A Yale University professor who studies fascism is leaving the U.S. for Canada, warning that the future of academic, and personal, liberty in the country is in pressing danger.
“This crackdown, Columbia’s capitulation to this, is a grave sign about the future of academic freedom,” philosophy professor Jason Stanley said Monday in an interview on MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Reports. “In addition to, say, 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,” he continued, referring to Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk who was detained last week for what her attorneys believe is retaliation for a pro-Palestinian essay she co-authored last year.
The academic explained that his decision ultimately came down to the safety of his children and his desire to “send a warning to Americans” that’s consistent with all his work on fascism. Stanley has authored several works on the subject matter, including a 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, and 2015’s How Propaganda Works.
“The message is that they’re going to do a kind of stochastic terrorism against our country. They’re going to target people one by one so that those who are in fear will shut up, essentially,” Stanley added. “Universities are filled with fear already. They’re ceasing to make public statements. They’re not banding together. Right now they’re targeting non-citizens for, you know, writing in student newspapers.”
“I’m sure, or I suspect, they’ll start pulling people’s passports, targeting U.S. citizens for various reasons, and exploiting Americans’ ignorance,” he claimed.
The Trump administration has commenced a crackdown on a handful of prestigious universities including Columbia and Harvard for allowing students to protest for Palestine on campuses last year and fueling what they have described as antisemitism.
Shortly after a $400 million cut in federal funding was announced for Columbia, the Ivy League school was quick to succumb to the Trump administration’s demands including enhancing security, cracking down on protests, and internally reviewing academic programs like the Middle Eastern studies department.
“I have two Black and Jewish kids. I think my kids actually are more important to me than anything else. So they’re using my religion to go after academic freedom, crushing universities supposedly in the name of protecting my people, Jews, American Jews,” Stanley said. “My kids are Jewish. My kids are Black. They’re attacking their history, and I want to send a political message as I’ve been doing with my work.”
According to The Guardian, Stanley has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
