Abstract
As faculty members many of us are experiencing a period of uncertainty and stress about the future of academia. In this short opinion piece, I reflect on my own journey. Similar to the different stages of grief, I have gone through my own stages of dealing with the clash between academia and the Trump administration. My first step was academic curiosity about the proposed changes by the administration. My second step was worry and stress. I then understood some of the ways in which academic institutions have been complicit in creating the current state of affairs. Finally, my current stage is hopefulness that the new rules imposed by DOGE could help universities reinvent themselves in a way that is more useful for institutions of higher education and for society as a whole.