The following statement of support for Donald Trump is intended to counteract the dishonest presentation of this promising presidential candidate as someone whose followers are illiterate or, in the words of Ted Cruz, “badly informed.” Those who have attached their signatures to this statement are accredited scholars, mostly with Ph.D. s, who are endorsing Donald Trump as a credible candidate for the presidency and as the only barrier now standing between us and (Heaven forfend!) the election of Hillary Clinton. It is our hope that the appearance of this statement on a respected website will generate signatures from other scholars and that our statement of support can then be placed in the national press. We are fully aware that signing this statement will not bring the signatory the same professional rewards as speaking at a conference on why Trump is a “fascist” or on why he reminds one of the late German Fuhrer. Expressing support for the Republican presidential candidate undoubtedly requires more courage, particularly for someone in the academic profession. But we trust that there are lots of gutsy scholars who read this website and who will be eager to append their signatures to our statement.

Yours truly,

Paul Gottfried and Walter E. Block

We the undersigned scholars hereby express our support for the presidential bid of Donald J. Trump. Contrary to a fiction invented and disseminated by both the mainstream media and the Republican Party establishment, Trump supporters are by no means limited to the badly educated and ill-informed. We feature numerous academics and other professionals, who share Trump’s vision of “making American great again.” Our group is vitally concerned about reversing the direction in which this country has been moving for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. That is, we want to move away from harming our economically strained middle and working classes. We reject their pattern of stifling freedom of thought and speech that is being imposed by government agencies as well as by the media and our universities in the name of an increasingly restrictive political correctness. Moreover, we respect Trump as the law and order presidential candidate, who is dedicated to making our borders and our streets safe. Instead of blaming such scapegoats of the Left as white Christian bigotry and gun owners for our increasing lawlessness and terrorist attacks, Trump places responsibility for the breakdown of our safety where it belongs, on Muslim extremists and violent criminals.

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Finally, we see Donald Trump as a leader who will give a new direction to American foreign policy. Neither an isolationist nor an ideological crusader, he will base his dealings with other nations firmly on American interests. He is searching for a path in international relations that advances those interests without involving us in playing policemen to the entire world or confusing statecraft with imposing a global democratic agenda. In this respect, Trump emphatically distinguishes himself from recent Republican presidential candidates and from the utterly ineffective Democratic administration of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both forces of opposition to Trump have been badly misguided. Whereas establishment Republicans have tried to make the rest of the world conform to their preferred notions of democracy, their Democratic opponents have not dealt competently with either international relations or domestic social disorder.

We believe Donald Trump will offer an alternative to the failed approach to foreign relations of our last two presidents.

Walter E. Block , Loyola University, New Orleans, Ph.D., Columbia University

Paul Gottfried, Elizabethtown College, Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Ph.D., Yale University

Darren Beatty, Ph.D., Duke University

Boyd Cathy, North Carolina State Archives, Ph.D., University of Navarra

Marshall DeRosa, Florida Atlantic University, Ph.D., University of Houston

Jack Kerwick, Rowan College (Burlington County, New Jersey), Ph.D., Temple university

Donald W. Miller, professor of surgery emeritus, Seattle Swedish Medical Center

Ralph Raico, SUNY Buffalo, Ph.D., University of Chicago

Clyde Wilson, University of South Carolina, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If you are willing to have your name added to this list, please drop a note to Paul Gottfried at gottfrpe@etown.edu and give us your scholarly affiliation, along the lines of the other signatories.

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