B I J A N

I’ve known Judge Mark Wolf for several years. We’re neighbors in Massachusetts. Over coffee, I’ve come to understand how deeply he cares about justice and the rule of law.

When I served as Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Lauren and I hosted Judge Wolf for lunch in Prague. We talked about democracy and what it means to protect institutions that can seem abstract until they’re under threat.

Lauren and me with Judge Mark Wolf, United States Ambassador’s residence, Prague, 2023

The Czechs understand this. They lived through occupation. They know what happens when the law becomes a weapon instead of a shield.

This week, Judge Wolf resigned from the federal bench after nearly 40 years. He wasn’t tired. He wasn’t ready to retire. He resigned because, as he wrote in The Atlantic, “silence, for me, is now intolerable.”

A federal judge with a lifetime appointment walked away from a position he loved because staying silent felt worse than speaking out.

Judge Wolf spent five decades at the Department of Justice and on the bench. He prosecuted corruption. He sentenced a Speaker of the Massachusetts House to eight years for taking bribes. He ordered the government to pay over $100 million to families of people murdered by FBI informants. He does not speak lightly about threats to the rule of law.

His concerns are specific. President Trump publicly instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek indictments against political adversaries, even when officials saw no proper basis for charges. The FBI’s public corruption squad has been eliminated. The Justice Department’s public integrity section has been gutted from 30 lawyers to five. Inspectors general who detect fraud and misconduct were fired, possibly unlawfully.

As Judge Wolf writes: “What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or improper, Trump now does routinely and overtly.”

What struck me most is what this decision cost him. He loved being a judge. He took pride in a federal judiciary that makes “our country’s ideal of equal justice under law a reality.” But ethical rules limit what judges can say publicly. And he watched in “dismay and disgust” as the administration “dismantled so much of what I dedicated my life to.”

Judge Wolf has worked in countries ruled by corrupt leaders who jail political opponents, suppress independent media, forbid free speech, punish peaceful protests, and block any effort to establish an independent judiciary. He’s not claiming we’re there. He’s telling us where we’re heading if we don’t pay attention.

A lifetime appointment. A career of distinguished service. A position he loved. He set it all aside because speaking out became more important than staying comfortable.

I encourage you to read Judge Wolf’s full essay.

Václav Havel was born on this day. The playwright turned president saw that change begins when ordinary people decide they’ve had enough.

Havel wrote about this in The Power of the Powerless. He watched people in communist Czechoslovakia go through the motions. They hung state slogans in shop windows not because they believed them, but because it was safer than facing consequences. They applauded speeches that made them cringe. They went along. Small compromise after small compromise.

His answer: live in truth. Stop pretending. Stop nodding along when you know something is wrong.

Living in truth might mean not sharing a story you suspect is false. It might mean speaking up when someone gets unfairly attacked. Small things.

Havel’s warning applies beyond communism. We’re not behind an Iron Curtain, but we still face pressures to stay quiet or go along.

Nearly the entire Fulbright board resigned this week. These public servants did not step down lightly. They quit because the White House interfered in selecting Fulbright scholars, turning a merit based program into something political.

When I served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, I saw what Fulbright makes possible. I met American Fulbrighters teaching in Czech towns, often living abroad for the first time. They were curious and humble and eager to learn. I met Czech Fulbrighters studying in the U.S., working on public health and climate science and music. One went on to build a nonprofit. Another joined the Czech foreign ministry.

I met Czech university leaders like Milena Králíčková, a Fulbright alum who became rector of Charles University in Prague. Martin Bareš, rector of Masaryk University in Brno, is also a Fulbright alum. These leaders are shaping the future of their country. Fulbright played a part in that.

I met Americans in government and research and civil society who traced their careers back to a Fulbright experience.

Senator J. William Fulbright created the program in 1946. He believed educational exchange could help prevent future wars. He wanted to replace suspicion with understanding. That idea matters as much now as it did almost 80 years ago.

Fulbright builds real relationships. It says that exchange between people matters. That academic freedom matters. That we gain something when we listen to each other.

When politics takes over this program, we lose something. We turn away the very people who want to engage with us. We damage how others see us.

This never should have happened. The board members who resigned stood up for what the program was meant to be. They were right to do so.

We should be protecting Fulbright, not weakening it.

We’ve had a place on Nantucket for years but never been inside the Unitarian church on Orange Street. This spring, Lauren and I decided to try it. What I want to tell you about happened on our second visit.

The minister started telling a story passed down from a local family. She said the word “Czechoslovakia,” and I sat up. This island and my second home, Czechia, were suddenly connected.

It was 1939. Nazi forces had just marched into Prague. Czech intellectuals and religious leaders were being hunted. Some escaped.

Word spread that Czech Unitarians were in danger. Congregations in the U.S. arranged passage for those fleeing. When this little Nantucket church learned Czech families were arriving with nowhere to go, they opened their homes. Quietly and without fanfare.

One family they took in was Maja Capek, her teenage son, and her elderly father. Maja’s husband was Reverend Norbert Capek, who had founded the Unitarian Church in Prague. In 1923, he created the Flower Communion. Each person brings a flower and places it in a shared vase. At the end of the service, each person takes home a different one. We come from different places, but we belong to the same community. We are changed by being part of it.

That ritual spread everywhere. Congregations still hold a Flower Communion each spring. Capek believed in human diversity and spiritual freedom. The Nazis saw those beliefs as a threat. He was arrested in 1941 and murdered in 1942.

Another family the church took in was Zdenek Kopal, a young astronomer, with his wife and infant daughter. He went on to help NASA map the moon for Apollo. That journey started in a stranger’s home on Nantucket.

The Capeks and the Kopals arrived with almost nothing. No luggage. No certainty. Just hope someone would help. And someone did.

Sitting in that pew, I felt the weight of it.

The values Capek held onto did not die with him. They lived on through his family. They lived on in Nantucket. They live on every time people come together to honor difference.

The connection between the U.S. and Czechia runs deeper than diplomacy. It shows up in what it means to show up for one another.