By: C. William Hanson Jr.

Dear Readers,

Last month we speculated that “the younger generations provide grounds for hope in 2026.”  We celebrated the musical accomplishments of a Harvard undergraduate, Jack Damon, whose musical talents and charisma recently brought back to life the moribund Harvard and Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan players. (In an attachment, we also discussed the importance of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the canon of British-American culture.). Here you see him receiving, on January 28th, 2026, the Davenport International Foundation Musician of the Year Award:

Today on board a flight headed southwest, seeking some respite from arctic weather, the cold spell currently gripping New England, two experiences have brought to mind the stark contrast between older and younger generations. For reading material I brought with me The New York Review ofBooks, a publication in which the essays far transcend mere assessment of new books, these serving largely as points of departure. For readers unfamiliar with the Review, let us note that the illuminating essays vary widely in subject matter, as of course do the books undergoing review. The contents of the Review often evoke an awareness that elements of culture, while seeming superficially unrelated to each other, interweave themselves in unexpected ways. Thus last fall a critique of art museum exhibitions in Kazakhstan revealed an increasingly enlightened despotism, one which tends to adopt a hands off relationship to Kazakh creativity, allowing also an influx from the wider world, including especially young Russian artists, talents fleeing repression under Putin.   Sadly, the current (February 12th) issue of the Review informs us of some repressive actions, not widely publicized, through which “the Trump administration’s widening assault on civil society has found its first target in the world of philanthropy.”  Trump has launched an attack on the Open Society Foundations (OSF), established by George Soros, a major contributor to Democratic candidates for election. An adamant opponent of the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, Soros donated more than any other individual to the campaign of Bush’s opponent John Kerry. Trump has called Soros a “bad guy” who “should be put in jail.” At Trump’s urging, in September Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche without evidence “instructed more than six US attorney’s offices to launch investigations of OSF on possible charges ranging from arson to support of terrorism.”  OSF has explained that the ostensible suspicions are “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with.”  The administration, in its actions, according to the Review, “is imitating the authoritarian regimes it appears to admire.”  In 2015 the Putin regime declared the OSF “an undesirable organization,” and accused it of “undermining Russia’s constitutional foundations and national security.”  Is it not clear by now that Putin and Trump, each currently in his seventies, both embrace a retrograde culture of autocratic and militaristic nationalism (and, especially in Trump’s case, racism)?

On the flight, the refreshments having arrived, and the Review having been stashed in order to make room, I asked the very young man sitting next to me if he might be a student.  “Yes,” he replied, “a graduate student.”  It turns out that he is a graduate student in the Harvard biology department, who specializes in neuroscience and who comes from China.  He in turn seemed curious about my line of work, and I told him of our Gazette and showed him last month’s edition. He concurred with the impression that his generation has largely rejected or ignored chauvinism, ethnocentricity, and militarism. As a graduate student at Harvard, surely he must be far from typical or average. He no doubt belongs to an elite within Chinese society.  It is my hope and belief that in China, as in many other nations, educated youth from the elite stratum of society will, in all likelihood, come one day to hold the reins of power, and  that this rising generation may usher in an enlightened age. Members of this generation, especially the better educated among them, see themselves more as citizens of the world than did generations preceding them. Admittedly, my hope in this regard springs largely from my experience as an educator and foundation director, having worked internationally with students and young professionals from numerous different lands.

The hope clearly faces challenges and disturbing setbacks. Eighty years ago, following World War Two, the USA undertook, through its policies in Japan and through the Marshall Plan in Europe, to promote prosperity even in the countries whose regimes had waged war against the USA and allied forces. Likewise after the war the underdeveloped world received developmental aid. Policies recognized that a rising tide lifts all ships. International prosperity fosters the worldwide growth and economic empowerment of a middle class, and historically a flourishing middle class tends to insist on having a voice in government, a voice tending to counter the entrenchment of repressive autocracy. Needless to add in 2026, a prosperous republic always remains vulnerable to the ambitions of would-be autocrats.  Yet the most egregious examples of autocracy have involved countries in which the middle class floundered. Hitler came to power in a time of economic collapse. In Putin’s Russia, despite the country’s vast natural resources, household income is only about half that in Poland and a much smaller fraction of that of England, France, and Germany, and has shown no overall growth in the past decade.

Russians’ Real Disposable Incomes Are Falling

Also, in my view, economic prosperity and a generalized elevation in standard of living in themselves have a humanitarian value quite apart from a country’s form of government.

With such considerations in mind, let us consider the unprecedented national security document which the Trump administration has recently published. We cannot improve upon the review and analysis which the Danish professor of international relations, Anders Puck Nielsen, has provided:

In view of some of the recent developments we reviewed for you today, one might wonder if we have expressed excessive optimism.  

Let us therefore turn to a note of long range optimism expressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky:

Listening to Zelensky’s outlook, we can safely surmise that he refers to the mass of uneducated Russian youth which supplies Putin’s troops in Ukraine. My own familiarity with Russians in the age range of twenty to forty has included only individuals who have studied at universities or other such educational institutions, who have resided in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, and whose educations rank far above the average. These individuals in their outlook bear a similarity to the Chinese graduate student sitting next to me on my flight.

In February we shall revisit Hungary and take a fresh look at governance and culture in this neighbor of Ukraine, a neighbor currently under the leadership of the Viktor Orbán, now in his sixties, who like Putin and Trump has endeavored to outlaw the Soros Foundation and other independent organizations of a civil society.