That is no excuse, however, for what the historian Timothy D. Snyder, in On Tyranny, calls anticipatory obedience. Snyder argues that a key lesson from 20th-century authoritarianism is “don’t hand over the power you have before you have to.” UNT’s overcompliance feels precisely like we are conceding our power — our academic authority over teaching and research — in advance to aspiring authoritarians in Austin, Tex. Our administration cheerfully assures us that we are not abandoning our values as an institution of higher education. The necessity of such assurances, though, should alarm any faculty who hear them. As we creep into self-censorship, that is precisely what we are doing: not speaking truth to power, but letting power tell us what truths we can pursue.