the terrain. A lone student struggling feels isolated; students moving in community create momentum. I have witnessed how collective action at my own institution has shaped tangible and meaningful change. When folks collaborate across divisions — student affairs, academic affairs, enrollment management — to address students’ needs, they create coordinated systems. When students organize around shared concerns, they seed the legacies of support centers and systems.

The power of movement is that, over time, it reshapes the landscape. Rivers carve canyons, the footsteps of animals carve trails, not through force alone, but through persistence. If we keep moving — intentionally, collectively, strategically — we become part of that reshaping.

In higher education, resistance will look like movement: continuing to teach, to support, to learn, to organize, and to imagine better structures while moving through imperfect ones. The journey is exhausting. The odds are real. But history shows that when people move together — by will, by numbers, and by necessity — they do more than survive. They change the landscape itself.