The global wave of right-wing populism landed in New Haven on May 3, 2017 when Yale University President Peter Salovey issued an executive order, announcing that Yale would defy US labor law.

Yale refuses to begin negotiations with UNITE HERE Local 33, which was certified by the National Labor Relations Board as the representative of graduate teachers in eight Yale departments (including English, History, Political Science, and Geology and Geophysics) after union elections in February. Like other populist demagogues, Salovey insists that his view of what is democratic outweighs not only the rights of association of his employees, but the inconvenient legal procedures of the NLRB: “we [the royal we] are deeply troubled by the undemocratic method of department-by-department unionization chosen by Local 33,” he writes. He then laments “Local 33’s non-inclusive strategy” and “its micro-unit approach.”

So Salovey imposes his idea of “democracy” by defying democratic labor law.