On a gray day in late January — four days after President Trump's inauguration and three days after the Women's March — I received a call from the newly constituted office of Ivanka Trump. I was invited to the White House to discuss a computer-science education initiative she was spearheading. She wanted the organization I founded, Girls Who Code, to join. Despite my deep personal opposition to many of the positions President Trump had already expressed, I was prepared, in the interest of furthering our mission, to collaborate with his new administration the way we had with the Obama administration.
Three days later, the president signed Executive Order 13769, which indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States and blocked citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entry for 90 days, keeping the "Muslim Ban" promise Trump made on the campaign trail. I immediately thought of the many young immigrants — including Syrian refugees — who participate in Girls Who Code, which is dedicated to educating, empowering, and equipping girls with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering. I thought of the girls wearing hijabs in our after-school clubs, many of them from families with roots in the seven countries Mr. Trump had singled out. I thought of the Islamophobia many of them have faced. By putting anti-Muslim stereotypes and bigotry into policy, the president of the United States, I worried, had just painted a target on their backs.
If I agreed to work with his administration, how could I look these girls in the eye? And what good would it do to advance my organization's educational mission if I offered implicit support to an administration that didn't see these girls and members of their families as fully American — let alone as the leaders we hope they will become?I declined Ms. Trump's invitation.
This week, President Trump directed the Education Department to commit at least $200 million toward computer science education. Several corporate and nonprofit partners were on hand at a Detroit event to celebrate the occasion. Girls Who Code was not.
While I have great respect for the partners participating in this program, many of whom support the work of Girls Who Code, I do not believe this initiative — nor any partnership with this White House — can reverse the harm this administration has already done in attempting to legitimize intolerance. Indeed, collaborating with this administration, on any issue, emboldens it only further.It's no accident that two days before Ms. Trump boasted about the new program's modest funding for increasing diversity in computer science, the White House unleashed yet another attack on diversity in America, in the form of a revised travel ban — this one more expansive and punitive than the original. Federal funding for increasing inclusion means little when coupled with policies like this and others that trample on the rights of immigrants, women, and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans.
Standing beside the Trump administration on one issue makes it harder to stand up to it — and against its bigoted agenda. Many in the private and nonprofit sectors have already learned this the hard way. During the last eight months, business, religious and nonprofit leaders who initially gave the White House the benefit of the doubt — who suppressed their moral outrage and joined advisory councils with the idea that it was important to have a seat at the table — have resigned and renounced their support for the president and his policies. What they seem to have discovered is what many of us already knew: There was never a table in any meaningful sense, nor any seats to take. There was only a facade — a cynical front for this administration's insidious agenda. The private and nonprofit sectors must not take part in it anymore, at any level.I am not suggesting that there is no room for negotiation. That is the job of our elected lawmakers — Senator Chuck Schumer; Representative Nancy Pelosi; Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader; and Paul Ryan, the House speaker — whose responsibility it is to minimize harm and maximize concessions on the way to compromise.
But private sector and nonprofit leaders must no longer take the bait. To work with this administration in any capacity is to normalize it, and all of the hate and bigotry it represents. That is the very real danger we face as the months drag into years, and each successive outrage fades from memory. We will all be tempted — by lucrative contracts, federal grant dollars or flashy ribbon cuttings — to seek a middle ground that does not exist. At times, it will be easier to give an inch than to stand firm.
In those moments, we would be wise to remember the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, in "Letter From Birmingham Jail," lamented that "the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."There is an undeniable appeal to the benefits that could come with having an audience with any president, and conventional wisdom about our divided politics has long suggested that the way to make change is to find common ground. Still, I believe Girls Who Code sends a more powerful message — to the young women we aim to empower, to other organizations making strategic choices and to President Trump himself — by refusing to engage.
Resistance is not futile. Those who have recently taken a knee on the football field showed us — by the national attention they drew back to the issue of racialized police violence and the value of peaceful protest — the power of citizens who refuse to cooperate with injustice. As long as extremists and open bigots inhabit the White House, there is no common ground nor common purpose to be found. We are at war for the soul of our nation, and that is why we must say no, on behalf of our fellow Americans who deserve nothing less than equality. We must not be stumbling blocks. We must draw the line. We must do it here and now.
Reshma Saujani who is the founder and C.E.O. of Girls Who Code wrote this for The New York Times on September 28, 2017.
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September 29, 201
