‘No Noncitizen Professor at My Institution Can Speak About Politics Ever Again’

Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale University, was one of the most forceful voices in higher education opposing the first Trump administration. His book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, published in 2018, identified and analyzed 10 pillars of fascism. His most recent book is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. “History suggests that when the central government targets universities in ways we are now witnessing in the United States, it is a signal of encroaching authoritarianism,” he wrote in The Chronicle. “We would do well to take such signals both literally and seriously, if we are to preserve what history teaches is a bulwark against authoritarianism — a vibrant, robust, and independent university system.”

Two months into Trump’s second term, Stanley has decided to leave Yale for the University of Toronto. He will follow two prominent colleagues, Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, both history professors, to Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

In a sign of how significantly his move is being perceived, Stanley has been on a whirlwind tour of press interviews in the two days since his decision was first reported in the Daily Nous and Leiter Reports, both philosophy blogs. He was almost out of breath when he spoke to The Chronicle Thursday afternoon, between interviews at The Washington Post and CNN. He apologized for ranting. But Stanley was clear in his disappointment in democratic institutions, including the media and higher education. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I read that the political environment is the reason that you’re making this move. What is it specifically about what’s going on in higher education that makes you feel like you can’t stay here?

I’m not disaggregating between the different democratic institutions: the media, the courts, and higher education.

So the AP gets banned from the White House briefings because of the Gulf of Mexico. The other organizations can’t agree on what to do. Nothing gets done other than a bland statement. The media can’t help its own.

The law firm Paul Weiss comes under attack. Other law firms, instead of defending it, raid its clients.

Columbia gets targeted. Other colleges’ response is, Let’s keep our heads down and we won’t be seen; we won’t be a target. Columbia does this obsequious, embarrassing, Oh, hit us again, please. Hit us again.

What would be needed for any kind of hope whatsoever would be a coordinated response. They are going to set us all against each other. The media has completely laid the groundwork. The sanctimonious bullshit, including, unfortunately, from you guys — ‘Oh, stand up to wokeness’ — has justified this attack on universities.

There’s a complete failure to see that the far right is not trying to have a debate. They’re not trying to have an argument. The ‘institutional neutrality’ stuff, it’s a strategy. There’s no reasonable conversation that’s being had.

They have a set of strategies to take down our institutions. The main part is to get all these concerned liberals on board, to trick them, because they don’t realize they’re going to come for the institutions no matter what. You want to show to the right wing that you’re a reasonable liberal, you can debate them. But they don’t care.

If only university administrators were talking to anyone who was following what was going on in Florida or the southern states, they would have been told these are strategies to make you shut up before you’re attacked.

I saw mistake after mistake. It’s not going to affect me, but no noncitizen professor at my institution can speak about politics ever again. Half my colleagues are not U.S. citizens. They can never speak about politics again.

Why not stay and help defend the academy from here?

I don’t feel it’s important to leave — I feel I have an enormous opportunity. I love Yale. It’s tragic for me to leave Yale. I don’t view myself as fleeing. I’d love to get myself arrested for political reasons. Think what my grandkids could say.

But Toronto is doing something exciting. I’ve held on to the offer for a number of years. The Munk School wants to be the world center for who they think are the best scholars to create a place where journalists and scholars from democratically backsliding countries can come. So there’s a great affirmative move.

I turned down their offer a year and a half ago. Right after the election, we started talking again. They were like, Now it’s even more important. They hired Tim Snyder, Marci Shore. The University of Toronto is like a kid in a candy shop now.

I want my kids to grow up in a free society. It’s not a free society if half the professors at the table are like, I can’t say anything about Israel. The Columbia thing pushed me over. It just made me cringe. You have to pretend that this is real, that it’s really about antisemitism.

I don’t view it as leaving the country, Yale, going to Canada. Canada’s a target too. This is an international fight. It’s more valuable to work in an international context. There’s not an atmosphere of fear.

What would you say to your students or younger scholars who you mentor, who don’t have the option to leave, about how to navigate the next few years?

I don’t view my own role in the fight as being a heroic person. I’m doing analysis. This is what is going on. This is the structure of what we face; this is the structure that you would need to preserve a situation where people are not terrified all the time. I’m not in the business of advising people or moralizing.

Will you bring graduate students with you?

I have not asked myself that yet. I just decided Friday to leave. I have six more exams to grade before 1 p.m. [We spoke at 12:30 p.m.]

You wrote in The Chronicle in 2018: “Fascist politics does not necessarily lead to an explicitly fascist state.” Do you think we have a fascist state yet?

I think that fascism is not a one-off thing, just like democracy. There’s no pure democracy. You get more and more democratic if you’re lucky, and you get less and less democratic if you’re unlucky.

But yeah, we live in an authoritarian regime. It’s crushing dissent. It’s going to keep crushing dissent.