University Of California Los Angeles Alumni

"We're living in a time of intense of these past regimes... including to remove their violence, so... Putin erects statues to Stalin, but then sends historians and others who comment on the s into penal colonies, and Amazon... sells t-shirts that say, "Pinochet did nothing wrong"... [etc.] ...I wrote it as an American watching Trump... holding rallies... s, and institutionalized lying, and I wanted to document and figure out this experience with some history. ...[I]t's the first book to put Trump's presidency in the context of 100 years of authoritarian rule."

"We must... enact measures that reflect and reinforce the bedrock democratic principles of transparency, accountability, and solidarity. That means... instituting a... rigorous procedure for vetting presidential candidates, including disclosure of financial records and foreign and domestic business interests. We must... hold elected officials and candidates responsible for the language they use. Rogue statements, such as Trump's... boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters, should have consequences."

"[A] really important thing is the predominance of... survivalist ideologies. Great replacement theory is one... [T]o motivate people to... do violence, or... embrace the big lie, and to be corrupt, because that's a form of corruption: embracing election denial. You have to convince them that there's an existential threat, that they're in mortal danger... [T]hat's what Great Replacement theory does. That's... all this discourse on democratic cities as crime-ridden dens of anarchy... Giorgia Meloni... [H]er version of Great Replacement theory isn't just... demographic change and more non-whites being born (a more passive thing). She... believes... there's a plot by the EU and George Soros to flood Europe and Italy with non-white immigration... depressed wages of white workers and... extiguished white Christian civilization... Donald Trump is also a specialist in this, where on January 6th he said, "If we don't fight... we won't have a country any more!" The specter of obliteration. Instead of the obliteration that could come through climate change, you deny it and have a different kind of existential threat... affecting the white male minority, and you harness that rage."

"Trump wasn't just in office to wreck American democracy. He... was there to... detach America from a democratic world order and insert it into this developing autocratic order... [T]he reason he admired openly, publicly all autocrats: friendly... with Orbán.., admires Xi, and... attached to Putin... [A]ll of his campaigning against NATO.., digs at the EU, talking about globalism... is of a piece. It all relates. ...[W]hat Trump was able to do with the GOP, ... already going... in an authoritarian direction, but ...not ...pro-Russia. ...Trump managed to take the GOP and make it his personal tool... changed its ideas and sympathies about Russia.., that's... extraordinary. ...[T]hat's part of this big picture."

"I happened to see a video of... presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally. I saw him rouse the crowd to perform a loyalty oath... barely concealing the condescension for the crowd... I heard him talk about roughing up protesters and the media, and then.., "I could stand on 5th Avenue and shoot someone, and not lose any supporters." As a historian of authoritarian regimes... this was deeply familiar... This was a trial... to test the public, political elites and the press to see how... they would tolerate... extrajudiciality and violence. Authoritarians always tell you what they're going to do to you... [T]his is part of their politics of threat. Here was Donald Trump telling Americans... in January, 2016, that he approved of violent methods, could be violent himself, and considered himself above the law. The reactions..: a few expressions of incredulity... and a lot of "That's just Trump being Trump." ...Trump was following ...the authoritarian playbook, which most Americans ...were not familiar with. So I decided to educate people ...more than 60 op-eds ...[and] over 80 interviews to familiarize journalists with this ...analysis, and warn the public and decision-makers ...[P]ersonalist regimes..: the leader's personality.., obsessions.., quirks.., have an outsized influence over domestic and foreign policy. ...[H]is obsessions sometimes become state policy. Think of Hitler and the Jews... [T]he bad judgement caused by one of his worst character flaws, not wanting to take any criticism, can end... in ruinous situations and catastrophe for the nation, as... with Mussolini and Hitler... Trump is not fit to serve as leader... of American democracy, but he is... eminently fit to serve as the leader of an authoritarian state. ...[H]is impulsiveness, his mix of fragility and , ...his lack of empathy... and most disturbing, his willingness to... lead the country into ruin, to save his power and his source of personal enrichment, map 100%... on past authoritarian leaders' character[istics]. ...We have valuable knowledge to strike back, and yet, we haven't been doing it."

"Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a distinguished historian of and a prolific political commentator, belonged firmly to the alarm-bells camp over the past four years. Less than two weeks into Trump’s presidency, she wrote an article titled “Donald Trump and Steve Bannon’s Coup in the Making.” Her new book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, elaborates on... the ways ambitious strongmen can damage or destroy democratic regimes. The book features Trump prominently, but it sets him in a rogues’ gallery of authoritarians and would-be authoritarians ranging from Hitler and Benito Mussolini to late-20th-century dictators like Augusto Pinochet, Moammar El-Gadhafi, and Idi Amin to present-day populists like Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, and Jair Bolsonaro."

"Trump's repeated elevation of dictators as models of leadership should be understood as part of a re-education strategy: conditioning Americans to see authoritarianism as a superior form of government to democracy. That is likely why he is explicitly making strongman rule his brand, telling Americans it is in their interest to allow him to save them from the supposed chaos and crime of democracy and give them an orderly authoritarian world under his control."

"American voters should take Trump's enthusiasm for autocrats seriously. He is previewing the kind of leadership he will pursue... and doing his best to re-educate Americans to tolerate―or worse, even desire―an approach to governance that, wherever it has unfolded, has created despair and division―and often placed nations on a path to destruction, as with Germany under Hitler’s guide. [[w:Autocracy|[A]utocrat]]s... disregard... human rights and human dignity and... attempt to persuade people that it is in their interests to support governments that take their rights away. This seems to be Trump’s project... [N]o authoritarian has ever relinquished power once he gains it..."

"[[Ivana Trump|[H]is first wife]]... said that he had two books... one was Art of the Deal... which was ghost-written, and the other was Hitler's speeches, so he's very interested... in autocrats, and learning from them, but he doesn't read, so... it's a factor of having a similar personality... He wasn't in office to govern. He wanted to dominate people. He wanted to make money off of the presidency. ...[T]hey have similar personalities, and that's one reason they do similar things ...[T]hey ...very early ...start talking about violence. They start demonizing the press. They want to turn the public against journalists and make them political enemies, so that if anything comes out about their corruption, nobody will believe them. ...So there is this playbook that they use... [I]n the book I isolate these tools of... violence, , corruption, the myth of national greatness... and show what stays the same, and what changes over 100 years."

"The irony cannot be lost... government officials have used their positions to muscle out a scholar of authoritarianism from a prestigious lecture, aping the very tactics of censorship and political intimidation... associated with authoritarian states."

"[T]he speed at which this is happening and the... concentrated push... doesn't have any parallel in situations where leaders came to power through elections. ...[T]he early Putin.., Orbán or Erdoğan ...didn't move at this speed. This resembles more [like] after there's been a coup."

"[F]or 100 years authoritarian leaders have invested in propaganda to convince people to believe their lies, to participate in their corruption, and accept their racism and violence as normal and necessary. ...Personality cults are key to success of authoritarian propaganda. ...20th century cults depend on mass-media... -mobilization and... -surveillance so the leader can seem omnipresent... [P]ropaganda is a set of communication strategies... to sow confusion and uncertainty, discourage critical thinking and persuade people that reality is what the leader says it is. ...From Mussolini's ...newsreels to Trump's and Bolsonaro's use of Twitter, authoritarians have had direct communications channels with the public... and... pose as authentic interpreters of the . ...Strong men disappear people, but they also disappear knowledge that conflicts with their ideologies and goals. ...All 21st century authoritarians suppress climate change science because it discourages the plunder of s that generate profits for them and their cronies."

"People have to have circumstances that... they can't deny any more. ...[S]ometimes it takes a lot, like in the 1930a and 40s, the only thing that got some people to stop worshipping Hitler and Mussolini is when the Allies bombed them and they saw the destruction; ...or just... . It could be a pandemic, so Bolsonaro in Brazil is in trouble... Trump, one of the reasons he lost was the pandemic: criminal mismanagement. ...[P]rosecution is very important because some people worry, "Oh, if we prosecute Trump it'll cause a civil war" but the history shows that the only thing that bursts the bubble of a personality cult in the long run, is to see that these people are not... immortal, because these guys set themselves up as... gods. ...[T]hey're untouchable, "...Only I can fix it" ...[W]hen they are prosecuted, it happened to Berlusconi.., with Pinochet in Chile after he left office; that's the thing that leads a lot of people to turn their backs on them, when they're finally put to justice. So that they are human.., they are mortals after all."

"Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen...will serve as a guidebook for navigating through this ongoing authoritarian turn in American politics. In examining the political tendencies, as well as dictatorships, of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi, and Augusto Pinochet, among others, Strongmen answers... questions perplexing... many... [and] brings to the fore stories of resistance, many based on personal interviews that give hope and encouragement. ...Ben-Ghiat’s historical evidence is repeatedly complimented with references ...to her authoritarian playbook... making it ...easy to see what such disparate figures as Berlusconi, Putin, and Trump share in common. Firsthand accounts from survivors of autocracies are interspersed... adding poignancy to the horror... [S]ocieties... faced with extreme ideological polarization and inter-communal tensions can either succumb to authoritarian forces or stop the cycle with , solidarity, and love. In... the United States, this may seem simplistic and even impossible, but these are what strongmen fear the most, and... keeping hope alive is an act of resistance. In clarifying the authoritarian formula, Strongmen is an exhortation to appreciate and collectively protect our fragile democracy."

"[A]t a time when we face climate, health, food and other crises, the priority of authoritarian states is never public welfare, but maintaining stability... keeping the leader in power. ...[S]trongman leaders don't just endanger democracy, ...they pose an existential threat to humanity. ...[Y]et hundreds of millions ...embrace authoritarian lies and violence, so we need to understand why[.] ...Strongmen is about ...looking back in history, globally, for patterns ...[I]t ...put[s] Trump's America in historical perspective. ...[F]or 100 years charismatic leaders ...at moments of uncertainty and transition ...often come from outside the political system. Many... have a past in mass communications. ...They communicate with their followers in ...ways that seem original and thrilling. ...[A]uthoritarians ...appeal when societies have made ...gains in gender, class or racial emancipation and equity.., [and] sooth fears of the loss of male domination.., elite privilege, ...the end of white Christian "civilization." ...[C]ertain categories of enemies recur: ic peoples, Jews and Muslims, LGBTQ communities, indigenous people and more ...the throughlines of persecution. [A]uthoritarians get a boost from conservative elites... their most important promoters and collaborators... afraid of losing their privileges... often thinking that he can be controlled, and that never works out... They strike... the "authoritarian bargain"..: prosperity for... the elites in return for loyalty and toleration of... violence and suspension of rights."

"A leading expert on authoritarianism and history professor at New York University, Ben-Ghiat is the author of numerous books on Italian fascism, including... Strongman: Mussolini to the Present―which compares Donald Trump to Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet, among other dictators. She... has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, regularly connecting his temperament and viewpoints to... dictators she studies. Ben-Ghiat had been invited by the Naval Academy’s history department to deliver the Bancroft Memorial Lecture... which... would focus on "what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule." ...[H]owever, the Naval Academy canceled the lecture ...after the urging of Congressman ..."

"Welcome to the shock event, designed precisely to jar the and civil society, causing a disorientation and disruption among the public and the political class that aids the leader in consolidating... power. ...Trump gained power legally but... intends to shock or strike at the system, using the resulting ...chaos and flux to create a ...government... beholden only to the chief executive. ...Bannon has repeatedly talked about "destroying the state" in the name of securing power for "an insurgent, center-right populist movement that is virulently anti-establishment." Besieging your targets until nothing makes any sense―giving them no time to absorb or recover from attacks―is a time-tested strategy in the history of... authoritarian takeovers. ...It's now being employed at the pinnacle of American democracy. ...With all the emergencies going on, who is bothered ...about ...Trump tax returns, or ...his ties to Russia?"

"…the Chinese [Communist Party] government was aware of an Instagram post Alysa made about human rights violations against Uyghurs. For a regime sensitive to criticism, especially from high-profile figures, this was enough to put her on a list. Alysa Liu was not just a dissident’s daughter. She was a young American athlete who [had] publicly acknowledged the suffering of a persecuted minority. That combination made her a target. … It is rare for an Olympic gold medal to intertwine with a federal criminal case. It is even rarer for the athlete to be the daughter of a man who once fled China in a smuggler’s boat. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the story is Alysa’s reaction. When asked how she would portray this saga in a possible Hollywood movie, she said she would like to be a “super cool hero,” but the real focus should be on her father. His story, she said, is the one that matters. Alysa Liu’s saga is a reminder that the Chinese government’s campaign against dissidents extends far beyond its borders. It reaches into American cities, into immigrant communities, and even into the lives of children who have never set foot in China. It also reminds us that courage takes many forms. Sometimes it looks like a student leader refusing to betray his classmates in 1989. Sometimes it looks like a man gripping the side of a speeding boat in the dark, fleeing toward freedom. And sometimes it looks like a young woman stepping onto Olympic ice, knowing her family has been watched—and skating anyway."

"I’m so proud of her. The message that this is going to send to young athletes and parents alike that if you consider your mental health and treat it right, great things can happen."

"I’m here to announce that i am retiring from skating. I started skating when i was 5 so that’s about 11 years on the ice and it’s been an insane 11 years. a lot of good and a lot of bad. ... i feel so satisfied with how my skating career has gone. now that i’m finally done with my goals in skating i’m going to be moving on with my life."

"“I actually wouldn’t tell my younger self a thing, ’cause she’s gonna figure out herself. I don’t want to change anything.” -this was from an article summarizing her comments in recent interviews about her mindset and journey, where she was asked what advice she would give her younger self."

"I was so into skating that I really didn’t do much else. Skating takes up your while life, almost. I don’t know if other people kind of feel the same when they look back at certain parts of their life, but for me, it’s definitely a blur, because it kind of meshes together, you know — going to the rink, going home, competing. There were many, many times when I didn’t enjoy it."

"The thing is, I love.... what I like to share about myself is like my story and my art — my creative process — and I guess messing up doesn’t take away from that. It’s still something, it’s still a story. A bad story is still a story, and I think that’s beautiful. There’s no way to lose."

"https://dailydot.com/alysa-liu-best-quotes"

"He worked hard. And now, he deserves to rest."

"Scientific skepticism is considered good. ... Under this principle, one must question, doubt, or suspend judgment until sufficient information is available. Skeptics demand that evidence and proof be offered before conclusions can be drawn. ... One must thoughtfully gather evidence and be persuaded by the evidence rather than by prejudice, bias, or uncritical thinking."

"Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, Greenest state in the Land of the Free, Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree, Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three— Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier."

"The egregious error of adult educators is to define our function solely as one of fostering behavior change and to act as though we believe our principal tasks are to do needs assessment surveys, to communicate ideas and to design exercises to develop specific knowledge, skills or attitudes for prescribed behavior change. Not only does this effort often become indoctrination to engineer consent, but it frequently addresses the wrong reality to begin with."

"Education cannot be defined by a simplistic preoccupation with fostering direct behavior change, which in many cases exemplifies the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The most significant behavior changes may be functions of perspective transformation, and such transformation is often an essential precondition for meaningful behavior changes."

"We all require the meaning perspectives prescribed by our culture, but we have the potentiality of becoming critically aware of our perspectives and of changing them. By doing so, we move from an uncritical organic relationship to a self-consciously contractual relationship with individuals, institutions and ideologies. This is a crucial developmental task of maturity."

"Transformation in meaning perspective is precipitated by life’s dilemmas which cannot be resolved by simply acquiring more information, enhancing problem solving skills or adding to one’s competencies. Resolution of these dilemmas and transforming our meaning perspectives require that we become critically aware of the fact that we are caught in our own history and are re-living it and of the cultural and psychological assumptions which structure the way we see ourselves and others."

"I am a mathematical analyst, and most of my research is in the area of spectral geometry. Problems in spectral geometry are also studied by various kinds of geometers, number theorists, applied mathematicians, mathematical physicists, and others. What is Spectral geometry? Spectral geometry most usually means the study of how the geometry of an object is related to the natural frequencies of the object. These are the frequencies at which the object can vibrate. A vibrating object often produces a sound, and the frequencies can be heard as the dominant tone and the overtones of the sound. The well-known question highlighting what spectral geometry is all about is the question "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" I am a mathematical analyst, and most of my research is in the area of spectral geometry. Problems in spectral geometry are also studied by various kinds of geometers, number theorists, applied mathematicians, mathematical physicists, and others. In mathematical terms, the natural frequencies of an object (or rather their squares) are the eigenvalues of a partial differential operator called the Laplacian. This Laplacian takes each function defined on the object and differentiates it twice to give a new function. The eigenvalues of the Laplacian form an infinite sequence of numbers tending to infinity. In spectral geometry we study how these numbers depends on the shape of the object. For people who like to know the full story, I should mention that many spectral geometers (including me) who work on the Laplacian on smooth manifolds study the whole sequence of eigenvalues of the Laplacian. Now the low eigenvalues can give accurate values for the frequencies at which a real-life object vibrates, but the very high eigenvalues do not correspond to genuine physical vibrations of the object because of molecular forces and damping. These effects are not included in the model where the vibration is driven by the Laplacian alone. This means that my research is rather different from that of an engineer who wishes to model precisely the vibrations of a real-life object. In actual fact the questions I work on are more closely related to mathematics arising in quantum physics and string theory. In addition, I don't always study the Laplacian, but also the eigenvalues of other operators, which might represent other physical quantities than the frequencies of vibration. I mostly study spectral geometry for nice smooth objects such as spheres and tori, but some people work on rough objects and even discrete objects like graphs. In the last eight years, I have worked mostly on the spectral zeta function, which is an infinite sum of powers of the eigenvalues. In particular, I have worked on the zeta-regularised determinant, which is used in topology, quantum field theory, and string theory. Recently, I have been very interested in the sum of squares of the wavelength of a surface, which is related to all kinds of different things including vortex theory."

"I cannot claim to find it easy to balance my ambitions in mathematical research with the desire to be a good parent, to be an inspiring teacher, or to effect positive social change in the world, I do feel very fortunate to be able to spend my life tackling these challenges, which are extremely interesting and important to me."

"My mother is British, from a family with a trade union background and a central interest in class struggle; she met my father, who is Nigerian, while both were students of mathematics in London. My father was a very talented mathematician, and after my parents married, he went on to a position in the mathematics department of the University of East Anglia."

"My research is in the field of spectral geometry, the study of how the shape of an object affects the modes in which it can resonate. A famous question in the field is, Can one hear the shape of a drum? Spectral geometry bridges different branches of science, including engineering and physics, as well as a number of different fields of mathematics. However, quite different sorts of questions are studied within each discipline. I am a mathematical analyst, which gives me an appreciation for the infinite and the infinitesimal. At the moment, one of the things I am working on understanding is the total wavelength of a surface like a sphere or something of greater complexity, such as the surface of a bagel or a pretzel. What is this total wavelength? If you strike a surface it can resonate at any one of a list of frequencies, and the wavelength of the sound produced by the vibration is inversely proportional to the frequency. In the mathematically idealized model, there are infinitely many possible wavelengths. The total wavelength should be the sum of all of these individual wavelengths except that this infinite sum equals infinity. Fortunately, a finite number can be assigned to it by a slightly elusive process called regularization. (This process is also used in mathematical physics to mysteriously obtain true answers from formulas which do not really make sense!) I first became interested in the total wavelength as a model related to a question which can be roughly stated as, can one hear the shape of the universe? However, the total wavelength shows up in many quite different areas of mathematics and I am finding these connections intriguing."

"While I was growing up, the elementary school I attended was extremely ethnically homogeneous. I was unable to escape from heavy issues concerning race, which my mother always explained in a political context."

"My parents separated after my father resigned his university position to focus on his inventions, and my mother then finished her education and became a school mathematics teacher. We moved to a very cosmopolitan area of London, which was like a new birth to me; it was there that my interest in mathematics really began."

"I learned mathematics on my own from textbooks, which is perhaps strange given that both my parents were involved in the subject. At the same time, I spent a good deal of time studying art and wanted to follow a career in that direction until I was eventually convinced by my family that I should first work for a mathematics degree to ensure that I could earn a living."

"I went to Cambridge, which represented a second major change in my life. As I learned more mathematics, I saw that it is an entire world of its own which many people choose to live in, a world in many ways more real than the real world: it feels permanent, eternal, and offers a deep sense of security because nearly everyone who understands it agrees on what is truth. By the time I had finished at Cambridge, I was very involved with mathematics and did not consider other careers."

"That way of visualizing emotions, I feel like that came from that book I read that helped me meditate, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle...And one thing he emphasizes over and over, which is also something that’s explored a lot in Buddhist philosophy, is that your true essence is completely separate from your thought process. So whatever verbal chatter is in your mind, you can be immersed in it, or you can actually see it as a third-person observer and sort of step back from the chaos of your thoughts and just think to yourself, “Oh, that’s an interesting response I’m having,” or “Oh, how interesting that I’m going through that mental battle again. I’m triggered to think these thoughts again.” And it’s, of course, easier said than done, but I feel like making these comics is a way of reminding myself that if I’m feeling sad or if I’m feeling anxious, I’m not the sadness, I’m not the anxiousness. I can step back from this bad energy or see it as a rainstorm or a bad streak of weather that will eventually go away."

"I never want my stories to be just sad or just happy. I always feel like the stories that I love, they’re never completely resolved. All the loose ends aren’t tied, but it’s that tension that makes me keep thinking about it. One ending that keeps coming to mind is the ending for Spirited Away, the Ghibli movie, where it’s a happy ending but also a sad ending, but there’s also this possibility of more things to come. I just feel like that’s the most accurate representation of life. Even if it’s an ending, new things are on the way. Or even if it is a happy ending, it might pass one day. I feel like ultimately, with characters, I want them to go through a journey or go through some sort of transformation of epiphany. So it’s more a matter of that than whether it’s happy or sad."

"With comics, it’s always this interesting tug of war between what you can convey with words that can’t be conveyed with just image, and what you can convey with image that words can’t do justice to. So it’s always a combination of both when I come up with the stories because the two things are inseparable to me."

"Let us get reacquainted with the miracle that is your breath: all the trees, flowers, and plants on this earth make it possible for you to breathe. All living things on this earth are breathing in and breathing out the same air that you are."

"when making art, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum—you need at least one audience member, and that’s sort of an extension of life itself too. You need at least two people. The quote I always go back to—I think Tony Kushner said this in the introduction to Angels in America—is “The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one.” That’s a quote that has always reverberated with me."

"There are no divisions in the universe, the universe is oneness, the universe just is"

"A lot of people ask me — I get this all the time — 'Are you Buddhist? Are you Zen?' And my answer is always, 'I don't always necessarily identify myself with Buddhism, but the philosophy is something I'm always interested in and am very curious about learning more about.' So I am very influenced by Buddhist philosophies, Buddhist schools of thought. So much of it deals with being mindful, being fully aware of just a very subjective nature of reality, the illusion of reality, sort of the dichotomy of samsara or nirvana ... those are things that I do think about a lot, and I think it definitely, that interest reflects itself in the comics. (2014)"

"What if instead of drowning in your self- hating thoughts, you spread them apart like cotton candy..."

"I think it’s this intention to pay attention to what you’re doing in your day-to-day life to take care of your home and body and health and really taking — not taking pride, but like how Marie Kondo says to thank your clothes when you’re giving them away, that spirit. I just like the idea of honoring these very mundane activities, whether it’s washing your dishes or decorating your office; because I think when you put care and intention into these activities, it infuses everything you do with this mindful sense of care, where things just feel more meaningful because you’re doing them for yourself. (2017)"

"we exist because of all the other living creatures the came before us"

"there are no separate waves in this ocean of energy"