STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: In the 1950s, Senator John F. Kennedy wrote a book called "Profiles In Courage." It told the stories of eight senators through history who took unpopular stands and also took the punishment for it. The journalist Jacob Weisberg has now written a book about eight public figures during the second Trump administration. He calls it "Profiles In Cowardice."
JACOB WEISBERG: I'm talking about a particular kind. I'm talking about civic cowardice.
INSKEEP: Jacob Weisberg tells of the leaders of law firms, universities, courts and Congress. In his telling, they failed to push back when President Trump exceeded his constitutional power. Weisberg begins the book with a quote from Mark Twain.
WEISBERG: (Reading) It is curious, curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
INSKEEP: So in laying out these profiles in cowardice, as you call them, you're talking about people who you believe could have stood up more firmly against the excesses of the Trump administration and just didn't.
WEISBERG: Yes. And I'm not talking about people who, you know, oppose Trump's politics. I'm talking about Trump's dictatorial behavior, his governing by emergency decree and executive order, his essentially - his operation outside the Democratic system.
INSKEEP: It's a variety of people here. You've got head of a Democratic or liberal-leaning law firm. You've got prominent Republicans. And you also have a university president, the president of Dartmouth. Who is she, and what's the story?
WEISBERG: Well, she's called Sian Beilock, and it's - Dartmouth is an interesting story, and it's a complicated story. Dartmouth was the only Ivy League school that didn't fully support Harvard in its lawsuit against the Trump administration when Trump tried to deny Harvard billions of dollars in research grants that it had already been awarded and tried to say Harvard, the most important international university, couldn't enroll any foreign students.
What happened at Dartmouth was they got a free pass for bad reasons. They cracked down really excessively on a quite benign Gaza protest in 2024. And as a result, the Trump Justice Department, and particularly a woman named Harmeet Dhillon, who was a Dartmouth alum, gave Dartmouth and Sian Beilock a free pass, and she said, great, we'll take it. We'll play ball with them. We'll keep quiet. We won't stand up for the principles that Dartmouth should represent.
INSKEEP: If she was here, could she say, what's a matter with you, Jacob? I have an institution. I need to look after the institution. I kept my head down.
WEISBERG: I think that's a fair point, but when there's a compromise to be made between what protects you personally or your fiefdom personally, and the principles that govern all of academia, I think you have to kind of figure out how to be a leader.
INSKEEP: Why is John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, a profile in cowardice, in your view?
WEISBERG: I think Roberts has pursued his own goals around executive power and executive authority without much regard for the reality of who's exercising that authority right now and how they're exercising it.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute.
WEISBERG: So...
INSKEEP: You're saying that Roberts has a pre-existing opinion about executive power?
WEISBERG: I do, and I think he's a devotee of something called the unitary executive theory, which is the idea that essentially, Congress can't trammel the power of a president by creating independent regulatory agencies and so on, which we've just seen finally enacted through a series of Supreme Court decisions that Roberts has joined or led. And the most damaging instance is the case of Trump v. United States, where Roberts wrote the majority opinion right before Trump was reelected. And that decision essentially made it impossible to prosecute a president for corruption or criminal activity, either while they're in the White House or after they leave the White House.
INSKEEP: I wonder if your view of Roberts and of the court generally has evolved over time. There was a period in 2025 when from the outside the court seems super pro-Trump. In ruling after ruling after ruling, overruling lower courts, they would say, let's defer to the president. We'll defer to the president, and we'll get to a final decision later. These were temporary rulings. And then the court did reach some final decisions and began ruling against the president, for example, on tariffs. Does that give you a different perspective on them?
WEISBERG: Well, I think it's wrong to see Roberts as a shill for Trump. I don't think that's what's going on, and I don't think it's that he won't draw any lines. I think it's that he's holding back when it comes to restraining the executive in ways that this executive in particular, needs to be restrained.
INSKEEP: Did you call up any of these eight individuals or their spokesman, whoever you could reach, and just say, you know, I'm writing a book, and I'm going to call you a coward?
WEISBERG: But of the eight, only one, Brad Karp, the chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss was willing to talk to me.
INSKEEP: Ah. Did he give you anything that complicated your view of his cowardice?
WEISBERG: I think it did because I think he made me understand what it was like. Not that I think he made the right decision. I think he made a disastrous decision in agreeing to make a deal with the White House after only five days. And I think that decision has harmed his law firm. Of course, he's no longer head of the firm because of some stuff that came in the Epstein scandal about how he was essentially giving pro bono advice to Jeffrey Epstein. But he did - you know, telling me the story from his perspective, made me understand what that moment was like when the weight of the federal government and of the presidency is aimed at your law firm.
And Trump issued an executive order saying, Paul, Weiss lawyers couldn't enter government buildings, and they would all be denied security clearances. You know, the firms that resisted that pressure that were also targeted with executive orders, won every case in the courts. And they're doing fine, and they're doing a lot better than Paul, Weiss in a lot of ways. You know, he'd had a heart attack a couple of months before. I mean, it's hard not to sympathize with someone who is in that position, even if you think they made a terrible decision.
INSKEEP: Jacob Weisberg is the author of "Profiles In Cowardice," a study of collaboration in the Trump era. Thanks so much.
WEISBERG: Steve, it's a pleasure talking to you.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
We reached out to Dartmouth College president Sian Beilock, Chief Justice John Roberts and Attorney Brad Karp for comment. Beilock declined, and we did not hear back from Roberts or Karp.
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