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Woke Yale professors announce they're fleeing the US as historian compares living in America to the Titanic

Daily Mail

16-05-2025

Politics
Daily Mail

Woke Yale professors announce they're fleeing the US as historian compares living in America to the Titanic

Three liberal professors at Yale University say they're jumping ship from the United States, saying the country is headed toward fascism under Donald Trump and even comparing it to being on the Titanic. Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley are all professors at the Ivy League institution, with Stanley already having told MSNBC in April that he's running away from America. Now, the other two are bolting as well, with the trio set to take up new jobs at the University of Toronto. The three released a video for the New York Times Opinion section where Stanley led them in saying he wants 'Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency.' 'We're like people on the Titanic saying our ship can't sink,' Shore added. 'And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can't sink.' Snyder claims he is not leaving because of Trump or a slide towards fascism, 'but that would be a reasonable thing to do.' He claims he is largely leaving to support his family and teach at a university where he can host 'conversations about freedom.' Stanley directly takes aim at Trump, believing he will retaliate against dissenters. 'I want to do my work without the fear that I will be punished for my words,' he said. Shore cited previous fascist regimes and said that the lesson is 'to get out sooner than later.' Stanley advised that Americans 'set up centers of resistance in places of relative safety.' They specifically cited college students being removed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for radical anti-Israel views. Stanley, an American citizen who's at no risk of deportation, previously explained how he's accepted a job offer at the Canadian college as a result, eager to escape with his family. The Ivy League processor went on to chide rival schools like Columbia, for what he billed as bowing to Trump's crackdown. On Friday, the school's interim president resigned from her role just one week, seemingly in protest of its decision to change several policies to satisfy Trump administration demands. 'This crackdown, Columbia's capitulation to this, is a grave sign about the future of academic freedom,' he told Cabrera on the set of her eponymous show. 'Hauling people off the street and sending them to Louisiana prisons like they did at Tufts University for co-authoring op-eds in the student newspaper' is another sign, he continued. Stanley had been referring to recently arrested Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained last Tuesday by ICE officials outside Boston, off-campus. Threatening to leave America has been a hobby horse of the elites and wealthy since Trump's first term. Many have been flocking to exclusive pockets of Britain in record numbers in a desperate bid to escape life under Trump. The so-called 'Donald Dash' has been backed up by Home Office figures this week which revealed that applications for UK citizenship soared in the last quarter of 2024, rising 40 per cent year on year. In fact more than 6,100 US citizens applied last year, the most since records began two decades ago and 26 per cent more than in 2023. Celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi, designer Tom Ford and Hollywood star couple Ryan Gosling and his wife Eva Mendes are among those who have fled America for the UK. Other high-profile stars including actress America Ferrera are rumoured to have relocated to the UK. The Ugly Betty star was allegedly spotted checking out schools in west London - after saying she wanted to leave the US when Trump was elected. Trump's election victory cemented Ugly Betty star Ferrera's decision to flee the US in search of the 'best opportunities' for her children in the UK. 'America is sick that Donald Trump is President again,' an insider told exclusively last November. 'She is devastated that Kamala lost. She thought the country she lived in was better than that.' Others have quit for the benefit of their children, including Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, while others including British Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner has hinted at 'getting the f*** out of America due to gun violence and the overturning of Roe v Wade. American actress Elizabeth Olsen, who lived in Richmond, south-west London, with her rock star husband Robbie Arnett during Covid, said in November that she thinks she is 'supposed to live in England'. She told The Standard: 'I don't think I'm supposed to live in the United States. London feels like a place you can work very hard and diligently, and you can stop, and you can be in parks and nature.' She added: 'I know every country has its faults, but anytime you leave the United States, your nervous system shifts. You're not consciously preparing for a random act of violence to occur.' British actress Minnie Driver said last July that she had returned to the UK after 27 years of living in Los Angeles, and would not return to a Republican state if Trump was re-elected – although she would be 'somewhat insulated' in California. Home Office data shows applications by Americans have risen steadily since the end of 2022. They surged in the last quarter of 2024 in particular, rising 40 per cent year on year to about 1,700.

New York Times

14-05-2025

Politics
New York Times

We Study Fascism. And We're Leaving the U.S.

Legal residents of the United States sent to foreign prisons without due process. Students detained after voicing their opinions. Federal judges threatened with impeachment for ruling against the administration's priorities. In the Opinion video above, Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley, all professors at Yale and experts in authoritarianism, explain why America is especially vulnerable to a democratic backsliding — and why they are leaving the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto. Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration's attacks on civil liberties. 'I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,' he said. Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. 'We're like people on the Titanic saying our ship can't sink,' she said. 'And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can't sink.' Professor Snyder's reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he's leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues, and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States. 'I did not leave Yale because of Donald Trump, or because of Columbia, or because of threats to Yale — but that would be a reasonable thing to do and that is a decision that people will make,' he wrote in a Yale Daily News article explaining his decision to leave. Their motives differ but their analysis is the same: ignoring or downplaying attacks on the rule of law, the courts and universities spells trouble for our democracy.

Frozen out: Academics seek refuge in Canada as Trump steps up attacks on US higher education

The National

09-05-2025

Politics
The National

Frozen out: Academics seek refuge in Canada as Trump steps up attacks on US higher education

It's a cold spring afternoon on Toronto's bustling Bloor Street West, a 25km road that cuts through Canada's most populous city, from the Don river in the east to neighbouring Mississauga. At the intersection of Avenue Road, tourists queue for the city's Royal Ontario Museum, while students pop in and out of a local franchise of Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee staple in the city. Tucked into the scene is the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, a relatively new addition to the centuries-old institution, established through a donation from the late Hungarian-Canadian philanthropist Peter Munk. The school will next year welcome a new member to its faculty – the American philosopher Jason Stanley, who, worried the current US political climate is putting the country at risk of fascism, is relocating his spouse and children to Canada this summer. Dr Stanley, who has been a professor at Yale University since 2013, has written extensively about authoritarian regimes and was the author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. 'I understand why Jason is as concerned as he is,' Dr Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School, tells The National. 'It's very alarming.' 'We are seeing arrests of students, visas on campus that are expired with very little notice and unprecedented budget cuts to [US universities'] core science and research enterprise.' On the hiring of Dr Stanley, Dr Stein says the university had a position open with a focus on the US. They advertised the role and reviewed applications, choosing the best candidate in the school's view. Writing to the Daily Nous, Dr Stanley said he accepted the job offer after US President Donald Trump's treatment of New York's Columbia University, which for months faced campus protests against Israel amid the war in Gaza. Angered by the demonstrations, the Trump administration withheld $400 million in federal funding for Columbia until it submitted to a series of demands, which included banning face masks on campus and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty. 'When Columbia folded,' Dr Stanley said in an interview with PBS, 'I thought, OK, I'm just going to look at the probabilities of our democratic institutions folding. I think the probabilities are not in favour of US democracy.' The Trump administration has defended its actions against Columbia and other universities by saying it is fighting anti-Semitism on campuses. That argument has been rejected by Dr Stanley, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors – highlighting the Jewish groups and students that have joined the demonstrations. Dr Stanley did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story. As part of the continuing clampdown, US immigration agents have targeted foreign-born students associated with pro-Palestine issues, at times grabbing them off the street in an effort to deport them. The best-known case is that of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian student at Columbia and legal US resident who was arrested in March in front of his pregnant wife in Manhattan, without being accused of any crime. He has since been detained in Louisiana, as a legal battle ensues over the administration's attempt to remove him from the US, sparking more unrest at the Ivy League school. 'This is a clear violation of the rule of law,' Dr Stein says. 'Without the rule of law there is no protection, that's when states become authoritarian … it is a threat against everybody.' Also watching with concern is Dr Tyeshia Redden, a US academic who works as an assistant professor in the University of Toronto's geography department, specialising in urban planning. 'I can't imagine what it's like to be walking home and a group of masked people encircle and restrain you,' she says. "It's horrifying ... but I can't say that I'm surprised, because I understand how tyranny works. "I know how this story ends ... and I think there is a degree of helplessness that I feel." Dr Redden, who has been living in Canada for about two years after receiving a doctorate in Mr Trump's home state of Florida, tells The National that attacks on education in the US predate the current administration. She highlights Florida's Stop Woke Act, a 2022 state law prohibiting professors from expressing certain viewpoints while teaching topics the government deems unfavourable, such as racial discrimination or injustice. 'We've been seeing the beginnings of this for quite some time and we are now seeing it under the auspices of an administration that is bragging about it', she says. 'I've been warned by professional organisations to limit my visits to the US … I'm not making leisure trips at this point." Dr Stanley will not be alone in his new venture. The academic will be joined by historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are also leaving Yale for the Munk School in the next academic year. 'This could be devastating for the academic community in the US,' Dr Stein says. 'You can't nurture that community if there isn't confidence in the rule of law.'

[Grace Kao] Americans consider leaving the US

Korea Herald

21-04-2025

Politics
Korea Herald

[Grace Kao] Americans consider leaving the US

About a month ago, I learned that three colleagues were leaving Yale for the University of Toronto. Philosophy professor Jason Stanley, history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore are not only senior scholars at Yale, all three study fascism. Stanley appeared in many media outlets — The Guardian, PBS, The Atlantic, etc. — explicitly noting that America's slide into authoritarianism and fascism is a major impetus for his departure. Are their departures a sign of an impending mass exodus of American academics to other countries or are they simply three of the many faculty members that move from institution to institution every year? Given Stanley's detailed exposition about the reasons for his leave, it's worth considering whether the shift in the political climate in the US has prompted American scientists to look elsewhere. Moreover, are nonacademics considering leaving their American lives? Nature, a major science journal, conducted a poll in late March 2025 and found that among 16,000 respondents, 75 percent were considering leaving the US because of the changes from this administration. While this is an alarming number, polls that rely on self-selected participants can lead to misleading results. Basic statistics teaches us that it's best to rely on a random sample of respondents or even better, a complete census. Still, we can learn something about the rationale for people's planned departure. Many of the respondents were younger scholars, who see the disappearance of viable scientific careers. In the US, funding for the sciences via government agencies like the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the National Center for Education Statistics have been severely cut. Staff at scientific agencies have been slashed, and grants to universities have been cut and threatened. Right now, $2 billion to Harvard, $400 million to Columbia and $800 million in USAID funding to Johns Hopkins among many others have been cut. In addition, Harvard's tax-exempt status is at risk. Still, I realize that most people do not work in this sector and haven't yet felt these changes firsthand. The question remains whether Americans elsewhere are also imagining a life outside of the US. The Harris Poll conducted a survey with a random sample of approximately 2,000 Americans in August 2024, November 2024 and February 2025. Anyone can download the results of this survey from their website. Here are a few highlights for me. Fifty-two percent of Americans in the Harris poll dream of a better life outside of the US. This percentage was higher for younger (Generation Z) respondents (63 percent) and Hispanic (61 percent) and Black respondents (57 percent). They did not report numbers for Asian Americans. Reasons given by respondents for considering moving outside of the US include 'seeking a more affordable cost of living' (86 percent); 'living elsewhere that aligns with my values and beliefs' (81 percent); 'personal growth and wellness" (80 percent); and 'escaping political or social instability' (78 percent). The high percentages for each response suggest that the majority ticked all of these categories. 'Values' and 'escaping political and social instability' ranked highly among the rationales for leaving. Of course, the average American is unhappy about high inflation and their overall sense of financial security. Many are worried about price increases that will come with rises in tariffs. Only 21 percent of Americans feel confident in their preparations for their financial well-being and retirement. Fifty-five percent feel that they are struggling to reach this goal. Overall, these figures are alarming. The US has traditionally been a receiver of immigrants. Specifically, in 2023, 15 percent of Americans, or about 51.3 million of its 334 million people were born outside the US. The US receives the highest number of immigrants, but it is not the nation with the largest proportion of foreign-born residents. The second most popular country of destination for immigrants is Germany, where 17 million of its 84 million total population are foreign-born. Immigrants account for 20 percent of the German populace. Compare this to South Korea, where 2.5 million of about 52 million people were born abroad. This is just under 5 percent of its population. As an aside, there are also many YouTube videos instructing older Americans about the virtues of retiring abroad. The attraction is that health insurance is more readily available in wealthy countries than in the US, especially for those under 65. The US provides health insurance under Medicare for those over 65. Some of these retirees also argue that housing can be more affordable. Where does this leave us? Will the US shift from a country that welcomes people from other countries to one that sends its citizens abroad? I think once Americans realize how difficult it is to emigrate, fantasies of living abroad might dissipate. Still, it's disturbing that so many people are entertaining the idea of living elsewhere. No matter what, I hope more Americans choose to travel abroad — only 51 percent of Americans have a valid passport. Of course, worries about crossing the US border might drive people to watch travel videos on YouTube instead. Grace Kao is an IBM professor of sociology and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale University. The views expressed here are the writer's own. — Ed.

Trump's Claims of Antisemitism Are About Bringing Universities to Their Knees

Yahoo

16-04-2025

Politics
Yahoo

Trump's Claims of Antisemitism Are About Bringing Universities to Their Knees

A Tufts University student in a hijab, plucked off the street by masked agents. A greencard holder and former Columbia University protest organizer, arrested in front of his pregnant wife, awaiting possible deportation in an ICE detention in Louisiana. A 10-year resident of the U.S., on his way to a citizenship interview, seized by federal agents and placed into deportation proceedings. A State Department AI surveillance scheme, 'Catch and Revoke,' scouring thousands of academic visa holders' social media accounts for signs of dissent. Billions of dollars in federal funding suddenly frozen for universities that refuse to comply with demands for academic capitulation. Naked threats to bring 'existential terror' to American colleges. Amid this firehose blast of threats, directives, laws, and executive orders flows one common charge: antisemitism. Throughout history, authoritarian regimes have scapegoated Jews in order to impose tyrannical rule. Now the Trump administration is implementing an authoritarian plan to squash dissent, force conformity, and bring universities to their knees — in the name of protecting American Jews. 'We are being set up by the Trump regime,' Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale, said on MSNBC. 'We are being used to destroy democracy… as a sledgehammer for fascism.' More from Rolling Stone Kneecap Claim Pro-Palestinian Message Was Cut from Coachella Livestream Columbia University President Resigns After School Accepts Trump's Demands Here Are The Students Trump Wants to Deport Over Their Speech How did this happen? The Trump war on free speech didn't start on Inauguration Day, but dates back to the overwhelmingly peaceful Gaza solidarity protests at universities across the country during the spring of 2024. After the horrific Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, student tent camps sprang up to protest Israel's aggressive military response, which so far has left more than 50,000 dead. An estimated 62,000 more have died from starvation, and more than 116,000 have been injured. At my university, University of Southern California, a multi-ethnic ecumenical cohort held candlelight vigils, teach-ins, and rallies demanding an end to the slaughter. There were poetry readings, yoga, and seders for Jewish students who carried banners declaring, 'Not in my name.' The protests made some of the other Jewish students — and, more to the point, USC's pro-Israel donors and trustees — uncomfortable, and they accused the protesters of being antisemitic. President Carol Folt summoned the LAPD, who — in full riot gear, and with police choppers thundering overhead — descended on our campus to zip-tie and arrest 93 unarmed protestors, mostly students and a few faculty trying to protect them. Some version of this happened at institutions of higher learning across the country. The chaos on college campuses, with toxic charges of antisemitism being cast around, timed perfectly with the repressive agenda of Trump sycophant Elise Stefanik. Stefanik, once a moderate Republican member of the House, morphed under Trump into a champion of the Christian right. She has declared that Israel has a God-given right to control the West Bank, and that Trump's return to power was part of God's plan. In House hearings last spring, Stefanik summoned the ghost of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, grilling college presidents about alleged antisemitism on their campuses, and cowing the presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia to submit their resignations. In the hearings, Stefanik promoted an emerging definition of antisemitism that includes several common criticisms of Israel. The witch hunt on academics and student activists has little to do with actual antisemitism. If it did, Trump would have long ago denounced the far-right demonstrators in Charlottesville who chanted 'Jews will not replace us.' If it did, Trump would have fired Elon Musk immediately after his straight-armed salute on Inauguration Day — a gesture widely interpreted as a 'Sieg Heil.' If it did, the House hearings starring Stefanik would have also confronted the disturbing rise of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hatred. For that matter, they would have defended — or at least heard out — the Jews taking part in the solidarity camps who did not support what was being done in their name. 'There were a very large number of Jewish students in those protests,' Stanley, the Yale philosophy professor, told PBS Newshour. 'Why don't they count as Jewish?' American Jews, warned Stanley, whose Jewish family fled Germany in 1939, 'will go down in history — if this continues, if we enable it — as the people responsible for taking down the greatest system of higher education in human history. We need to resist this.' Silence and complicity On Feb. 28, the Justice Department announced investigations into 10 universities, including USC, in the purported quest to 'eradicate antisemitic harassment.' Trump then coupled the antisemitism charges with a new enemy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, threatening universities with billions of dollars of cuts in federal programs. These threats began frightening university leaders into complicity. At Columbia, the president caved, scrubbing the school's websites of evidence of DEI programs, agreeing to adopt the draconian definition of antisemitism promoted by hardline defenders of Israel, and subjecting its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department to outside oversight, a devastating blow to academic freedom. Dramatic concessions like these are part of the plan laid out in the Project 2025 blueprint. As conservative activist Christopher Rufo told The New York Times, the administration's objective is to put 'universities into contraction, into a recession…in a way that puts them in an existential terror.' On April 9, U.S. Customs and Immigration announced it would begin screening social media accounts of incoming 'foreign nationals' who attend universities 'linked to antisemitic activity.' This effort ultimately could ensnare foreign-born faculty around the U.S. It isn't too late for university leaders to take their place at the vanguard of the struggle. Some already have. The president of Princeton University, Christopher Eisgruber, called Trump's actions 'the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.' Wesleyan's president, Michael Roth, in an interview with Politico, cited his peers' 'fear that the current administration thinks of retribution as a legitimate political tactic.' But university attempts to stay out of the fray by implementing 'institutional neutrality,' Roth said, are 'making cowardice into a policy.' At USC, 77 Jewish and Jewish Studies faculty wrote to President Folt, denouncing Trump's attempts to 'weaponize Jewish identity for this Administration's goals of repression and deportation,' The letter called on USC to 'pledge to protect the rights of all students, staff and faculty.' USC did not respond. On Monday, Harvard announced it was refusing to submit to Trump's demands, putting $9 billion in federal funding at potential risk. The university had previously agreed to the definition of antisemitism promoted largely by the right, but now Harvard is pushing back against the administration's attempts to seize greater control. 'The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,' declared Harvard President Alan Garber. 'Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.' Trump responded the same day by freezing $2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard. Chilling echoes of 1939 It's no longer an exaggeration to say that the Trump war on democracy carries chilling echoes from those dark times. 'What made Hitler's orders stick was the eagerness of many academic leaders to comply, justify, and normalize the new order,' Iveta Silova, professor of comparative and international education at Arizona State, wrote in a recent op-ed. 'Each decision — each erased name, each revised syllabus, each closed program and department — was framed as necessary, even patriotic. Within a few years, German universities no longer served knowledge — they served power.' Our times demand resistance. Besides some universities finally pushing back, thousands of professors are speaking out as well. In an open letter to the presidents of 60 universities in Trump crosshairs over alleged antisemitism, some 4,700 faculty nationwide declared, 'You are on the frontlines of a war that is unfolding against U.S. higher education. We look to you for leadership and coalition-building during a time when the stakes have never been higher.' The letter called on 'all sixty institutions under government threat to unite in a coordinated, proactive defense.' And the American Association of University Professors filed a First Amendment lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court, accusing Trump administration officials of attempting to 'arrest…and deport noncitizen students and faculty based on their political viewpoints.' If the deportations don't terrify you yet, consider this: Erik Prince, a close Trump ally and founder of the private military contractor Blackwater, is advancing a $25 billion proposal to the White House to build mass detention centers in order to deport some 12 million immigrants. Who knows who else could end up there? 'Homegrowns are next,' Trump said this week to Salvadoran strongman president Nayib Bukele, who is already housing alleged gang members shipped by ICE to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center. 'You've gotta build about five more places,' Trump said, to laughter in the White House. We need to act fast. 'The time is now to stand up,' Eric Holder, former U.S. Attorney General, told Rachel Maddow last week. 'This is disgusting, it's shameful, and it's inconsistent with who we are as a nation. Every citizen of this country ought to be afraid. Because the reality is if they are successful in doing this to immigrants…this is how you get authoritarianism. This is remarkably similar to what happened in Europe in the 1930s. 'If you don't stand up and fight now, if you don't take a position now, it's going to be too late.' Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up