The College Fix

“We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.”

That was the headline of a May 14 video report in the New York Times featuring three Yale University professors who are in the process of permanently moving to Canada to teach at the University of Toronto.

The seven-minute opinion video peppers between the three scholars, who say the country is in the midst of some sort of major authoritarian-fascist upheaval under Donald Trump’s second administration.

Yale philosophy Professor Jason Stanley’s decision to leave the United States, as recently reported by The College Fix, parallels that of history professors Marci Shore and her husband, Timothy Snyder, who are also relocating and joining the University of Toronto.

“The lesson of 1933 is that you get out sooner rather than later,” Professor Shore told the Times, adding Americans who think the country is safe are “like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink.'”

“We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship. 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 argues Americans who think the country is exceptional will support whatever is happening.

“If you think there is this thing out there called ‘America,’ and it’s exceptional, that means that you don’t have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom,” he said, adding under that paradigm the concept of freedom gets narrowed.

“Soon, you are using the word freedom, what you are talking about is authoritarianism.”

The New York Times set the stage for its video by presenting the concerns the Left has regarding the early months of the second Trump term: “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.”

The video flickers between various images, such as illegal migrants being detained, a Latino child crying alone on the street, Elon Musk’s infamous salute and other negative portrayals of the tech mogul, and a pro-Palestinian Tufts student activist detained as she walked along the street. Clips of Trump include his suggestion to purchase and redevelop Gaza and his concerns about “activist judges.”

Professor Shore said Trump has created an atmosphere filled with arbitrary abuses of power that have caused fear and confusion, and “you have to continually ask yourself the question, ‘Is this OK?'”

Snyder made clear in an April 4 op-ed in the Yale Daily News that his family’s departure decision from Yale predated Trump’s re-election and that he would not have returned even if Kamala Harris was elected. In his comments to the Times, he added he understands why people would flee the United States.

The third professor in the video, philosophy Professor Jason Stanley, has said he is leaving the United States as an act of protest, telling the Times: “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency.”

In the video Stanley says “you know you’re living in a fascist society when you’re constantly going over in your head the reasons why you’re safe. What we want is a country where none of us have to feel that way.”

As The College Fix previously reported in an analysis piece, Stanley is a “seemingly perpetually angry philosophy professor who once exclaimed ‘fuck those assholes’ to those who differed with his views on homosexuality.”

MORE: Professor flees Yale, U.S. for Canada due to ‘rise in fascism’

CAPTION AND CREDIT: History Professors Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder / New York Times video screenshot

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