The Current - Why Yale professor Jason Stanley is moving to Canada

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Jason Stanley, a Yale University professor who studies fascism, is moving to Canada after seeing too many signs from his own work in the American political landscape. Stanley tells Matt Galloway about how he hopes to protect democracy from north of the border — and issues a warning to his new Canadian neighbors.

Whose take do you trust during this election cycle? I'm Rosemary Barton, CBC's chief political correspondent. At Issue is also where I listen and learn from the very best. Chantelle Bair, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj. They are political heavyweights. They write and talk about politics for Canada's biggest publications and broadcasters, and they help shape the national conversation. So if you're looking for people who can connect the dots, cut through the spin, check out

the At Issue podcast every week, wherever you listen. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Jason Stanley thinks a lot about fascism. As a philosophy professor at Yale University, his books unpack how fascist regimes use intimidation and propaganda to consolidate power. His most recent book is called Erasing History. It describes how

authoritarians attack universities and education in an effort to rewrite the past and obscure the truth. Well, now Jason Stanley is so worried about how that is playing out in the United States that he has decided to move to Canada. He's just accepted a new job at the University of Toronto with the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. And Jason Stanley joins us this morning from New Haven, Connecticut.

Jason, good morning. Good morning, Matt. I was joking earlier saying that people in the United States will often say, I'm moving to Canada when they don't like the results of an election, whatever party that might be that comes into power. You're actually doing this. Why did you decide that you want to make this leap? Well, I think it's a global fight against authoritarianism and Canada is a central target.

It's not just Yale University and Columbia University who are being targeted. Trump is serious about Canada and Canada has positioned itself as sort of a central player in this war against authoritarianism. Canadian values, social welfare system, universal healthcare, media and press freedom, all of these are under attack. They're dismantling the government in the United States. They're destroying free speech. You know, I have a lot of American universities are international institutions. I have many colleagues who are non-U.S. citizens. No non-U.S. citizen at

a university can speak about politics now. Had you been thinking about this for a long time? Yes. The Munk School approached me a couple of years ago. They had a search and I applied, but I decided not to pursue the opportunity at the time because I was uncertain about the course of how things were going. It's not just because of the United States, it's also because the Munk School and the University of Toronto are centers of excellence

and in particular in this fight for democracy. But uprooting your family is a big deal. And I mean, the University of Toronto, the Munk School, I'm sure gave a great offer. They're both great institutions, Yale and the U of T, the Munk School, I'm sure gave a great offer. They're both great institutions, Yale and the U of T. What was the final straw for you? What was the thing that led you to say, you know what, I have to do this, I'm going to make this leap?

Well, certainly the University of Toronto does not pay or provide as much as Yale University. So it is a hit financially. So it wasn't because of the offer that I made the leap. It was because I see defending Canada as more important than defending Yale, even though I love Yale, and you guys are very much squarely in the target. So I thought they're assembling a team, Tim Snyder, Marcy Shore and I are the first elements of that team. And the idea is to train people from democratic black backsliding countries, journalists, politicians, to give them a home where they can strategize and go back to their home countries, as well as solidify Canadian democracy

in the face of this onslaught. And frankly, I believe in Canadian values, like I believe people should get healthcare, the government is good for people, not an enemy, tax cuts aren't the solution to every social problem. And then fundamentally, if I believe that if you need to recognize that Trump and the movement he represents is an existential threat,

and anyone who doesn't recognize that is naive, and I'm seeing university administrators in the United States not recognize that. Let's talk a bit about what's happening at some of those schools. You mentioned Columbia. For people who have not followed this situation closely, what unfolded at that school that alarmed you?

Okay, good point. I decided to, I made the decision when Columbia folded last Friday. I made it in a split second. So I had had this offer, I'd been thinking about it. You're absolutely right that it's been very difficult. I have two young kids, they don't want to move. But what Columbia did that made me just finally make this decisive decision is they were, so the Trump administration accused them of anti-Semitism.

It said that the university had been inactive in the face of harassment of Jewish students and so it was pulling something like $400 million in federal funding. Yeah, which is devastating for Columbia, but they made, now the harassment of Jewish students, no doubt there were some incidents, but there were Jewish students on both sides of the anti-war protests last year. Jewish students in our anti-war protests in our encampments were among the largest group,

if not the largest group, in the encampments. So the media misrepresented the situation. And then, so the Trump administration, they don't care about antisemitism. This is an antisemitic attack on antisemitism because it's making it seem as if Jewish people control the institutions and can get you fired. And that leans into antisemitic stereotypes.

And as an American Jew, I have never been more concerned about our position in this country, not because there were anti-war protests against Israel's actions in Gaza, but because the government is placing American Jews at the crosshairs of American politics. The US government, the Trump administration, put out a list of demands to get that funding back. There were a long list of them, no masks, protests, institutional neutrality, what have you. You say that Columbia folded. What do you mean when you say that it folded?

So it was two things. So one of the things you didn't mention is they put the academic department of Middle Eastern studies into receivership. Never before has the federal government intervened in university affairs, much less one of the top universities in the world, to place an academic department into receivership. What does that mean? Receivership is something that's done when the members of a department hate each other

so much they can't even be in the same room. And so it's a very sort of personal intervention. You take an outside chair from the university in some other department and you say, okay, you guys can't get along so I'll do this for you. This is a completely, this is saying one of the top departments in the area in the country, it's one of the best departments in that area. Because of ideological reasons, the government is forcing Columbia to, you know, appoint someone not in the department,

a non-academic probably, to oversee its affairs, to oversee its hiring. It's a completely unprecedented ideological intervention in university government, in department, department government. And the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Columbia was the home of Edward Said, one of Columbia's most important intellectuals, one of the most important intellectuals in the United States

in the last 50 years. So that was terrifying. The interim president of Columbia put out this statement about the decision to make these concessions to get the 400 million dollars back Said in her words We are guided by our values putting academic freedom free expression open inquiry and respect for all at the fore of every Decision we make what do you think Columbia should have done differently in the face of you mean you admit that the 400 million dollars Would be devastating if that money were to disappear. What should what should the school have done differently?

that the $400 million would be devastating if that money were to disappear. What should the school have done differently? I'm selling out democracy and free expression for $400 million. There is no more Columbia University. It's just a joke. That statement is the most ridiculous North Korean statement. Like, we are sacrificing academic freedom, apologizing,

we're obsequious in every way, and yet we're going to, we're obsequious in every way, and yet we're going to say we're going to protect exactly the values we just completely relinquished. You have to, these institutions, like let's take that $400 million. These institutions, and my institution, unfortunately, is also hinting that they're thinking this way, that I'm worried they're thinking this way. They're saying, we want to preserve our particular institution, meaning our particular university

in the face of this onslaught against universities. But you are not preserving Columbia University. There is no more Columbia University. There's a bunch of buildings called Columbia University, but there's no more Columbia University. There's a bunch of buildings called Columbia University, but there's no more university there. You're preserving a name and some buildings. What you're seeing in the United States and the broader issue is that all the democratic institutions are acting like this. What are the core democratic institutions? The universities, the media, the courts and the legal system. The Trump administration is going after law firms one

by one. They went after Paul Weiss, one of the most important law firm for progressives in the United States. Paul Weiss, all the other law firms started raiding their clients. That's not solidarity. The White House evicted the AP Newswire from the White House press corps. All the other media outlets sort of uniformly agree, unilaterally agreed to no longer attend press briefings. But nothing like that happened because everybody wanted to protect their own. And that's what we're seeing here. Yale didn't put out a statement in support of

Columbia. They're just, they just say, and they're openly saying, we want to keep out of the news. I'm Zing Singh. And I'm Simon Jack. And together we host Good, Bad, Billionaire. The podcast exploring the lives of some of the world's richest people. In the new season, we're setting our sights on some big names. Yep, LeBron James and Martha Stewart to name just a few.

And as always, Simon and I are trying to decide whether we think they're good, bad, or just another billionaire. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Find it on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Donald Trump seems rather pleased with how universities are responding to his threats to cut their funding. Have a listen to what he said on Wednesday. You see what we're doing with the colleges and they're all bending and saying, sir, thank you very much.

We appreciate it. And they are, nobody can believe it. And there's more coming. Jason Stanley, what do you think this is about? What are the goals of Donald Trump here? The goals of Donald Trump are to smash all democratic institutions and humiliate academics, journalists, and the legal world who has stood up for legal independence

because the United States is now about Donald Trump. So, and the machine behind him is extremely powerful. So he's reveling in this kind of humiliation of democratic institutions. And he's coming for Canada next, which is one big democracy sitting next to us. It's not just the institutions, it's the people who are at those institutions.

There was a story this week of an international student who was taken, she was at Tufts University, was taken into custody by federal agents. The Department of Homeland Security said that allegedly she's a supporter of Hamas, but they provided no evidence to back that up. Her visa has been revoked. What does that tell you? And the revoking of a student visa, what does that tell you about what's going on? Let's be clear.

The charges are based on her co-authoring, co-authoring an editorial in the student newspaper about Israel and Gaza. So that's what they mean. So co-authoring or social media posts, non-citizens, this is what I meant, non-citizens in the United States, professors in the political science department, can no longer co-author op-eds

about issues of political importance. If you're not a citizen of the United States, you can no longer write an op-ed criticizing Donald Trump and what he's doing. So that means that our universities are not international universities anymore. They're podunk local universities. They're places where if you are not a US citizen you can't really be at those universities anymore. Even if you're, you know, they also detained a Russian scientist who was working at a US university

and threatening to deport her back to Russia. So this is a broad net, but basically, our universities have been the best universities really in human history because they draw on the entire world, But that is now over. You used the phrase backsliding earlier to talk about the state of democracy in the United States. Do you believe that that's what's happening?

That the country, people use language like that, but you're a professor and you study this. I just wonder from the academic perspective, do you see a true backsliding of democracy in the US? Well, this has been very interesting for me, talking to a lot of Canadian journalists lately, which I've been doing in the last few weeks, even before this decision.

And there's kind of a naiveté, which is startling. It reminds me of the US media in 2017, 2018, when I first was writing about these issues, saying we're facing a fascist Political movement that is gonna that seeks to take over and install Donald Trump as a sort of personalist dictator And people were shocked people like you can't possibly mean this It's the United States and now when I talk to Canadian journalists, I see the same kind of naivete There's absolutely no doubt that the United States is an authoritarian country partnering with other authoritarian countries. Putin or Bonn, the Republican Party

loves Victor or Bonn. There's no doubt. And so if you guys don't snap out of your naivete, you're not going to be able to protect yourself. You can't have anyone anymore in positions of power who doesn't understand what's happening to the country on your southern border, because there's no more partnering with us. We are the enemy of Canada, and you need leaders who recognize that, or else you're going to be humiliated and taken over in the same way as Donald Trump and this machine behind him is taking over all our democratic institutions. Are you surprised at all by what's happening? No, no.

I mean, I wrote my book, How Fascism Works in 2018, laying this all out. And as I said, it's an international struggle, working in India, working in Brazil, these are all countries where I'm connected with journalists, politicians, and this international movement against democracy. And so the idea that it couldn't come to the United States and the idea that it couldn't come to Canada

is incredibly naive and it was facilitated precisely by the kind of disbelief that these countries could fall. So it is absolutely essential that we not be surprised by it. I'm certainly not surprised by it because I work on countries all over the world and I work on countries all over the world and I work on this ideology. I know for Europe in the post-World War II era was very vigilant about the fact that democracy, about the oldest problem in political philosophy,

which is that democracy can eat itself up. You can vote in a naive leader, you can vote in a demagogue who is going to then seize power by pitting people against each other, by vilifying cultural elites, by raising panic about minority groups, and then they will seize power and end democracy. This is in Plato's Republic. So Europe, like Germany, made it illegal for there to be anti-democratic parties.

I'm not necessarily recommending that. I'm just saying that as a political philosopher, it is the oldest, it's a book eight of Plato's Republic. Democracy leads to tyranny because you can use, if unprincipled people run for office, they will lie and use propaganda and, you know, foment panic about internal and external enemies and then seize power and never get it out. How should your new home or your soon to be new home

of Canada respond to this? I mean, yesterday the prime minister said, and this got a lot of attention in the United States and around the world, because again, it's very direct language that the United States is no longer a reliable partner in this, that it's no longer an ally. How should Canada respond, do you think? I think that was a good, solid response, but I'd like to see a much bolder response.

Which would include what? The United States in its current form is an enemy of Canada that seeks to at least dominate us if not annex us. And so you need that bolder understanding. I know you Canadians, and maybe I will be that you'll soon be my where I live in my home are not are sort of friendly, but, and I appreciate that. And I appreciate your Prime Minister saying what needs to be said, that we're no longer

a reliable partner, but don't you think that's a little bit of an understatement? But don't you, I guess the other concern is that if you use stronger language, the response will be even more dramatic, and in the shadow of the United States, I mean, you take a look at our economy, we're a tiny economy. The United States and Donald Trump

could crush this country. Donald Trump respects strength like any bully. You're talking like, I mean, if you were a therapist talking to someone in an abusive relationship and they said, look, my husband, he's so strong, I just wanna placate him and maybe he'll be nice again. I mean, you know, he's so strong, I just want to placate him and maybe he'll be nice again. I mean, you know, that's 101. That is not how you deal with abusers. And this situation, you know, Canada is going to be an abused partner if they act weak. Sure, you might lose when you

stand up to someone much stronger than you, but if you never stand up, you know, everything is lost. You have no chance then. And Canada needs to have bolder language, bolder policies. They need to also see this as an opportunity. This is an opportunity to place Canada squarely on the world map as a defender of democracy. The universities in Canada can get almost any academic in the United States they want. So Canada can, international students are not going to come to US universities anymore.

Where are they going to go? They're going to go to Canadian universities. This is an enormous opportunity for Canada. It is not the time to cower in fear. It is not the time to try to make buddies with an authoritarian. It is time to seize the opportunity, take leadership, and take advantage of the situation for the greatness of its institutions.

I have to let you go, but just finally and briefly, are you optimistic that there is a way back from this point for your country? Well, look, we're not at the part, not at Russia where they're throwing people out of windows and sending them to Siberian prisons. They're sending non-citizens to prisons in Louisiana, which are horrific. The conditions are horrific. But, you know, I don't know, I don't really work on optimism. I can say we're pretty far down the path. I work on analysis. So we're pretty far down the path, and it's going to take a lot more to bring

us back than it did a few years ago. We will see you here in Canada this fall, and hope we have the chance to talk again, Jason. Thank you very much. Thank you. Jason Stanley, currently a professor of philosophy at Yale University, and this fall begins a new job at the University of Toronto.