Latest news with #TheRoadtoUnfreedom
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Be a Patriot
Professors Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley are leaving Yale for the University of Toronto. Some of their reasons might be personal and professional, but these well-known academics—two historians and a philosopher—aren't just changing jobs. They're fleeing America as they see it falling under an authoritarian regime. They're watching the rule of law wither and due process disappear while a chill of fear settles over the country's most powerful law firms, universities, and media owners. They're getting out while they can. So are thousands of other Americans who are looking for work abroad, researching foreign schools for their kids, trying to convert a grandparent's birth country into a second passport, or saving up several hundred thousand dollars to buy citizenship in Dominica or Vanuatu. Many more Americans are discussing leaving with their families and friends. Perhaps you're one of them. When I heard the news of the Yale exodus, I wondered if my failure to explore an exit makes me stupid and complacent. I don't want to think I'm one of the sanguine fools who can't see the laser pointed at his own head—who doesn't want to lose his savings and waits to flee until it's too late. Perhaps I was supposed to applaud the professors' wisdom and courage in realizing that the time had come to leave. But instead, I felt betrayed. Snyder is a brilliant historian of modern Europe; Shore, his wife, is an intellectual historian focused on Eastern Europe; Stanley is an analytic philosopher who has refashioned himself as an expert on fascism. In the Trump era, Snyder and Stanley have published popular books on authoritarianism—How Fascism Works, On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom. All three professors have traveled to wartime Ukraine, tirelessly supported its cause, denounced Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and explained to their fellow Americans what history teaches about the collapse of free countries into dictatorships. Snyder says that his reasons for leaving are entirely personal, but Shore insists that she and her husband are escaping a 'reign of terror' in America. Stanley compares the move to leaving Germany in 1933. Snyder's best-selling pamphlet, On Tyranny, is an instruction manual on how to resist authoritarianism. Lesson 1 warns: 'Do not obey in advance.' It's hard not to conclude that the Yale professors are doing just that. Cutting and running at a difficult moment, before the state has even targeted them, feels like a preemptive concession to Trump—a decision that Shore says she and Snyder made after his reelection. Very few people are capable of heroism under oppression. For anyone facing death, arrest, or even persistent harassment, fleeing the country is the sane course. But the secret police aren't coming for Snyder, Shore, or Stanley. Yale, like other top-ranking universities, stands to lose millions of dollars in federal funding, but its scholars—especially those with tenure and American citizenship—are still free to speak up on behalf of an unjustly deported immigrant, defend a trans student against bullying and humiliation, protest the destruction of the federal government, and even denounce Elon Musk on X. They can still write books about fascism—more urgently now than ever. Snyder, Shore, and Stanley are deserting their posts in this country just as the battle that they've warned us about and told us how to fight is coming to a head. [Marc Novicoff: The Kennedy Center performers who didn't cancel] Following Trump's first election, in 2016, a British journalist published an essay in The New Yorker explaining why, after decades in New York, she was returning to London. Having shown its best face during the Obama years, America had let her and itself down, so it was time to leave. She had obtained United States citizenship, but she was exercising her option to get out now that the going here was no longer good; if the winds shifted again, she might come back with her American passport. Abandoning a country that had treated her well at just the moment when it ran into trouble defined citizenship as a transactional relationship. The essay seemed written to confirm the right-wing stereotype of the coastal elite with no real commitment to this country. You don't have to be a dual citizen for your attachment to be transactional. Many Americans—I'm one—believe that our country's identity rests on an idea, but an idea can be corrupted and betrayed, and then disillusionment might break the bonds of affection: I'll stay with you as long as you're beautiful, good, and true. Let yourself go, and I'm out of here. In an essay on the website Persuasion, a former government official, writing under the pseudonym William A. Finnegan, says that he is going to expatriate himself because America has broken its promise and his heart. His essay is a farewell love letter from an American who served his country for years: 'And so we grieve—not just for what we're leaving behind, but for the version of America we once believed in.' This pseudonymous public servant isn't leaving because of any personal danger. His America was worth staying for only as long as it remained the America of the Declaration and the Constitution, Lincoln's last best hope, Reagan's shining city on a hill. Trump's gargoyle nation is unrecognizable to William A. Finnegan, and it's too late to do anything about it: 'If you still believe change is possible from within, I envy you. I truly do.' How will you know when it's time to go? When Trump deports an inconvenient American citizen and ignores a court order to bring him or her back home? Or when Yale is intimidated into firing a law professor for teaching civil rights? Or the Justice Department invents a pretext for FBI agents to confiscate computers in the offices of an independent publication and take down its website? Or the 2026 midterms seem certain to be unfree and unfair? Or when none of these extreme possibilities happens, but life in America becomes so rotten with injustice and corruption, so colorlessly orthodox, so unavoidably compromising, so impoverished, so shitty, that you lose the will to stay here? When your children plead with you to move abroad? [Atossa Araxia Abrahamian: Americans are buying an escape plan] What if you decide the time has come to leave and find that it's too late? I can't answer these questions for myself, let alone for anyone else. But I don't believe the time has come—not even close. Americans are just beginning to find their voices against the destruction of our democracy. They're raising them in town halls, city streets, schools, media, courts, Congress, and conversations across the country. The awakening is slow and incoherent because the assault is coming so fast and on so many fronts: constitutional, legal, bureaucratic, economic, cultural, moral. Above all, moral. Trump's greatest weapon is his power to convince Americans that their country isn't worth saving. Some public intellectuals already seem persuaded. The belief that America stands for an idea beyond blood and soil makes its identity fragile, because an idea lives in people's minds, where it is subject to lies, hatred, ignorance, despair, even extinction. But for this very reason, as long as enough Americans continue to believe in the idea with enough conviction to stick it out here and fight, the country that you and I once lived in will still exist for the generation after us. Even with Trump memes, tariff charts, Signal chats, and masked police, America will remain my desecrated home. Snyder's Lesson 19 is this command: 'Be a patriot.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Be a Patriot
Professors Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley are leaving Yale for the University of Toronto. Some of their reasons might be personal and professional, but these well-known academics—two historians and a philosopher—aren't just changing jobs. They're fleeing America as they see it falling under an authoritarian regime. They're watching the rule of law wither and due process disappear while a chill of fear settles over the country's most powerful law firms, universities, and media owners. They're getting out while they can. So are thousands of other Americans who are looking for work abroad, researching foreign schools for their kids, trying to convert a grandparent's birth country into a second passport, or saving up several hundred thousand dollars to buy citizenship in Dominica or Vanuatu. Many more Americans are discussing leaving with their families and friends. Perhaps you're one of them. When I heard the news of the Yale exodus, I wondered if my failure to explore an exit makes me stupid and complacent. I don't want to think I'm one of the sanguine fools who can't see the laser pointed at his own head—who doesn't want to lose his savings and waits to flee until it's too late. Perhaps I was supposed to applaud the professors' wisdom and courage in realizing that the time had come to leave. But instead, I felt betrayed. Snyder is a brilliant historian of modern Europe; Shore, his wife, is an intellectual historian focused on Eastern Europe; Stanley is an analytic philosopher who has refashioned himself as an expert on fascism. In the Trump era, Snyder and Stanley have published popular books on authoritarianism— How Fascism Works, On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom. All three professors have traveled to wartime Ukraine, tirelessly supported its cause, denounced Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and explained to their fellow Americans what history teaches about the collapse of free countries into dictatorships. Snyder says that his reasons for leaving are entirely personal, but Shore insists that she and her husband are escaping a 'reign of terror' in America. Stanley compares the move to leaving Germany in 1933. Snyder's best-selling pamphlet, On Tyranny, is an instruction manual on how to resist authoritarianism. Lesson 1 warns: 'Do not obey in advance.' It's hard not to conclude that the Yale professors are doing just that. Cutting and running at a difficult moment, before the state has even targeted them, feels like a preemptive concession to Trump—a decision that Shore says she and Snyder made after his reelection. Very few people are capable of heroism under oppression. For anyone facing death, arrest, or even persistent harassment, fleeing the country is the sane course. But the secret police aren't coming for Snyder, Shore, or Stanley. Yale, like other top-ranking universities, stands to lose millions of dollars in federal funding, but its scholars—especially those with tenure and American citizenship—are still free to speak up on behalf of an unjustly deported immigrant, defend a trans student against bullying and humiliation, protest the destruction of the federal government, and even denounce Elon Musk on X. They can still write books about fascism—more urgently now than ever. Snyder, Shore, and Stanley are deserting their posts in this country just as the battle that they've warned us about and told us how to fight is coming to a head. Marc Novicoff: The Kennedy Center performers who didn't cancel Following Trump's first election, in 2016, a British journalist published an essay in The New Yorker explaining why, after decades in New York, she was returning to London. Having shown its best face during the Obama years, America had let her and itself down, so it was time to leave. She had obtained United States citizenship, but she was exercising her option to get out now that the going here was no longer good; if the winds shifted again, she might come back with her American passport. Abandoning a country that had treated her well at just the moment when it ran into trouble defined citizenship as a transactional relationship. The essay seemed written to confirm the right-wing stereotype of the coastal elite with no real commitment to this country. You don't have to be a dual citizen for your attachment to be transactional. Many Americans—I'm one—believe that our country's identity rests on an idea, but an idea can be corrupted and betrayed, and then disillusionment might break the bonds of affection: I'll stay with you as long as you're beautiful, good, and true. Let yourself go, and I'm out of here. In an essay on the website Persuasion, a former government official, writing under the pseudonym William A. Finnegan, says that he is going to expatriate himself because America has broken its promise and his heart. His essay is a farewell love letter from an American who served his country for years: 'And so we grieve—not just for what we're leaving behind, but for the version of America we once believed in.' This pseudonymous public servant isn't leaving because of any personal danger. His America was worth staying for only as long as it remained the America of the Declaration and the Constitution, Lincoln's last best hope, Reagan's shining city on a hill. Trump's gargoyle nation is unrecognizable to William A. Finnegan, and it's too late to do anything about it: 'If you still believe change is possible from within, I envy you. I truly do.' How will you know when it's time to go? When Trump deports an inconvenient American citizen and ignores a court order to bring him or her back home? Or when Yale is intimidated into firing a law professor for teaching civil rights? Or the Justice Department invents a pretext for FBI agents to confiscate computers in the offices of an independent publication and take down its website? Or the 2026 midterms seem certain to be unfree and unfair? Or when none of these extreme possibilities happens, but life in America becomes so rotten with injustice and corruption, so colorlessly orthodox, so unavoidably compromising, so impoverished, so shitty, that you lose the will to stay here? When your children plead with you to move abroad? Atossa Araxia Abrahamian: Americans are buying an escape plan What if you decide the time has come to leave and find that it's too late? I can't answer these questions for myself, let alone for anyone else. But I don't believe the time has come—not even close. Americans are just beginning to find their voices against the destruction of our democracy. They're raising them in town halls, city streets, schools, media, courts, Congress, and conversations across the country. The awakening is slow and incoherent because the assault is coming so fast and on so many fronts: constitutional, legal, bureaucratic, economic, cultural, moral. Above all, moral. Trump's greatest weapon is his power to convince Americans that their country isn't worth saving. Some public intellectuals already seem persuaded. The belief that America stands for an idea beyond blood and soil makes its identity fragile, because an idea lives in people's minds, where it is subject to lies, hatred, ignorance, despair, even extinction. But for this very reason, as long as enough Americans continue to believe in the idea with enough conviction to stick it out here and fight, the country that you and I once lived in will still exist for the generation after us. Even with Trump memes, tariff charts, Signal chats, and masked police, America will remain my desecrated home. Snyder's Lesson 19 is this command: 'Be a patriot.'
CBC
30-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
A U.S. brain drain could be Canada's brain gain
Over the last few months, academics and scientists in the U.S. have been scrambling to keep their footing on swiftly eroding ground, amid massive Donald Trump-ordered funding cuts and new restrictions. But although a weakening of the American scientific community has far-reaching impacts on the global academic landscape, experts say one side effect could be top talent from the U.S. coming to Canada. Already, some researchers, academics and scientists are making the journey — and some provinces and organizations in Canada are looking to reap the benefits. "The more questions and concerns emerge in the United States, the more opportunity there is for Canada to try and reassert its leadership in the world as a global research powerhouse," said Gabriel Miller, president and CEO of Universities Canada. A dominating force in academia The U.S. has long been a dominating force in the academic world, home to many of the most highly regarded universities in the world. But Trump has begun an aggressive campaign in his second term, increasingly targeting academia and scientific organizations in a bid to cut government spending and move against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Over the last few months, the administration has slashed federal funding and restricted leading institutions from communicating with international counterparts. Trump has also issued executive orders that led to many organizations, like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deleting scientific data sets and censoring language. Most at risk are researchers whose work goes against the stated goals of the new administration. The Environmental Protection Agency terminated grant agreements worth $20 billion US for clean energy and climate-friendly projects earlier this month, and Canadian researchers applying to receive U.S. grant funding are now being asked to confirm that their projects contain no "DEI" elements, among other politically charged inquiries. "It's kind of an attack to what we're used to in university, academic freedom and the opportunity to inquire about any kind of topic," Rémi Quirion, Quebec's chief scientist, told CBC News. Against this backdrop, some academics in the U.S. have already decided to take their skills up north. Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor, recently left a position at Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing a "far-right regime" under Trump. Two other Yale historians also made the same move earlier this year. Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are married, are on leave from Yale and slated to begin teaching courses at U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy in the fall. Snyder is the best-selling author of The Road to Unfreedom and On Tyranny, 20 Lessons From the 21st Century, the latter of which is about the need to stand up to authoritarianism when it threatens democracy. They're not the only American experts eyeing a switch to Canada. Though there isn't specific data at the moment, several in the Canadian research community, including university leaders and professors, are reporting increased interest from scientists working or training in the U.S., said Mona Nemer, Canada's chief science adviser. A U.S. crisis could be a Canadian opportunity Earlier this month, Quebec Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge announced that the province was actively looking to recruit scientific talent from the U.S. who are wary of what he called "the climate-skeptic directions that the White House is taking." "Every crisis brings opportunities," he said at an event held by the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations. For researchers in this field and others targeted with cuts, Canada could be an appealing alternative, said Quirion. In Quebec in particular, academic freedom is legally guaranteed, he said. (However, this came with its own controversy, as the law's creation was prompted by a debate over whether a professor should be suspended for saying a racial slur in a lesson.) Other provinces are also looking to attract U.S. workers. Both Manitoba and B.C. have launched campaigns within the last two months to attract more U.S. health-care professionals. Jennie Massey, a partner with executive search firm KBRS in New Brunswick, told CBC News earlier this month that she'd received 14 applications the morning after Trump's inauguration. Most were from academics looking to join Canada's universities and colleges, she said. Court challenges and backlash may have caused the U.S. administration to reverse some recent funding freezes, but the impacts on the field are lasting. "If your grant is stopped for a few months, it's really hard to basically keep coming back and keep the momentum on the research topic," Quirion said. "Very quickly you lose competitiveness or you lose interest also because you don't get enough support for that research project." Complications in pulling U.S. talent An ironic twist is that as some regions seek to woo more U.S. talent, Canada has been trying to cut down on international students and new permanent residents. In October, the federal government announced a reduction in immigration levels in a bid to relieve pressure on the housing market. Under this plan, more than 40 per cent of new permanent residents in 2025 will be temporary residents already living in Canada. A cap on international students, announced last year, has also triggered job cuts, lower enrollment and program cancellations at some post-secondary institutions due to the loss of revenue from international students' tuition fees, potentially impacting their ability to acquire new teaching talent. At this moment, Canada needs to invest more in pathways for U.S. talent to come to this country, Quirion said. Existing pathways could be expanded on, he suggested, citing the Canada Excellence Research Chair, which supports Canadian universities with investments of $10 million over seven years to attract researchers. And the question of handling academic freedom is still contentious in some regions of Canada. Earlier this month, Alberta exempted post-secondary institutions from a bill that would have required them to get provincial approval before entering into agreements with the federal government, after pressure from academic organizations. And a debate is currently unfolding in Nova Scotia over a proposed bill which critics say would give the government too much control over university funding. Still, Canada has a unique opportunity right now, Miller said. "The benefit of this moment is the reminder to Canada that we should treasure our outstanding research being done in universities and that we can take advantage of this moment to reassert that we're gonna be leaders and that we're gonna win in the global competition for talent.
