The Manhattan Institute Helped Kill DEI. Now It’s Coming for Protests

Key Takeaways

• A right-wing think tank responsible for the emergence of zero-tolerance policing in 1990s New York City and the Trump administration’s scorched-earth campaign against “diversity, equality and inclusion” programs is behind state-level legislative efforts to classify minor protest-related crimes as “civil terrorism.” The Manhattan Institute, cofounded in 1978 by former Central Intelligence Agency director William Casey, is in the midst of a yearlong campaign to pass state-level legislation reclassifying minor crimes like vandalism, blocking a roadway, or trespassing during a protest as felonies that would carry 18-month prison sentences as punishment.
• The Manhattan Institute’s push to criminalize forms of nonviolent disobedience as a form of terrorism comes amid a broader Trump administration effort to crack down on leftist organizations, causes, and social movements, while recasting acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as potential crimes.
• “Today’s left-wing agitators deploy random acts of lawlessness designed to inconvenience and disrupt as many civilians as possible, hoping to pressure them to get the government to change course.
• This tactic is reasonably described as a form of terrorism, though the activists aren’t murderous like al-Qaida or Hamas—they don’t use guns, bombs, or threats of unpredictable bloodshed.
• Instead, they engage in civil terrorism,” wrote Manhattan Institute legal policy fellow Tal Fortgang, a recent New York University law graduate who lambasted students protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza for “Jew hatred.” Fortgang, who’s spent his career at right-wing think tanks, appears to be the main proponent of the “civil terrorism” theory, beginning with a February 2025 Wall Street Journal op-ed that argued acts of nonviolent disobedience like blocking a road was something far more sinister.