Amid Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on Ivy League institutions and immigrant students, Yale University professor Jason Stanley said he will be leaving the country and taking a position at the University of Toronto. “It’s not just Donald Trump. It’s the machine behind Donald Trump,” he said, calling the present situation an ‘autocratic takeover’. “The United States is in the process of an autocratic takeover and it’s directed by a regime that I don’t think will want to leave power,” said Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy.
“Columbia’s complete and utter capitulation, really giving up to an autocratic regime, showed me that the universities are not going to stand together,” Stanley said.
The writer of the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of US and Them announced that he has accepted a position at U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
He said the way Columbia University kneeled before the Trump administration to get $400 million in funding helped him make up his mind that he should accept Toronto University’s offer.
“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted – that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said.
‘I don’t see it as fleeing’
In an interview with the Guardian, Stanley said he considered leaving the US in 2017 as well but the second Trump administration is going to be much worse, he feels. He said his grandmother left Berlin in 1939 and he sees this in a similar light, though he said he does not see it as a fleeing but joining Canada. “I see it as joining Canada, which is a target of Trump, just like Yale is a target of Trump.”
“Part of it is you’re leaving because ultimately, it is like leaving Germany in 1932, 33, 34. There’s resonance: my grandmother left Berlin with my father in 1939. So it’s a family tradition,” Stanley said.